The National Cold Fusion Institute (NCFI) was a nonprofit research institute affiliated with the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. It was established in 1989 to research cold fusion, a phenomenon that chemists Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons claimed to have achieved earlier in the year. It closed in 1991.
In March 1989, Fleischmann and Pons announced that they had achieved nuclear fusion during an experiment using two electrodes made of palladium submerged in heavy water. While other researchers initially reported that similar experiments had resulted in some evidence of nuclear fusion, these results were subsequently withdrawn due to various errors, and in subsequent studies, researchers were largely critical of Fleischmann's and Pons's findings. However, in April 1989, the government of Utah voted to allocate $4.5 million (equivalent to $ million in ) to establish and operate a research institute to investigate the proposed phenomenon.
The institute was officially established on August 7 at a facility in the University of Utah Research Park, with Hugo Rossi serving as its first director. Rossi resigned in November 1989, later stating that his resignation was due in part to difficulties in garnering collaboration between the researchers, with particular criticism towards Pons. In 1990, the institute was the subject of controversy when an anonymous financial donation to the institute was revealed by university president Chase N. Peterson to have been from the university itself. In the later half of that year, the institute was subject to a financial audit by the Utah State Auditor's office and a scientific review by an independent panel of researchers, with the latter reporting that there was no evidence that nuclear fusion had occurred as part of the institute's experiments. In June 1991, the institute closed, having exhausted its initial funding and having failed to garner significant private funding.
While the university continued to pay attorneys to pursue several patent applications regarding cold fusion, no patent applications were ever granted. Fleischmann and Pons continued research into cold fusion in France, though without success. In 2022, The Salt Lake Tribune reported that the institute had failed to verify Fleischmann's and Pons's findings during its existence.
Background On March 23, 1989, Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, two chemists who were working at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah, announced that they had produced a nuclear fusion reaction in a process that became known as cold fusion. The two said that they had conducted an experiment where an electric current was passed between two electrodes made of palladium submerged in heavy water which had produced a large amount of heat that they attributed to fusion of the atomic nuclei of the deuterium present in the water.
By early April, researchers at several American universities, including the Georgia Institute of Technology, Texas A&M University, and the University of Washington, reported that similar experiments had resulted in some evidence of nuclear fusion having occurred. However, these reports were all subsequently withdrawn after various errors in the experiments were discovered. Further research at numerous institutes and universities was unable to demonstrate that fusion was occurring. On May 1, the American Physical Society held a meeting where cold fusion was largely dismissed, and on November 12, a committee of the United States Department of Energy concluded that cold fusion was unproven and did not merit further research.
Fleischmann's and Pon's results were also criticized by other researchers. In November 1989, researchers from the Harwell Laboratory published a report in the scientific journal Nature where they said they were unable to replicate Fleischmann's and Pon's results and speculated that the two's claims may have been the result of errors in their experimentation. Furthermore, in January 1991, scientist Frank Close wrote in New Scientist that, "my own researches during the past 18 months show that some of the so-called evidence for fusion was not obtained and presented to the world in the accepted scientific way". Additionally, scientists working for General Electric published a paper in 1992 that said that the two had misinterpreted the data they had collected from their experiments.
Establishment On March 24, 1989—the day after Fleischmann and Pons made their initial announcements concerning cold fusion—Utah Governor Norman H. Bangerter announced a special session of the Utah State Legislature in order to discuss state funding for cold fusion research. On April 7, the legislature passed legislation to allocate $5 million in funding towards cold fusion. Of this amount, $4.5 million (equivalent to $ million in ) would go towards the establishment and operation of a research organization, while $500,000 ($ million in ) would go towards paying patent attorneys. Ultimately, the government of Utah established the National Cold Fusion Institute (NCFI), a nonprofit research institute, which officially opened on August 7, 1989.
The organization would be affiliated with the university, which was also operated by the state government, and based in the University of Utah Research Park. For this location, the university signed a five-year lease for $1.1 million ($ million in ). In addition to the state funding, the institute was hopeful that additional private funding could be secured in the future, and the institute also lobbied the United States Congress for $25 million ($ million in ) in federal funding. According to the Deseret News, at the time, the institute was only one of two instances of funding being allocated for cold fusion research, alongside funding allocated to several universities by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). Prior to the institute's establishment, the university acquired the rights to use the term "cold fusion" from Jim Bradley, a politician who had previously served as the head of the state's Department of Energy and had registered the term as a business name. Bradley had registered the term with the state's Department of Commerce on April 5 for $20 ($ in ) and sold the rights to use the term to the university for $2,000 ($ in ).
The institute's funding appropriations would be overseen by the Fusion/Energy Advisory Council, which would consist of members appointed by the state government. Raymond L. Hixson served as the council's chairman, being appointed to that position by Governor Bangerter roughly two weeks after Fleischmann's and Pons's initial announcements. Hugo Rossi, the dean of the University of Utah College of Science, served as the institute's first director. Concerning the composition of the institute's board of trustees, university officials said that they hoped to appoint several businessman alongside academics, with Ian Cumming, James C. Fletcher, and Jon Huntsman Sr. mentioned by the Deseret News as possible candidates. Initially, Pons served only as an advisor for the institute and continued his own research into cold fusion independently. In October, both Fleischmann and Pons joined the NCFI with the condition that their work would be peer reviewed by other members of the institute.
Research and early controversies
Early activities In late September 1989, Rossi said that none of the experiments conducted by the institute up to that time had yielded results that would indicate a nuclear fusion reaction was taking place, such as the production of excess heat, neutrons, or tritium. Rossi initially stated that the institute may close if no results were found by February 1990, though he later said that the institute had no deadline for finding results. On October 1, the institute announced that its facilities would be off-limits to reporters and that university officials James Brophy and Pam Fogle would serve as the official spokespeople for the institute and issue occasional press releases. Around the same time, the Westinghouse Electric Corporation publicly announced that they would not be moving forward with requests from the institute to help fund cold fusion research. Later that month, Brophy stated that he was confident that the institute would attract between 10 and 20 private investors by the end of the fiscal year.
In November, a panel of 22 scientists from the United States Department of Energy's Energy Research Advisory Board presented a report advising against the allocation of the $25 million in federal funding that the institute had requested. The panel, headed by John R. Huizenga, had been studying cold fusion since May and reported that it had found no concrete evidence of fusion reactions in any of the dozens of experiments that had been conducted throughout the United States. Also in November, Rossi resigned as director after four months in the position. Speaking to New Scientist in June 1990, he said, "Part of the reason for quitting was the inability to get the personnel there to collaborate", further stating that Pons refused to share data with other scientists on several occasions. The following month, Fritz Will, a research scientist from General Electric, was appointed the new director of the institute. In the interim, Brophy served as the institute's acting director.
In late March 1990, around the anniversary of Fleischmann's and Pon's initial announcement, the institute held its first annual conference in Salt Lake City to discuss the state of cold fusion research, which was attended by about 200 people. Forty people presented papers at the conference. Around the same time, a team of researchers led by Michael Salaman of the University of Utah published a paper in Nature that included the results of studies they had conducted on the apparatus used by Pons where they claimed that they had found no evidence of cold fusion. Pons responded that one of the cells used in his experiments had produced excess heat for two hours, but that it had occurred during a power failure when the team's detectors were not working. At the time, Will said that researchers at the institute were attempting to optimize an apparatus that he said was producing excess heat.
Legal and funding issues In April 1990, C. Gary Triggs, an attorney representing Fleischmann and Pons, called on Salaman to retract the Nature paper, writing in a letter, "Please be advised that any damages suffered by my clients proximately caused by any act or omission on the part of yourself or any other coauthor of the subject paper will not be tolerated. I have been instructed by my clients to take such legal action as is deemed appropriate to protect their interests in this matter." Salaman criticized the act and said that Chase N. Peterson, the president of the University of Utah, had instructed him to "lie low". Additionally, Salaman said that the university had told him that it would refuse to indemnify him in the case of a lawsuit, though Joseph L. Taylor, the university's vice president of academic affairs, later told him that the state government would defend him for lawsuits filed over his work. In a later article by New Scientist, Salaman noted that, at the time, Triggs had been paid $68,000 ($ in ) by the university as a consultant for patents on cold fusion. The American Physical Society stated that they would discuss the matter at their next executive meeting, with society member Robert L. Park saying that some members were offering to contribute to a legal defense fund for Salaman. Triggs later apologized for the letter.