Cold fusion may be a viable energy alternative to end reliance on fossil fuels | Letters A number of companies have been able to make these low-energy nuclear reactions work reliably, write Brian Josephson, David J Nagel, Alan Smith, Dr Jean-Paul Biberian and Yasuhiro Iwamura.
Luca Garzotti observes (Letters, 22 January) that serious challenges face the production of energy from processes based on thermonuclear fusion, but failed to mention a crucially important alternative, low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR), commonly known as cold fusion.
For a long time, difficulties with making the process work reliably, or in making useful amounts of energy using cold fusion, meant that LENR had no practical value, but now the situation is very different.
In the time since the original discovery there has been much progress, a number of companies having been able to make these reactions work quite reliably, one at least confirming claims of genuineness by powering a device from its output.
Readers of the Guardian’s 2012 obituary of Martin Fleischmann will know that the situation regarding cold fusion is more complicated than that commonly assumed: that the claims of Fleischmann and Stanley Pons for the process were discredited.
