On
January 2, 2005, at around 4:00 p.m., an explosion rocked a
cold fusion laboratory at Hokkaido University, Japan. The
experimental design was the plasma electrolysis method, one of
several methods used to perform cold fusion experiments.
Physicist Tadahiko Mizuno, one of Japan's most experienced cold
fusion scientists and a guest of his were in the laboratory at
the time of the explosion.
Mizuno
and the guest suffered wounds to the face, neck, arms and chest
from shards of glass. A large piece of glass next to Mizuno's
carotid artery was safely removed.
"I
feel fortunate that neither of my eyes were seriously wounded
and that neither I, nor my guest were seriously wounded,"
he said.
However,
the explosion was so loud that it rendered both victims
temporarily deaf. A week following the accident, their hearing
recovered, though Mizuno said that the "singing in the ear
continues strongly."
A
definitive explanation is unknown, though Mizuno suspects that a
mixture of hydrogen and oxygen in the headspace of the cell was
ignited. Mizuno has performed these experiments hundreds of
times, and this apparatus had been well-tested over the last
five years.
Before
the experiment, Mizuno had checked all of his equipment and had
made sure that the exhaust tube was clear.
"The
outlet tube leading to the mass spectrometer was definitely not
blocked or impeded, so the gas in the headspace was at one
atmosphere," he reported.
A
high-pressure build-up of hydrogen and oxygen has been ruled
out.
At
the time of the explosion, a collector that would normally have
aided in the collection and removal of the effluent gasses was
removed, though this was not unique.
"The
funnel around the cathode was taken off for the analysis of the
generation gas during plasma electrolysis," Mizuno said.
"I have performed such measurements 40 times in the past
and confirmed the safety of this procedure many times."
Mizuno
turned the experiment on when he arrived in the laboratory that
afternoon. It had not been on long enough to develop the plasma,
which usually takes about 20
minutes. About 5 seconds later,
when he observed that electrolysis started, he increased the
voltage to 20 volts and the current to 1.5 amps. About five or
six seconds later, Mizuno reported seeing a bright white flash
of light from the submerged portion of the cathode, where the
plasma normally would develop.
The
light "expanded, and at the same instant the cell
exploded," Mizuno said. The safety doors to the incubator
were blown open, and glass and electrolyte were blown up to 6
meters from the experiment platform.
Mizuno
documented the event in his accident report (http://newenergytimes.com/news/2005MTEexplosion/Report.pdf).
He listed several possible causes, though he was tentative about
any of the prosaic explanations.
Chemist
Dieter Britz from the University of Aarhus was curious about how
such a small amount (3cc) of hydrogen gas might have caused such
a large explosion in the cell.
"It
is also hard to imagine that there should have been enough for
such a violent explosion," Britz said. "You have no
doubt seen the school experiment, where a lighted taper is
inserted into a tube with some hydrogen in it. You get a nice
'pop.' In an open cell, [such as this] after a short time of
electrolysis, that is what I would expect. So this is very
strange, and I have no guesses."
The
explosion was perhaps similar to the one on Jan. 2, 1992, that
killed SRI International researcher Andy Riley, though the SRI
cell was closed and under high pressure. Mike McKubre, the
director of the energy research center at SRI, who was wounded
in the 1992 explosion, as well, cautioned that any exposed metal
can cause a recombination explosion.
"I
found it is impossible to impress on people just how explosive a
stoichiometric mix of hydrogen and oxygen is, McKubre said.
"Even a few cc's can be dangerous, even deadly.
You don't need to search for an ignition source. Any
metal will do."
The
only other well-known cold fusion explosion was that of Martin
Fleischmann and Stanley Pons in 1985, though a source who wishes
to remain anonymous states that the Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory had a Fleischmann-Pons-type explosion in 1989, as
well.
Mike
Carrell, a previous board member for Infinite Energy magazine,
postulates a two-stage reaction in the Mizuno explosion.
"First
there is a spark or flash, then an expanding glow, then an
explosion," Carrell said. "When the disturbance
reaches the surface, the stoichiometric H2-O2 mixture may well
have ignited, contributing to the explosion."
Horace
Heffner, a cold fusion enthusiast, offered this analysis.
"It appears that the explosion may well have been ignited
in the flask, but the main energy from the explosion came from
the top interior of the Yamato 1L-6 incubator. It looks like the
explosive force was primarily downward, and the overpressure on
the conical cap on the flask blew the flask apart in radial
directions, leaving the base cracked but in place. It looks like
the base of the flask may be stuck (by prior heating) to the
polypropylene insulation underneath it.
"Assuming
the plastic door was not blown to pieces, the overpressure was
clearly enough to blow open the plastic door before the glass
shards went through the open door. This indicates the
overpressure hit the door before the flask pieces. The source of
the blast pressure that opened the plastic door was therefore
not inside the flask but rather probably coming from the top of
the 1L-6 downward."
Heffner
speculated that hydrogen from the reaction flask is dumped into
the interior of the 1L-6 where it can accumulate in various
spaces and thus be exploded by an ignition event in the flask.
The
big question on everyone's minds is whether this was a chemical
explosion - or a nuclear explosion. A physicist who considered
the amount of energy required to convey the 800cc of electrolyte
a distance of up to 6 meters, was unconvinced that this was a
chemical reaction.
Jed
Rothwell, who translated Mizuno's book Nuclear Transmutation:
The Reality of Cold Fusion to English, assisted with this
story and reports that Mizuno is back at work starting the
experiments again, despite the trauma.
"Mizuno
has guts," Rothwell said. "All cold fusion researchers
have guts. They are an ornery bunch, but you have to admire
them."
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