At the American Chemical Society's annual meeting in Portland, OR the U.S. Navy researchers presented a paper that shows evidence of highly energetic neutrons from cold fusion reactions.
Everyone remembers the press conference in 1989 by Pons and Fleischmann with the first big announcement on cold fusion? Other researchers were not able to reproduce the results so Pons and Fleischmann were 'tarred and feathered' in the media and the scientific community.
It is interesting that the research money for cold fusion never actually dried up in the last 20 years. In fact, the Dept. of Energy kept funding available for further research, although this was kept as a low-profile budget item.
It appears that the key to this week's announcement was difficulty in detecting the low-energy neutron reactions.
It is difficult to predict the fusion energy reprocussions from this breakthrough. My guess is the theortetical implications may be the most ground breaking. Who knows, this may actually lead to something big for the electric power industry. Time will tell.
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