Alternative energy: cold fusion wanted. Studies continue worldwide to verify the feasibility of producing energy through “LENR” (Low Energy Nuclear Reaction) nuclear transmutations. This includes the analyses being conducted by the Italian laboratory Prometheus, located within the “Kilometro Rosso” science park in Bergamo.
The Egyptians called it “Bennu,” the Greeks “Phoînix,” and the Latins “Phoenicis,” a term later Italianized as “Phoenix.” Common to all names is the underlying reference to a bird of divine origins, capable of controlling fire and rising from its own ashes after death. Depicted at times as an eagle, at times as a heron, but also as a peacock or pheasant, it was revered as a symbol of energy and prosperity as well as of the rising and setting sun. Like many characters that populate various mythologies, obviously no mortal has ever touched the creature in question, but having been the subject of extensive discussions by historians and poets of the caliber of Herodotus and Ovid, no one has ever doubted its existence.
A situation entirely analogous to that proposed by the non-mythical “Holy Grail” and, more recently, by the so-called “cold fusion,” a technology that, according to its proponents, once perfected, could be a virtually infinite and clean source of energy. It would, in fact, allow the nuclear fusion processes currently occurring within the Sun to be reproduced, occurring at pressures and temperatures close to ambient temperatures.
Chiaro che se tale possibilità si concretizzasse si risolverebbero tuti i problemi di approvvigionamento energetico attualmente in essere e non è un caso se l’interesse scientifico nei confronti della tecnologia risale al 1926, quando il chimico austriaco Friedrich Adolf Paneth e il radiochimico K. Peters, pubblicarono un lavoro su una presunta trasformazione spontanea dell’idrogeno in elio per effetto di una catalisi nucleare attuata a temperatura ambiente e agevolata dalla presenza di palladio in veste di catalizatore. I due successivamente affermarono che certi loro dati erano sbagliati, ma l’anno dopo lo scienziato svedese J.
Tandberg claimed to have obtained a mixture of hydrogen and helium inside an electrolytic cell equipped with palladium electrodes, which prompted further studies on the subject, giving rise to what today might be called the saga of cold fusion. The topic has indeed divided technicians and scientists into two opposing camps, divided between those who support the possibility of implementing the technology and those who consider it merely a utopian dream. The debate has also taken on fictional aspects, especially when the media and the judiciary have addressed the issue. Fortunately, today it has returned to being developed on the basis of objective technical comparisons based on the possibility of triggering the transmutation of some atomic species into others as a result of low-energy nuclear reactions, or LENR.
In effect, these are nuclear reactions induced by electroweak interactions between neutrons that occur at low temperatures and pressures and based on a standard physical model. Unlike fusion and fission reactions, they do not produce nuclear chain reactions but are still capable of generating energies exiting the reactors within which the transmutations occur that are greater than those entering.
The Italian laboratory Prometheus, located within the “Kilometro Rosso” science park in Bergamo, is working specifically on reactors, and specifically on the possibility of developing mini-reactors that can be carried on cars, trains, or trucks, or used to power homes. ù
Headed by a company of the same name and working in collaboration with prestigious external institutions such as the Polytechnic University of Milan, Prometeus aims to develop a system based on the use of electricity and salt water to generate mechanical work, heat, and green hydrogen, without the use of fossil fuels or radioactive elements. The laboratory has not yet released any technical or functional description of the system under development, except to emphasize that it would not produce carbon emissions or emit waste, toxic materials, or radiation. It is entirely modular, meaning that by combining multiple reactors, the necessary amounts of energy could be produced to meet the various applications.
Title: Alternative energy: cold fusion wanted
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