Panel Clears Nuclear Engineer
Associated Press

Friday, February 9, 2007

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind., Feb. 8 -- A panel has rejected allegations that a Purdue University nuclear engineer interfered with efforts to verify his claims of producing "tabletop fusion."

The internal university committee investigating the work of professor Rusi Taleyarkhan determined that the evidence does not support allegations of research misconduct and that no further investigation is needed, Purdue said Wednesday.

The university's vice president for research, Charles O. Rutledge, appointed the committee last March after the British research journal Nature reported that researchers had raised questions about Taleyarkhan's work.

Taleyarkhan led a team at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee that reported in March 2002 in the journal Science that they had achieved nuclear fusion by collapsing bubbles in a solvent with powerful ultrasound vibrations.

Their simple experiment stood in contrast to experimental fusion reactors that have to date required large, multibillion-dollar machines.

Since the 2002 report, however, scientists working in other laboratories have been unable to reproduce those findings.

"Taleyarkhan is engaged in very promising, significant research, and we hope he will now be able to give his full attention to this important work," Purdue spokesman Joseph L. Bennett said in a statement.

Taleyarkhan said in an e-mail that he and his colleagues were unfairly accused. "The inquiry offers vindication for what we've stood for and have stated all along about the science, our research, and the integrity with which we conduct, report stand by our results and findings -- despite the intense attacks from detractors," he said.

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