any dog poop, but I have to pick my way around measure the presence of elements in vapor with
some furniture and across rubber exercise mats extreme precision. He became involved in the
that Ed’s wife, Carol, placed beneath the SP100 program, an effort to build a power reac-
equipment to prevent it from damaging the tor for use in space, and he played a significant
parquet floor. role in the Rover program, which developed a
Storms has a laconic sense of humor, but his nuclear-powered rocket motor. This project
relaxed style is deceptive. During more than a reached the point where it was tested in Nevada.
decade of supposed retirement, he has worked “We had a reactor with liquid hydrogen flowing in
from his home with relentless ambition and at one end and hydrogen gas coming out at the
infinite patience to understand and control an other end, around 2,500 degrees Kelvin,” Storms
obscure phenomenon known as low-energy recalls. “The specific impulse and the thrust were
nuclear reactions (LENR). His latest acquisition, just enormous. It could have taken 100 tons to
the electron microscope, is on loan from a small the Moon without any problem. But Nixon killed
Chicago company of speculative investors who the program when he needed the money to
hope that Storms may make a crucial break- bomb Vietnam.”
through in his one-man research initiative. The final and fateful phase of Storms’ tenure
at Los Alamos began when Stanley Pons and
Martin Fleischmann announced their discovery
The stakes are immense. of “cold fusion” in 1989. The laboratory spon-

If LENRs exist and can be harnessed, they could sored a major effort to replicate the effect. Of eliminate our dependence on carbon-based about 100 scientists who were involved, Storms fuels. Oil would become obsolete for most ap- was one of only three who succeeded. During a plications, and electric power lines would largely year-long series of 250 separate experiments, he disappear as cars, homes, and airplanes would measured excess heat on numerous occasions acquire their own individual nuclear power cells, and detected tritium, a radioactive byproduct, 13 capable of generating electricity for decades times, causing him to become convinced beyond while costing virtually nothing to maintain. More- any doubt that although the phenomenon was over, LENRs would not be hazardous, quite unlike elusive, it was real. the dramatically dangerous fission and hot-fusion reactions that occur in bombs and nuclear power plants. Since they don’t emit chemical pol- “There’s a lot of room for lutants such as carbon dioxide, they could even the solitary experimenter.” alleviate global warming.

Hard to believe? Certainly, this kind of lyrical speculation seems uncomfortably reminiscent of Other researchers lacked his persistence or “futuristic” visions from 1950s Popular Mechan- were simply unlucky in their selection of metal ics magazine covers, or classified ads offering electrodes, which turned out to be a crucial mysterious additives that guarantee 100 miles factor. Pons and Fleischmann were widely from a gallon of gas. Since LENRs have been discredited, and Los Alamos almost forgot about notoriously difficult to replicate on a reliable cold fusion, along with most other conventional basis, many skeptics dismiss the entire field as research institutions.

“pathological science.”

Still, Ed Storms does not remotely fit the profile of a crackpot inventor. He spent most of his In 1991, Storms took early working life in Los Alamos National Laboratory, retirement. He retreated into an unspoiled, one of the most prestigious research environ- mountainous area of New Mexico, worked for ^{ments in the world. Arriving with a degree in} radiochemistry, his first task was to design and _{build a mass spectrometer — a device used to} >>