Word: fusion
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...secrets to themselves could serve to protect their financial interests and those of the University of Utah, which has already filed five patent applications, with more to come. Pons insists, though, that he has reached an agreement with Los Alamos National Laboratory to help its scientists replicate his cold-fusion experiments...
...awesome potential of the alleged discovery explains why so many people are badgering Pons and Fleischmann for information, and why they are giving it out so cautiously. A practical technique for creating useful fusion energy at low temperatures could change the world forever by providing a source of virtually limitless power. Moreover, the process would generate no pollutants -- not even carbon dioxide, which many scientists fear is warming the globe in a greenhouse effect. A fusion plant would give off much less radiation than do conventional nuclear-power generators. And it would essentially run on seawater. Any scientist who managed...
...reasons for the fusion furor are more complicated than just the prospects of riches and fame. Scientists and university administrators are ; sometimes driven by the same sort of base emotions -- like jealousy and paranoia -- that often motivate less intellectually lofty folks, and the peculiar circumstances of this discovery helped ignite a number of long- smoldering resentments. For one thing, fusion and other subatomic phenomena that are usually studied with giant nuclear reactors and particle accelerators have long been the private domain of physicists. Chemists, on the other hand, were more likely to be studying how to make a better laundry...
Still, the cold-fusion combat is not just the physicists vs. the chemists. There is a sense in Salt Lake City that most of Pons' critics are what Utah chemist David Grant calls "the mean bullies from the Eastern establishment." Such snooty folks should remember, he says, that "science is not the domain of one set of colleges or one set of people anymore...
...Brigham Young University, located just 50 miles away. Although the U is the state-supported university, Utah's majority Mormon population identifies far more strongly with church-run Brigham Young. It was at least partly because a Brigham Young physicist named Steven Jones was nearing an announcement on cold fusion too that Pons and Fleischmann called their surprise press conference. They had been urged to go public by University of Utah administrators, who were apparently fearful that archrivals at Brigham Young would steal the fusion spotlight. The U has had chronic money troubles recently, and an influx of fusion-research...