Cold fusion and the Energy Department (1999)
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 8
| Date | 17 May 1999 |
|---|---|
| Author | Hal Plotkin, SF Gate (San Francisco Chronicle online) |
| Title | "The War Against Cold Fusion: What's really behind it?" |
| Scientist | Michael McKubre, Energy Research Center, SRI International |
| Claim | Strong evidence of cold fusion; the Department of Energy neglected or suppressed the field |
| Follow-up | DOE re-reviewed cold fusion in 2004 with conclusions "similar" to 1989 |
| Topics | Nuclear & missile sites (topic), Congress & law (topic) |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 140 |
| Year | 1999 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 1999 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 8 |
On 17 May 1999 the journalist Hal Plotkin wrote in SF Gate, the online San Francisco Chronicle, that the electrochemist Michael McKubre of SRI International had reported strong evidence of cold fusion.[1] He accused the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) of what might be called "at best, a policy of benign neglect. At worst, it's a policy of fraud and deceit."[1] He called for an investigation of the department and of Energy Secretary Bill Richardson.[1] The DOE's second review of the field in 2004 reached conclusions "similar to those found in the 1989 review", and most physicists regard cold fusion as unproven.[2][3]
McKubre's talk
In March 1999 Plotkin had previewed McKubre's results. McKubre, director of SRI's Energy Research Center in Menlo Park, was to present the findings of a ten-year, $6 million effort to replicate the 1989 claims of the chemists Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann. He did so at the American Physical Society's centennial meeting in Atlanta on 26 March 1999.[4] In that interview McKubre was cautious. He said he was "absolutely convinced" of excess heat, "somewhere between 5% to 30%", but "it might not be nuclear fusion"; "all we can say for sure is that we are getting out more energy than we put in."[4]
Plotkin's May column reported on the talk itself. He said close to 100 scientists attended, but there was only one journalist and no major news coverage.[1] McKubre reported several findings:[1]
- Under the right, hard-to-achieve conditions, sustained reactions were taking place in SRI's cells.
- The excess heat was measured with a calorimeter precise to a thousandth of a degree.
- Raised levels of helium-4, a fusion by-product, had been detected.
- The reaction "appears to be nuclear in origin".
This was a stronger claim than McKubre had made two months earlier.[1][4] McKubre researched cold fusion at SRI from 1989 to 2002, funded first by the Electric Power Research Institute, then by the Japanese government and later by the U.S. government. In 1992 a cell exploded in his lab, killing a collaborator and injuring him.[2]
Plotkin's accusations
Plotkin blamed what he called "an unholy alliance" of the fossil-fuel industry and the mainstream physics community. In his view the physicists were protecting the federal funding for hot fusion, on which the U.S. had spent about $15 billion. He offered no direct evidence of a coordinated effort.[1] His specific charges were:[1]
- The 1989 review. The DOE's Energy Research Advisory Board panel had leaned heavily on an MIT experiment. Eugene Mallove, MIT's chief science writer at the time, alleged that MIT's original heat graph, showing slight excess heat, had been replaced in the final report with an "adjusted" graph showing none. Mallove resigned in protest. According to Plotkin, MIT did not dispute the change but later redefined the experiment's purpose in an appendix.
- Funding hypocrisy. A former EPRI executive, Tom Passell, said that some members of the review panel later approached EPRI seeking money to study cold fusion themselves.
- Continuing work. Plotkin cited the chemical engineer Les Case, whose carbon catalyst McKubre was replicating, and Tom Claytor at Los Alamos.
Mallove went on to publish Infinite Energy magazine, which Plotkin said was funded by Arthur C. Clarke, and the 1999 documentary Fire from Water.[1] Plotkin also claimed that McKubre had discussed the subject with Edward Teller, who said he might be able to explain it.[1]
Background
Fleischmann and Pons announced cold fusion at a press conference in March 1989, claiming that palladium electrodes in heavy water had produced fusion at room temperature.[3][5] Most laboratories could not reproduce it, and in November 1989 the DOE's investigation found the evidence unconvincing.[3][5] A small research community carried on under names such as "low-energy nuclear reactions", with notable work at the Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego. In 2002 Navy researchers published a two-volume report calling for proper funding.[5]
In 2004 McKubre and colleagues persuaded the DOE to review the field again. The reviewers concluded that "while significant progress has been made in the sophistication of calorimeters... the conclusions reached by the reviewers today are similar to those found in the 1989 review".[2][5] Steven Koonin, a member of the 1989 panel, said nothing had changed "that makes cold fusion worth a second look".[5]
UFO connection
Some UFO writers cite the episode as an example of advanced energy research being held back.[6] The testimony this article draws on argues that it fits a broader pattern in which advanced energy sources may exist under DOE control and be covered up.[6] As an example it points to a patent by Triad National Security, the manager of Los Alamos National Laboratory. The patent, "Air-buoyant structures and vehicles", describes vehicles lifted by evacuated shells of ultra-low-density aerogel, foam or vapor-expanded material, with vacuum pumps and valves to control buoyancy.[6][7] The testimony compares these shapes to the "sphere encasing a cube" that a Navy pilot reported off Virginia, an account linked to Lt. Ryan Graves and reported by The New York Times in 2019.[6][8] The testimony says the patent was filed in 2021. The patent record shows it was filed on 4 June 2018 and granted on 8 June 2021.[7] The UFO link is speculative, and most physicists regard cold fusion as unproven.[3]
People and topics
- Department of Energy — The U.S. department that runs the nuclear weapons laboratories.
- SRI International — The research institute where the government's remote-viewing studies began.
- Unidentified anomalous phenomena — The U.S. government's current term for unidentified objects in the air, in space and underwater.
- U.S. Navy — The U.S. naval service, whose pilots reported the UAP encounters revealed in 2017.
On the Timeline
- David Adair's Area 51 engine claim (1999) — Engineer David Adair says he saw a strange craft at Groom Lake.
- Puthoff–Green emails on a pseudonymous article (31 July 1999) — Puthoff emails Kit Green about a UFO magazine story.
See every 1999 event on the UAP Timeline →
Further reading
- Stargate Project — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Stargate collection — CIA Reading Room · cia.gov · archived copy
- Los Alamos National Laboratory — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- U.S. congressional hearings on UFOs — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
References
- Hal Plotkin, "The war against cold fusion: what's really behind it?", SF Gate (May 1999) · plotkin.com · archived copy
- Michael McKubre — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Cold fusion — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Power to the people: the return of cold fusion — Hal Plotkin · plotkin.com · archived copy
- Cold fusion back from the dead — IEEE Spectrum · spectrum.ieee.org · archived copy
- bibliotecapleyades.net · bibliotecapleyades.net · archived copy
- patentimages.storage.googleapis.com · patentimages.storage.googleapis.com · archived copy
- nytimes.com · nytimes.com · archived copy
Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia articles “Michael McKubre”, “Cold fusion”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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