What is happening right now with LENR technology?

NOTE:  This article by Christopher Calder contains information that is alien to most readers.  I suggest those interested in Low Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR) first take a quick look at NASA scientist Joseph Zawodny's PDF slide presentation, which was obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.  Zawodny claims that LENR is not hot fusion, not cold fusion, but a strange kind of poorly understood "neutron absorption process" which give off useful amounts of heat, but very little radiation.  Zawodny favors the Widom-Larsen Theory as a possible explanation for LENR.  It involves the creation of heavy-mass electrons and ultra low momentum neutrons through the help of nanoscale magnetic fields.  You don't have to understand the complex science in Zawodny's amazing slide show to get a general sense of the potential historic nature of this development.

What is happening right now with LENR technology?

     Engineer Andrea Rossi claims to be in talks with a well known giant American retail chain store to sell his 10 kilowatt home heating LENR reactors, which he calls E-Cats, short for Energy Catalyzer.  The retail price is expected to be about $1,500 each, with mass production beginning in the fall of 2012.  Can Rossi get government approval to sell unconventional nuclear reactors for home use?  Rossi states his heaters will output 6 times more energy than fed into them, and they produce no pollution of any kind.  A Greek company called Defkalion Green Technologies states they will start selling their similar Hyperion reactors in a matter of months, and their improved design outputs 25 to 32 times energy input and has longer lasting fuel that is easier to refill. Defkalion claims they have scalable reactor systems up to 5 megawatts (heat) in size, with the largest power plants built into ordinary 20 foot long shipping containers. Both Rossi and Defkalion use low cost nickel dust and ordinary hydrogen gas as nuclear fuel.

NASA speculation on Rossi E-Cat reactor by NASA

     NASA's Dr. Joseph Zawodny also uses nickel powder and hydrogen gas for fueling his low energy laser driven LENR experiments, and Zawodny states that LENR is "A cheap, abundant, clean, scalable, portable source of energy [that] will impact EVERYONE." He goes on to say that LENR is the "Singular solution to peak oil, climate change, fresh water, and associated geopolitical instabilities." NASA scientist Dennis Bushnell agrees, and states that LENR can provide NASA with the highly concentrated energy needed to make space travel within our solar system cost effective, as well as bring a permanent end to the energy crisis.

     Is this all a hoax, a mirage, or some incredible miscalculation? Rossi's E-Cat reactors have passed every hands-on test to date by at least a dozen respected scientists from around the world. Rossi claims to have already sold 13 one megawatt E-Cat reactors to an unnamed US military customer, speculated to be DARPA or similar stealth research organization. Zawodny says that LENR reactors can be made small enough to power a mechanical dragonfly, or large enough to electrify an entire city. Perhaps there is an infectious bug going around making scientists all over the world hallucinate positive test results. Critics say that this is all too good to be true, and that there is nothing in our text books that can explain LENR with traditional physics. 

     The potential military uses of LENR are enormous, which is why the United States intelligence community is especially interested in finding out all it can about advances in LENR technology. Meanwhile, many corporations, scientists, and Internet pundits with financial and/or personal attachments to competing fields of energy production are praying that LENR blows up in our faces, both figuratively and literally. There are often shockingly inaccurate and unfair criticisms of Andrea Rossi and other LENR pioneers posted on the Internet. Despite abundant Internet skepticism and our television media's strange disinterest, NASA's Dennis Bushnell states that "The two decades of experiments and the weak interaction theories have removed the existential risk, what is remaining is to ENGINEER for improved performance."