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Comment by BeanCounter on Cold fusion: real after all? · 2013-04-18T18:48:28.389Z · LW · GW

Interesting but still highly doubtful. The Toyota reproduction of Iwamura is not clearly documented. And a team of researchers at University Missouri (SKINR - Kimmel Inst. "Nuclear Renaissance" - Robert Duncan) has not yet confirmed the appearance of energetic particles. This bunch is hosting a meeting called ICCF18, a crackpot-type conference of cold fusion enthusiasts found here: http://iccf18.research.missouri.edu/organization.php

What IS interesting is the recent patent issued to a research group inside the U.S. Navy's SPA-WAR division "Method for Generating Particles (Patent 8419919) http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8419919.html How the patent office could grant this type of cold fusion patent is beyond comprehension - but the Navy probably has big plans or is deluded. Still patents don't mean much and aside from the Italian loon and work at DARPA and ENEA, there is little peer-reviewed evidence of anomalous heat beyond Swartz and Hagelstein at MIT - even if Swartz is an MIT graduate.

One final thought, the Edison Electric Inst. recently published a paper on encroaching distributed energy systems stealing customers from the grid (mostly solar PV.) IF, big IF, there was any veracity to the commercialization of cold fusion, I would expect a utility consortium of this sort to issue a similar warning to their members. http://grist.org/climate-energy/solar-panels-could-destroy-u-s-utilities-according-to-u-s-utilities/