https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-gtj93-12c6da2
In this podcast interview with Dr. Al Scott, Dr. Edmund Storms describes his latest results, in these papers:
Storms, E. The Nature of Cold Fusion (Cold Fusion Made Simple). in ICCF24 Solid-state Energy Summit. 2022. Mountain View, CA.
Storms, E. The Nature of the D+D Fusion Reaction in Palladium and Nickel (preprint). in ICCF-23. 2021. Xiamen, China.
In the podcast and paper, he describes his model that he believes explains the reaction, and shows how to make better materials. His recent materials have produced heat more reliably in a higher power level than earlier materials, but they have still not reached useful levels of power or enough reliability for commercial applications.
Storms reminisces about the early history of cold fusion at Los Alamos, where hundreds of people were interested in the results. The Department of Energy later rejected cold fusion and closed down research at Los Alamos.
. . .Los Alamos became really excited. I mean, the entire laboratory got involved. Numerous people attempted to replicate what Pons and Fleischmann had done. Meetings held weekly, attended by hundreds of scientists. Great enthusiasm was shown. So, I naturally got interested because I have access to equipment and knowledge that made it possible for me to replicate what they were doing. . . . So I set up to measure tritium. The group I was in studied tritium for the hot fusion program. And so we had available to us the world’s experts on tritium measurement and tritium behavior. . . .So this was the ideal situation for me, because we had . . . We knew tritium; we knew how to deal with it. . . . And at that time, we did not really understand that it is entirely different, wholly unusual mechanism was operating in these materials, having no relationship whatsoever to hot fusion. But luckily for us, that mechanism also made tritium.
He describes the difference between plasma fusion and cold fusion:
We know that Pons and Fleischmann were absolutely right. Their discovery was in fact valid, and it demonstrated a new mechanism for causing a nuclear reaction. In this case it only happens with a material having certain characteristics. . . . The problem is that in order for fusion to happen the two nuclei have to get close enough together that their energy states can interact. . . . The hot fusion program does this by applying kinetic energy to the nuclei, so they come together, smack into each other, by brute force. And that high kinetic energy overcomes the Coulomb barrier. . . . The problem is getting the rate high enough that it makes useful power. . . . Cold fusion, on the other hand, has a different problem. It has to also overcome the Coulomb barrier, but it does that by neutralizing the barrier as a result of electron charge. And in order to accumulate electrons in a state, in a relationship to the nucleus, that is nonchemical — ordinary electrons have a relationship to the nucleus in the chemical context; we understand that relationship very, very well — they have to acquire a different relationship now, to the nucleus, that is not understood and has not been seen before in nature. But, apparently, nature has a way of causing this structure to occur under certain conditions. When it occurs, the Coulomb barrier is neutralized, the two nuclei come together, and they result in fusion. That fusion produces various nuclear products. Those nuclear products now are slowly being identified. But because this is so unusual, and happens within a material rather than a plasma, it is very difficult to study, and it is also very difficult to understand.