lol not another one! Every few years it seems a hair-brained scientists claims to have solved the fusion problem. As far as I know the most recent one was in early 2002 some time...a american scientist says he had achieved fusion by passing high intensity sound waves through acetone (nail polish remover). However his claims have not been verified, I myself am sceptical. Anyway even if he could...big deal, for cold fusion to be used as an energy source these conditions need to be held constant so the reaction can be sustained and controlled...this is the hard part! At the moment the best method which is producing promising results involves plasma being contained by powerful, highly focused lasers.
if there has been an even more recent claim, I'm not aware of it...
getting fusion to occur isn't the problem, indeed with many nuclear weapons the fission reaction is triggered by nuclear fusion (thermonuclear bombs), it is sustaining the high temp/pressures that is posing the problem.
Cold fusion is seen as possible by a few scientists and as bollox by most. Here I agree with the majority because open minded as I am I cannot see how low energy nuclear fusion could occur. Consider the case of nuclear fusion in U235: thermal neutrons are easily absorbed by U235 to induce fissionwith the emission of other neutrons to sustain a chain-reaction. However, the deuteron has a positive charge so two deuterons do not fuse together at "room temperature (cold)" because of their repulsive coulomb force. This repulsive force must be overcome in order for the short-range nuclear force to fuse the deuterons. Now the potential barrier here is in the order of 6*10^8 K, which is,....well fucking massive. There is no getting around this force the only way to overcome it is by energy....shit loads of it, ie. high temperatures and pressures. You cannot argue with this at all. Cold fusion....bollox. Quite often scientists who promote cold fusion say it is possible because of certain quantum mechanical effects.....which I doubt they know much about. I do however
...back to my last example: according to quantum mechanics the energy in this coulomb force potential barrier will have some distribution in its kenetic energy and also particles will have some small probability of "tunneling" through the barrier. However, even including these effects the fusion temperature will still be around 10^8 K, at these temperatures all atoms are fully ionized and matter can only exist in its 4th state...plasma. Surprise surprise and guess where all the serious fusion research is, yep u guessed it plasma confinement. In the Sun this plasma is confined to sustain fusion reactions by the HUGE gravitational field. Here on Earth we cannot match the gravitational field so serious experiments use laser or magnetic confinement of the plasma.
....Nail polish and soundwaves...fuck sake what a twat, how did that get in the papers, thought they would have learned their lesson after the big 1989 cold fusion bollox.
Foxy slaps them for being thick twats!