DOE Funds $10 Million to Settle LENR Controversy

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In February, 2023, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) $10 million in funding for eight projects working to determine whether low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR) could be the basis for a potentially transformative carbon-free energy source. The teams selected today—from universities, a national laboratory, and small business—aim to break the stalemate of research in this space.

Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) LENR Exploratory Topic:

* Amphionic (Dexter, MI) will focus on exploring if LENR are produced in potential wells existing between two nanoscale surfaces by controlling metal nanoparticle (NP) geometry, separation, composition, and deuterium loading. (Award amount: $295,924)

* Energetics Technology Center (Indian Head, MD) will use electrochemical co-deposition of a deuterated palladium metal compound on a metal substrate conformed onto a plastic scintillator to establish and sustain LENR. (Award amount: $1,500,000)

* Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley, CA) will draw from knowledge based on previous work using higher energy ion beams as an external excitation source for LENR on metal hydrides electrochemically loaded with deuterium. The team proposes to systematically vary materials and conditions, while monitoring nuclear event rates with a suite of diagnostics. (Award amount: $1,500,000)

* Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA) will develop an experimental platform that thoroughly and reproducibly tests claims of nuclear anomalies in gas-loaded metal-hydrogen systems.​ (Award amount: $2,000,000)

* Stanford University (Redwood City, CA) will explore a technical solution based on LENR-active nanoparticles and gaseous deuterium. (Award amount: $1,500,000)

* Texas Tech University (Lubbock, TX) will focus on advanced materials fabrication, characterization, and analysis, along with advanced detection of nuclear products as a resource for teams within the LENR Exploratory Topic. (Award amount: $1,150,000)

* University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI) will use a gas cycling experiment that passes deuterium gas through a chamber filled with palladium nanocrystalline samples. Variables will include temperature, nanocrystalline size, and laser wavelength. (Award amount: $1,108,412)

* University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI) will provide capability to measure hypothetical neutron, gamma, and ion emissions from LENR experiments. Modern instrumentation will be coupled with best practices in data acquisition, analysis, and understanding of backgrounds to interpret collected data and evaluate the proposed signal. (Award amount: $902,213)

14 thoughts on “DOE Funds $10 Million to Settle LENR Controversy”

  3. LENR has always been pseudo science, but these are legitimate groups, so no harm. I heard a real interesting talk, for a space propulsion engine, fusion, metal hydrides. Half fusion half fission.
    Rossi has made millions off of stupid people and our lax laws, but the true believers still believe.

    • I don’t know that it’s entirely pseudo-science. Muon catalyzed fusion could have been practical if muons had a longer half-life.

      But just from the fact that there are cold gas giants out there, you have to figure cold fusion is pretty unlikely; The background rate of such reactions would have to be vanishingly small even under much more plausible conditions such as near degenerate hydrogen in the center of a super-Jovian planet, for a large gas giant to cool down.

      But a lot of “too good to test rigorously” results have gotten publicity, and there are a high percentage of cranks. Same is true of ‘reactionless’ space drives, of course.

  4. I have some general doubts about the viability of ‘cold’ fusion, even assuming that it can be demonstrated to actually be real in some cases.

    The D-D fusion reaction releases about 3.5-4MeV per reaction. This is enough to heat a substantial portion of the material around a fusion reaction to the melting point, and destroy any micro-structure that enabled the reaction. Essentially, cold fusion is self-limiting, it destroys the conditions for its own occurrence.

    • I agree. The few experiments that seem to have had the best results also seem to be of a nature that can’t be scaled up to usefulness.

      Though if the effect is real, we might learn something from studying it. It’s good to learn more about the universe, even if it doesn’t have a practical application.

      • On further consideration, if you got enough energy out of the reaction before the lattice destruction terminated it, you might still have a decent EROEI even after periodically re-manufacturing the fuel. Fusion reactions are energetic enough that you don’t necessarily need a high burnup fraction for them to be practical.

        It would require getting more energy out each pass per kg than you’d typically get out of a chemical fuel, of course, but might be feasible.

  5. Look there is a lot more to LENR than meets the eye, go to the young brilliant environmental engineer from Australia who published the LENR catalyst ID model and has several high energy reactions, bulk production of catalyst dense hydrogen super chemical energy may be the path to harnessing the elusive low energy nuclear reaction.

  6. This will be interesting. Especially the second one (Energetics). They seem to be studying the SPAWAR effect. That’s a LENR result that was published in peer-reviewed journals, was successfully replicated by all of the numerous teams who tried to replicate it (even students), and which avoided the worst claims of the field (such as claims of fusion without any neutrons / gammas / etc being released). They even did a good job of having controls, eliminating various sources of error, etc.

    And yes, Rossi is an obvious scam. But the research being funded here appears to be legit. I’ll be curious whether they find anything interesting.

  7. What?
    No Rossi?
    Surely he’s got it figured out by now?
    He’s gotta be out there lurking, still trying to scam someone?

    • Rossi is still at work, but believes his devices do not work by LENR, but by some other property. As far as I have seen, he has not been asking anyone for money.

      • If he’s still eating he’s got some mark on the line. Remember, he’s a professional con man, not a physicist. His only legit degree is in philosophy, though he did buy a degree in chemical engineering from a diploma mill.

        It always amazes me when somebody takes the guy seriously. Seriously, he’s a con man, nothing more.

        • I agree. The few experiments that seem to have had the best results also seem to be of a nature that can’t be scaled up to usefulness.

          Though if the effect is real, we might learn something from studying it. It’s good to learn more about the universe, even if it doesn’t have a practical application.

      • Rossi has been making money from the scam. Though probably not much.

        He licensed it to Industrial Heat for $89 million, but they never paid that, because they could never get it to work in 3 years of trying. He sued them, and it was settled out of court, so maybe he got a little money. It’s unlikely he’d keep the scam going for so long if he didn’t make any money at all from it. But it’s also unlikely he’s been able to get much. I would assume the same is true for the BlackLight / Brilliant Light scam.

        There have been fake medicines sold for thousands of years, but that doesn’t mean all medicine is fake. Similarly, energy scams don’t necessarily mean all of LENR is wrong. It might be the case that all of LENR is wrong, but we can’t conclude that just because of a few scams.

        I’m hopeful these DOE projects will actually shed some light on the subject.

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