ENERGY
Why the DOE is Funding “Cold Fusion”
An exploration into exploratory physics is reported
The Department of Energy (DOE) announced in Sept. of 2022 that it was funding up to $10M to study Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR) aka “cold fusion.” The official announcement can be viewed here. This subject has been known to go by dozens of different terminologies such as solid state fusion, lattice enhanced fusion, lattice confined fusion, etc. The topic is typically scoffed at by most members of the scientific community as pseudoscience. So, why is the DOE funding it?
The short answer is that there are numerous credentialed scientists interested in the topic despite the dismissive attitude of academia. It turns out that there are a plethora of interesting results and the recent interest is shared by more than just the DOE. There are numerous academic institutions involved in the research and even NASA is studying the subject. There’s even interest in it by members of Silicon Valley and investors. Although there is admittedly no clear consensus for an underlying theory for the many reported anomalous results it appears a consensus among some less risk averse individuals is that there’s something here worth exploring. A conference (all videos available to view here) was held in October of 2022 in which members of the DOE program…
