It is appropriate that an international conference on "cold fusion," now called Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR) is being held next month at Salt Lake City, Utah, to mark the twentieth anniversary of the historic Fleischmann-Pons University of Utah announcement which was first made there.

It is obvious by now that experiments on this field have been repeated by several groups in the world and there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the observations.

If the observed phenomena do not fit within our text-book understanding of nuclear phenomena, that is a problem for science to solve. Nature demonstrates many phenomena which we don't yet understand. This does not mean we should not explore further.

The need to satisfy peer reviews, (in fact there could be no perfect peers at any time in any subject,) should not come in the way of continued exploration. We are glad that an archive is being created to mark this occasion. We congratulate Steven B. Krivit and New Energy Times for this initiative.

- Dr. P. K. Iyengar, Chairman (retired), Atomic Energy Commission, India
February 23, 2009

- M. Srinivasan, Associate Director (retired), Physics Group, Bhabha Atomic
Research Centre (BARC), India
February 23, 2009

Abstract
Early in April 1989 the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Mumbai, embarked on a massive experimental campaign involving close to 50 scientists to investigate whether there was any basis to the reported claims of occurrence of “fusion reactions” at room temperature in Pd-D2O electrolysis cells. Deuterium gas/plasma loaded titanium targets as well as nickel-light hydrogen electrolytic systems were also studied for nuclear debris. Within weeks the production of neutrons and tritium was confirmed in over a dozen independent experimental configurations, with neutron yield being almost eight orders of magnitude smaller than that of tritium. This so called “branching ratio anomaly” has since been identified as a unique signature of lenr devices by other groups around the world. Autoradiography of deuterium gas/plasma loaded cold working titanium metal targets indicated that tritium production occurs primarily in localized hot spots, predominantly defect sites created during machining of the electrodes/targets.

Tritium Emissions Captured on X-Ray Film

(Images and text courtesy of Jed Rothwell of LENR-CANR.org)

A Polaroid autoradiograph from M. Srinivasan, Neutron Physics Division (ret.), Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Bombay, India. The image shows x-rays from tritium generated in a Ti disk with a plasma focus device using deuterium gas loading. The Polaroid paper is 12 cm × 9 cm. The disk diameter is 6.7 cm. This image is 200 dpi. Click here for a larger, positive 300 dpi copy of this image.

The same electrode was repeatedly autoradiographed over a one-year period, revealing the same pattern. Tritium was detected with three methods: autoradiography with X-ray film; for Ti cathodes, characteristic X-ray measurement of titanium excited by the tritium β; and liquid scintillation method for tritium β counting. The plasma focus device used in this experiment generates low levels of plasma fusion (hot fusion). However, as explained in Ref. 2, according to conventional plasma fusion theory, this experiment should have produced no more than 109 tritium atoms, whereas in this experiment, when the titanium target was exposed to the plasma, it produced 1016 tritium atoms. See:

1. Rout, R.K., M. Srinivasan, and A. Shyam, Autoradiography of Deuterated Ti and Pd Targets for Spatially Resolved Detection of Tritium Produced by Cold Fusion, in BARC Studies in Cold Fusion, P.K. Iyengar and M. Srinivasan, Editors. 1989, Atomic Energy Commission: Bombay. p. B 3.

2. Rout, R.K., et al., Detection of high tritium activity on the central titanium electrode of a plasma focus device. Fusion Technol., 1991. 19: p. 391.

3. Rout, R.K., et al., Reproducible, anomalous emissions from palladium deuteride/hydride. Fusion Technol., 1996. 30: p. 273.

4. Iyengar, P.K. and M. Srinivasan. Overview of BARC Studies in Cold Fusion. in The First Annual Conference on Cold Fusion. 1990. University of Utah Research Park, Salt Lake City, Utah: National Cold Fusion Institute.

From Ref. 1: "Autoradiography is a simple and elegant technique of detecting the presence of radiation emitting zones. This technique has the advantage of being free from any electromagnetic interference (pick ups, discharge pulses etc), has relatively high sensitivity as it can integrate over long exposure times and can give very useful information in the form of space resolved images. In order to achieve good resolution of the image, the sample was kept very close to the X-ray film. Standard medical X-ray film of medium grain size (10 to 15 μm in diameter) on cellulose triacetate base was used for this purpose. The exposure time used for the deuterated samples varied from 18 hours to a few days. At times a stack of several films was used. In some cases films were placed on both sides of the sample. For latent image formation we used IPC (India Photographic Company Ltd.) made 19B developer and IPC made fixer. The developing time was typically 4 to 5 minutes. Out of many samples which had absorbed D2 gas, only a few showed a latent image."

A 35 mm slide photo of another Poloroid original

(All papers are contained in New Energy Times Reprint. Some individual papers are downloadble from LENR-CANR.org)

Part A: Electrolytic Cell Experiments

Part B: D2 Gas Loading Experiments