PREPARED FOR REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE

SUBJECT: THE POLITICS OF NEW-ENERGY TECHNOLOGY

A. BACKGROUND

One of the missions of the Department of Energy (DOE) is to support activities to discover, develop, and commercialize new sources of energy. In the early days of the predecessor agency for DOE, several alternative energy sources were intensely funded and studied. These altemative energy sources were wind, solar, tides, geothermal, and biomass. None of them proved to be less costly than energy derived from the burning of fossil fuels, except for some isolated locations or conditions.

With the development of nuclear power, it was deemed the energy source of the future. This decision was mainly based on the lack of polluting gases as compared to the burning of fossil fuels. When it was discovered that no nuclear power plant could survive to its designed years of service, coupled with the enormous cost of clean up after shut down, there developed a large political resistance to nuclear power.

With the partial success of the Russian Tokamak (one of the configurations for the development of a new type of nuclear power) there became a strong interest in and vast financial support by DOE for the study of "hot fusion." This type of nuclear reaction produces energy by the fusion of light elements as contrasted with the current nuclear power obtained from the fission of heavy elements. The end result has been DOE's support of hot fusion for a total estimated amount of over $20 billion. In 1989 the annual expenditure for hot fusion studies was over $500 million annually. ("Hot Fusion" is more precisely named as high-energy nuclear fusion.)

When low-energy nuclear fusion (dubbed "cold fusion" by the media) was first announced, the "hot fusion" community falsely assumed that this low-energy nuclear reaction was a threat to the continuation of $500 million (or more) per year from the DOE. Lobbyists for the "hot fusion" community took the following steps:

1. A committee visited several laboratories where low-energy nuclear reactions were achieved and declared them all to be invalid.

2. An agent was obtained at the Office of Patents and Trademarks to ensure that no cold fusion patent applications were approved.

3. All major U.S. technical journals were warned against printing any cold fusion articles. (All but Fusion Technology, the journal of the American Nuclear Society agreed not to publish.)

4. A fund of about $30,000 was provided to Random House to fund a book to destroy the credibility of cold fusion. This book was Bad Science, The Short Life and Weird Times of Cold Fusion, a hatchet job by Gary Taubes.

5. An "official" from Washington, D.C. called all major universities and warned them, "If you have so much as a graduate student working on cold fusion, you will get no contracts out of Washington!"

6. Robert Park, a self-appointed "spokesman" for the American Physical Society has been vigorously lambasting cold fusion and its supporters for over ten years. Park is now being sued.

These actions (planned, funded, and promoted by the lobbyists for the "hot fusion" community) have been clever, well-planned, well-orchestrated, and successful. Meanwhile, over six hundred technical articles from over 200 laboratories in 30 countries have reported the successful replication or expansion of low-energy nuclear reactions. However, the original "cold fusion" discovery has not been shown to be sufficiently robust to be a commercial success.

The political fight against a potential new-energy source has been fully supported by the DOE even to the extent of specifying that no funds would be made available for "cold fusion" research.

B. NEW-ENERGY DEVELOPMENTS

A variety of methods have been discovered by which low-energy nuclear reactions can be produced (not cold fusion). In addition, new-energy devices have been discovered and are now being commercialized. The following are two of the best known of these discoveries for new methods of creating energy.

Dr. Randell Mills and the Collapsing Hydrogen
After ten years of proof of his discovery and invention, Randell Mills was awarded a U.S. Patent. The patent, number 6,024,935 covering "Lower-energy hydrogen methods and structure," was granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Tuesday, February 15, 2000. This patent covers a method of collapsing the hydrogen atom below its ground state with the accompanying emission of considerable thermal energy. In addition, the collapsed hydrogen atoms can be used to make new types of hydrinos (the name given to the collapsed hydrogen atom) compounds. Robert Park immediately accused the patent office of patenting perpetual motion. Park and other lobbyists for the "hot fusion" community should be concerned. This patented new-energy development is far more threatening to the continued funding of "hot fusion" than any "cold fusion" discovery or invention. Dr. Randell Mills is predicting energy systems for homes for less than $2,000.

The Shoulders-Gleeson-Ilyanok-Mesyats Discoveries
Four independent inventor/scientists in three countries have discovered high-density-electron charge clusters (HDCC). U.S. patent 5,018,180, "Energy Conversion Using High Charge Density", was issued to Kenneth Shoulders on May 21, 1991. Five additional patents have issued and other patent applications are pending. This technology has been developed into devices that can provide more than 30 times as much direct thermal and direct electrical energy output than used to produce the charge clusters. As stated in the patent, it is believed that the excess energy comes from tapping the vacuum energy of space. In the parlance of the new-energy adherents, this is the first patent to tap the universally-available, zero-point energy (ZPE).

In the judgement of many of the new-energy technologists, this HDCC technology promises to dramatically change the way in which the world produces and distributes energy. Development of this form of new energy is being accomplished in several different countries. Several articles have been published and distributed to major world libraries (especially through the Journal of New Energy). It is important to realize that this development has been accomplished with the use of private funds. None of the dramatic new-energy discoveries have been accepted by the Department of Energy.

C. MAJOR POLITICAL ISSUES
Under previous political administrations there have been no major new-energy developments. The several discoveries that have led to the production of new-energy devices and systems being readied for market have not been acceptable to government scientists. There is no DOE mechanism for the support, evaluation, testing, and dissemination of information about new scientific discoveries. By contrast, older energy systems, that have been supported with billions of dollars of government funds, serve to perpetuate government bureaucracies, sustain government-funded national laboratories, and academic projects. The energy bureaus, the national energy laboratories, and the academic energy studies have all been highly inefficient. (A recent study of the results of funding for national laboratories cites an estimated 95% waste of funds.)

The worst case is a political system that allows lobbyists for one type of energy system to deny the constitutional rights of inventors to their intellectual property by the denial of patents. The second worst case is the abysmal record of the multi-billion-dollar consuming Department of Energy to fulfill a major objective of supporting the development of new sources of energy. The inability of DOE staff to recognize new technology is deplorable. For DOE staff to support the hot-fusion lobbyists and deny other more promising technologies is a national disgrace. A suggestion that has merit is that the DOE and its national laboratories be abandoned and replaced by an agency that would support the development of non-polluting, inexpensive, new-energy systems based on abundant energy sources.

This brief summary report has been prepared by Hal Fox, editor, Journal of New Energy, a peer-reviewed professional journal published by Emerging Energy Marketing Firm, Inc.

See Also:

The Institute for New Energy
Miracle In The Void: The New Energy Revolution, by Dr. Brian O'Leary and Stephen Kaplan, 1999 (Steve Kaplan Home)