I put this DoE announcement in the LENR-CANR.org News section. Today I added this somewhat pessimistic note:
Some cold fusion researchers feel that these eight projects were poorly chosen. The goals are framed as if cold fusion is the same as plasma fusion. People made this mistake in 1989. For example, several projects focus on neutrons. The first one says, “University of Michigan will provide capability to measure hypothetical neutron, gamma, and ion emissions from LENR experiments.” Some cold fusion experiments have produced neutrons, but most do not. It seems likely that neutrons are a secondary effect with a prosaic cause such as fractofusion, rather than being a primary signature of the reaction. Excess heat correlated with helium, or tritium production, can occur without neutrons, so looking for neutrons is not a fruitful way to detect or analyze a cold fusion reaction.
