Low Energy Nuclear Reaction Research at the Naval Research Laboratory

We have explored the field of Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR) for about eight years focusing on transmutation, electrochemistry, and gas loading with the latter two being the most fruitful. In electrochemistry, palladium foil is loaded with deuterium in a closed electrochemical cell contained in a calorimeter. Occasionally, excess energy is produced that is much larger than can be accounted for by chemistry or the electrical input into the system. Unfortunately, the poor reproducibility (<6%) prevented discovery of the trigger for this excess heat. In gas loading, palladium nanoparticles are pressurized with deuterium. While the resultant heat is very reproducible, it is much lower than from electrochemical experiments and therefore harder to characterize as unconventional chemistry. In both approaches to LENR only energy (as heat) is produced – neither nuclear products nor transmutations have been firmly established.