Cold Fusion during the Cold War

Lit Corner | Posted 671 days ago | July 21, 2011 | 7:37 AM | Short Link: http://sethto.us/a0

During the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union, Filimonenko Ivan Stepanovich developed and patented a cold fusion technology. Although it never reached commercialization, it is a reminder that cold fusion has a history that predates by more than 2x the 23 years since Pons and Fleishman.

Filimonenko Ivan Stepanovich

by Hank Mills
Pure Energy Systems News

With Steven E. Jones breathing down their necks, in 1989, Pons and Fleishman announced to the world they were able to produce nuclear reactions at low temperatures. This phenomenon became known as cold fusion. The discovery was naysayed by pathological skeptics, and ridiculed by scientists with a vested interest in keeping hot fusion research alive. Only recently has cold fusion been developed into a practical technology by Andrea Rossi, and will be launched this October by Defkalion Green Technologies Inc., among others.

However, cold fusion experiments similar to those performed by Pons and Fleishman and Jones were performed decades before their research ever began. One individual who performed such research and even obtained a patent on his technology, was Filimonenko Ivan Stepanovich of the Soviet Union.

Filimonenko was born in the Irkutsk region of the Soviet Union in 1924. As a teenager, he joined the military and served for many years. Later, he became a student at Moscow Higher Technical School. He graduated from the School of Missile Technology. Afterwards, he joined the aviation industry, and worked as an engineer. In 1954, he enrolled in the "Physics Institute of the Academy of Sciences", and obtained an education in nuclear physics.

By 1957, Filimonenko proposed a method of producing energy via the electrolysis of heavy water (deuterium enriched water) with a palladium cathode. The reaction could take place at low temperatures around 1000 degrees Celsius, produce large amounts of energy, and would not produce radiation. In fact he also claimed the reaction would nullify or cancel out radioactivity in the vicinity of the device due to some sort of unknown emissions coming from the reactor. Additionally, there are reports that he was working on a propulsion technology that would allow for reactionless thrust.

A few years later, several influential individuals convinced the Russian government to fund his research. The Council of Ministers and the Communist Party Central Committee directed him to focus on developing three key aspects of his research -- the production of energy, the production of motive force without expelling mass, and human protection from nuclear radiation.

Only two years later, he filed for a Russian patent titled, "The Process and System for Thermo-emission." At first it was rejected, because the patent examiner stated that everyone knew that fusion at low temperatures was impossible. Documents on the web seem to indicate that later on it may have been granted. A search of the internet has not yielded the actual patent, but there are many references to it. In fact, the following video is a Russian documentary about his research that may reference it.

(If anyone that can understand Russian, could provide a transcript or captions for the following video it would be appreciated tremendously.)

A Russian website give the following description of the video:

"Telecast on how a Russian scientist who worked with Filimonko and invented cold fusion (getting energy without the side effects - radiation). Allows to make anti-gravity engine. Filimonenko developed a theory of the Elixir of Immortality, which explains why people do not live 1,000 years and how to achieve such longevity."

After filing for a patent on the technology, Filimonko worked on the technology for several years, but the work was secretive and classified. It is claimed multiple companies (actually the claim is eighty companies) started working on cold fusion on the order of the government. Some of these companies were said to include, Ray, Krasnaya Zvezda, Institute of Thermal Processes, NPO Energy, Academy of Sciences of the USSR, and companies in the Ukraine and Belarus.

The result of the research during this time period is claimed to be the production of several small scale "hydrolysis thermionic power plants" (TEGEU) that produced 200 watts of output each. Also, they were claimed to produce nuclear by products such as tritium, helium 3 and 4, and isotopes of oxygen that proved beyond any doubt that nuclear fusion was taking place.

He continued working on the technology until 1968, when he signed a petition demanding the abolishment of nuclear weapons. The Soviet Union arrested him for being disloyal, and put him in either a prison or mental institution for six years.

The technology sat stagnant for many years, until 1989 when a Russian company decided to build two or three new TEGEU reactors. They invited Filimonko to work with them (without pay), and he did so until 1992 when he retired. The results obtained from these reactors are unknown. One source on the web claims that they produced an output of 12.5 kilowatts each (without mentioning how much input energy was used), and another source simply claims the reactors did not work as expected.

It is difficult to piece together the full story of Filimonko and his research. Most of the information available on the internet is in Russian, and the translations available are not always clear. What is clear is that a cold fusion technology was developed in Russia (even if not to a commercial ready state) in the 1960s. The technology seems to have produced excess energy in the form of heat, potentially excess energy in the form of electricity, and created nuclear byproducts that proved fusion was taking place.

1956 Cold Fusion

It turns out that there is an even earlier public mention of cold fusion. Consider the following newspaper article from December 1956 as pointed out recently by ECatNews.

click for enlargement

The history of cold fusion is proving to go back further and be more complex than most people realize. Maybe the history of cold fusion will one day be offered as a college course, once the technology is commercialized and the world is forced to admit its existence.

Links

(Translations by Google)

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