At 74, Storms shows no
signs of slowing down
— because he feels he
has no choice: “Once you
realize that this is real,
you can’t go back, because
your integrity and your
conscience won’t allow
you to go back.”
metal is deposited on another, and he uses an
expensive vacuum deposition system to enable
this. “I vaporize a palladium wire by passing
a high current and low voltage through it,” he
explains. “If you get it hot enough, it will vapor-
ize without melting, and in a vacuum, you can
deposit the vapor on other metals. Other people
have done this with electrodeposition, but vapor
deposition is cleaner. You can adjust the plat-
ing conditions to produce various geometrical
characteristics, all kinds of morphologies, widely
varying in size. My effort is to sort through that
and find what it is about an active material that
makes it unique.”
a fancy name for hydrogen that has one extra Since Storms is an experimentalist, not a theo-
neutron in each of its atoms. The deuterium rist, he isn’t trying to explain why the phenome-
penetrates the lattice structure of the palladium, non occurs. He is simply changing variables one
where Fleischmann theorized that nuclear fusion at a time in the hope of hitting a combination
could occur after the deuterium has reached that will make it occur more reliably.
sufficient density. The fusion would liberate heat, This is the same kind of trial-and-error ap-
which could be harnessed to create electricity. proach that Edison used when struggling to
According to conventional nuclear physics, this develop a working filament for a light bulb. It’s
was impossible. Atomic nuclei repel each other comparable, also, to the efforts of scientists who
so strongly, you should need huge amounts of developed high-temperature superconductors
energy to overcome that repulsion and make — ceramic compounds that ought to behave
them fuse. LENR advocates responded by as insulators yet somehow conduct electricity
suggesting that unique conditions in a Pons- with zero resistance. Even now, no one knows
Fleischmann cell could change the rules regard- exactly why these materials behave the way they
ing nuclear fission; but hot-fusion proponents do. In fact, according to orthodox theory, they
insisted that positive results were “experimental shouldn’t work at all.
errors,” even after one observer counted 92 sepa- The problem with LENRs is that they are not
rate groups who had validated the phenomenon. only difficult to replicate but difficult to detect.
Japanese researcher Tadahiko Mizuno claimed
The elusiveness of the he once had a cell that generated 100 watts of
phenomenon was blamed initially on impurities heat throughout a period of several days, but
in palladium. “People analyzed the surface of such reports are rare, and a more typical result
the palladium,” Storms recalls, “and found plati- would be 50 milliwatts. Since you must put some
num from the anode, silicon from the glass, boron
from the Pyrex, lithium, and other elements
— zinc, copper, and silver.” But subsequent studies indicated that impurities were actually necessary. “If the palladium is super pure, it doesn’t work,” Storms says. “We now believe that when the impurities reach a certain mix, they enable the phenomenon. I’ve seen this myself.
TEST CELL: Inside this typical electrolytic cell, the metal-mesh screen is an anode made from palladium. A glass-covered heater applies a known amount of energy, while a glass-covered thermistor measures temperature.
On the occasions when I hit it right the first time, it turns on instantly. It takes no time at all.” He claims the “micro domains” that foster LENR are most common where a thin film of one >>
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