Cold Fusion Research Paper

In March of 1989, a discovery was made that rocked the scientific world. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischman had announced that they were able to create and sustain a cold fusion process. After intense media attention, and corresponding interest in future test, the subject seemed to have faded away. Future tests proved inconclusive, and when the quick promise of easy energy didn’t materialize, most quickly forgot the subject. Little is said about the continuing research in the scientific community to further our understanding of the free energy enigma. Is it science fiction, on the border of legitamete science, or is it a practical field worthy of serious attention?

     Fusion energy seems to be the most promising energy source of the not-too-distant future. It is safe, it uses an energy supply that is so abundant that it will never run out, it gives off harmless waste, and it produces energy comparable to the Earth's sun! But are there any problems with this hopeful energy source?

Process of nuclear fusion release enormous about of energy It is a nuclear reaction where two atoms collide at a very high speed and join two crate a new type of atom .It needs two atomic nuclei to make a large nucleus it needs energy to make this happen though. Things that use this reaction are the sun and the stars to release energy.

1. Christian, Eric. (2012, May 10). Nucleosynthesis. Retrieved from http://helios.gsfc.nasa.gov/nucleo.html 2. May, Sandra. (2015, Sept 16)

Nuclear Fusion is a reaction where atomic nuclei come in contact with each other to form different atomic nuclei and subatomic particles. Due to the difference in mass between the reactants and the products, large amounts of energy is released. The difference in atomic binding energy between the atomic nuclei before and after the reaction fuel this energy. Nuclear Fusion is the process that powers active/dwarf stars, or other high magnitude stars and is the primary process by which new natural elements are created.

“At the sun core, powerful gravitational force generates heat and pressure, causing a reaction where by two hydrogen atoms collide and bond in to heavier helium atoms” (Naik, Guatam). The word fusion is when a merging of separate elements into a unified whole. “Scientist can’t replicate the tremendous gravitational force feeding sun and stars, they must find other ways to generate the intense heat and pressure needed to fuse the hydrogen atoms” (Naik Gautam). “It’s clean energy, virtually limitless fuel available, no chain reactions, with little to no waste and very low fuel cost but it’s unproven, commercial power plants will be very expensive to build and require extremely high temperature” ( Nolten, Tanja). Fusion should advance under general guidelines with some government control by how fusion was invented, backgrounds into fusion, the future of power and fission versus fusion. “Both fission and fusion are nuclear reactions that produce energy, but the applications are not the same” (Duke, Energy).

is the process of combining the nuclei of smaller atoms(less protons & neutrons and hence, a smaller atomic number) to create a larger atom. In many stars, the process starts with hydrogen (H) atoms combining to form helium atoms (He) then combining again to form Beryllium (Be) atoms and so on... The process stops when all the atoms are converted to Iron (Fe) and the star is thus dead. The reason for this is that once the atoms reach Iron and higher, the energy required to fuse the atoms becomes greater than the energy released by the atoms.

Many obstacles limit the adoption of nuclear fusion to include education, resources and the process itself.

Glenn T. Seaborg, Joseph W. Kennedy, Edwin McMillan, and Arthur Wahl discovered it in 1940.

Using fusion for power as many benefits to us, it offers a solution without the problems of our current methods, sustainable or otherwise. Fusion does not give off greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, unlike the use of fossil duels such as oil or coal; neither does it create long-lived radioactive waste like nuclear fission. It’s not dependent on the weather as wind or solar powers are, and there is no risk of a runaway reaction as, unlike nuclear fission, there is no chain reaction.

The molar heat of fusion is the energy required to convert 1.00 mole of a solid into a liquid at the melting point that is specific to that substance. The transition from a solid to a liquid is called an endothermic process. In an endothermic process, energy is absorbed by the system from its surroundings. The transition from a liquid to a solid is an exothermic process. In an exothermic process, energy is released by the system into its surroundings. The molar heat of fusion is determined by using calorimetry. Calorimetry is the measurement of the amount of heat that is absorbed or released chemical reaction. A container called a calorimeter is used to measure the heat involved in a chemical reaction. It’s covered to prevent air from going

Curium was first produced by the team of Glenn Seaborg, Ralph James, and Albert Ghiorso in 1944 at the University of California, Berkeley. Using a device called a cyclotron, they bombarded atoms of an isotope of plutonium with alpha particles. The plutonium with alpha particles was then sent to a laboratory at the University of Chicago where a tiny sample of curium was separated and identified. However, news of the new element was not revealed until after the end of World War II and was officially announced in November, 1945.2

Firstly, high thermal energies are needed to achieve controlled fusion. High temperature enable the particles to overcome the Coulomb barrier, the energy barrier due to electrostatic interaction that two nuclei need to overcome so they can get close enough to undergo a nuclear reaction. This energy barrier of the electrostatic potential energy is that temperature must be maintained for a sufficient confinement time and with a sufficient ion density in order to obtain a net yield of energy from a fusion reaction. A necessary part in nuclear fusion is plasma, which is a mixture of atomic nuclei and electrons that are required to initiate a self-sustaining reaction which requires a temperature of more than 40,000,000 K.

The article that I decided to review was an article about how a research laboratory in California was able to create nuclear fusion by using an incredibly concentrated laser. This is important because we need to find alternative fuels to power our society that doesn’t give off excess amount of pollutants such as carbon emissions or nuclear waste. In the article it mentions that this laser was able to create more power than it used therefore it can be used to generate power. The other process I want to mention as pretext is the nuclear fission of U-235 and U-238. The difference between these two operations is that they operate on the respective particles mentioned above and additionally U-235, which is what we use

In their study, the results they found for their “Super Compact Neutron Source” were on the less impressive side considering the hopes for a fusion reaction were very high. According to their report, they were able to get approximately anywheres from one to two megawatts of of output for an input of six megawatts of neutral beam