
SRI confirms nuclear fusion startup's reactors are producing excess energy - thesausageking
https://www.lenr-forum.com/forum/thread/5552-sri-report-independently-verifies-brillouin-lenr-reactions-report-included/
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jcalvinowens
> Importantly the results presented here, although modeled in a way to account
> for all input and output powers, do not use all of the heater power
> necessary to maintain temperature and the losses in the pulse generator, to
> calculate the COP. Brillouin engineers are confident that these power losses
> can be minimized or eliminated in future designs.

This pretty much negates the wow factor here IMHO. Or am I missing the point?

~~~
Erlangolem
There is no wow factor at all. This was a case of notoriously difficult
calorimetry measuring single digit wattage from a large device, under the
control of Brillouin engineers in their facility. Or rather, the wow factor is
just how hard people here are biting on this, presumably out of nothing more
than sheer desire for it to be real.

Cold fusion (oh sorry, Low Energy Nuclear Reaction) research is a bad joke,
unsupported by theory or practice.

~~~
miketery
> Cold fusion (oh sorry, Low Energy Nuclear Reaction) research is a bad joke,
> unsupported by theory or practice.

Is this really true?

~~~
valarauca1
Yes.

There are Low Energy Nuclear reactions that can occur but their often
catalyzed by a muon which requires _a lot_ of energy to produce. There has
been so little academic research (recently) because experimental evidence
hasn't been found and the simple well understood math makes such a system
impossible. Wikipedia notes this in their 3rd paragraph on the subject [1].

Cold Fusion, or low-energy nuclear reactions, or condensed matter nuclear
science is so far behind the pale of serious physics you might as well start
trying to jump into orbit with your own two legs, or invent perpetual energy.

Lastly... Given how much the US and USSR spent on nuclear research in the cold
war do you really think we missed a way making nuclear bombs smaller?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion)

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tzs
By the early '90s, when most cold fusion as fusion had been pretty much
debunked, there were some researchers with good reputations as careful,
competent experimenters who were starting to get some interesting results--not
necessarily fusion, of course, but they pointed to _something_ interesting and
not understood going on.

But by that time, most people were no longer interested at looking at anything
connected to cold fusion, so those interesting results weren't followed up on
by others.

David Goodstein wrote an interesting article about that shortly afterward, in
1993 [1].

[https://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/fusion_art.html](https://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/fusion_art.html)

~~~
Erlangolem
Calorimetry is not perfect, and the “interesting” results have always been
well within margins for error.

[https://sciencing.com/calorimeter-its-
limitations-8290898.ht...](https://sciencing.com/calorimeter-its-
limitations-8290898.html)

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ggm
I have a book called "yes, we have no neutrons" by Alexander Dewdney. Written
during the Pons/Fleischmann years.

It talks a LOT about the fundamental characteristics of _bad science_ and
pretty high up the list, is publication by publicity event.

If its not in peer review, then I think we're entitled to say _hmmmmm_

Yes, its SRI. But its also a commissioned report.

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tommoor
Technical report is here: [http://brillouinenergy.com/wp-
content/uploads/2018/03/SRI_Te...](http://brillouinenergy.com/wp-
content/uploads/2018/03/SRI_Technical_Report.pdf)

~~~
Erlangolem
I can’t find any mention of this report from SRI, only on Brillouin’s site,
and other cold fusion pages. Given the insanely high bar of reasonable
skepticism any claim of cold fusion has to meet, this is suspicious.

I mean, it’s no more suspicious than any claim of “over-unity” from people
raising millions to follow in the footsteps of Pons and Fleischman. Meanwhile
I’m shocked that an essentially unsupported pseudo report on cold fusion of
all things is the top post on the front page here!

What gives?

~~~
amluto
The report claims to be written by "Francis Tanzella", who seems to actually
exist and probably even works at SRI. However, the report claims that he's the
PI and Manager of "Low Energy Reactions Research Program", and I see no
evidence that such a program exists.

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bobthechef
"I can make a fusion reactor that produces excess energy. I just need a little
excess energy to 'sharpen it up a bit'."

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dingo_bat
Just need to open up an actual power plant now. I hope that doesn't take
another half a century.

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natch
It’s not clear this is fusion. Sounds like it might be fission. Anyone have
better info?

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basicplus2
This has to be Not the most important news of the 21st century

~~~
djsumdog
LENRs have been under study for years. Toyota sunk two years into research and
many universities can reproduce these studies .. some of the times.
Consistency is key to figuring out how/why these reactions work.

For a somewhat outdated, yet still interesting, documentary on the matter, I
suggest watching Fire from Water.

~~~
kuschku
Reading the reports, it looks like the outstanding fact here is that they’ve
been consistently able to reproduce the same results with different setups, in
different reactors, in different configurations. In every case with Q > 1.

If there isn’t a major measurement error or fraud that occurred here, this
looks like the best result yet for LENR.

I’ll still bet on the Stellerator design, though.

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exahash
If it were real, someone from C-Systems would have already shown up and
everyone at Brilloune would be running from the FBI

