Cold Fusion

When the idea of cold fusion was first kicked around scientific think-tanks, it was seen as an excellent end to the energy crisis.  Unlike nuclear fission, which breaks apart big atoms like uranium to produce power, nuclear fusion combines small molecules like hydrogen and helium to produce power.  Nuclear fission, though relatively safe and efficient, produces large amounts of dangerous radioactive waste which don't decay for hundreds of years and give off dangerous radiation.  Fusion, in comparison, produces hardly any radioactive waste.  Unfortunately, the only fusion experiments that have been successful have been thermonuclear and occur at millions of degrees Celsius, usually exploding and melting things and generally making a mess of everything.  So scientists postulated that they could create fission reactions (relatively) near room temperature and in (relatively) unpressurized environments, creating a great deal of power out of easily accessible materials while producing a very small amount of waste.  This procedure was called "cold fusion."

The main problem with cold fusion is that it doesn't work, or at least it hasn't worked yet.  Hot fusion has worked, but so far it's been nearly impossible to control or maintain.  When reactions occurring at millions of degrees Celsius are difficult to control it generally makes scientists and laymen alike a bit nervous, so most experts are hoping that cold fusion will be the answer to our problems. 

In 1987 two separate teams worked on cold fusion in Utah, Fleischmann and Pons and Stephen Jones.  Neither team knew of the others' work until they submitted their papers for peer review.  They had planned to release their papers simultaneously, but Pons and Fleischmann acted a day sooner than Jones and held their press release early.  Jones then fired his article off to Nature, the rush to publish the findings caused quite a stir in national media.  Much of the media buzz subsided quickly though, since the experiments weren't matching up to the proposed results.  Peer review produced a string of failed experiments, and after the government investigated they found no evidence that cold fusion had been achieved.  Though some cold fusion research is still being carried out and advances are still being made, most experiments are done by professors or retired professors working on shoestring budgets.  In general, though we may still see reliable cold fusion reactors in our lifetime, combining hydrogen and helium to produce clean, plentiful energy, for the time being it's best not to hold your breath.