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Wrecked equipment from a cold fusion ‘cell’ that blew up in January,
killing a British scientist, was handed over to the Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory last week. The laboratory will carry out a series of tests during
the next few weeks in an attempt to work out why the cell exploded.

Negotiations between California’s Division of Occupational Safety and
Health and SRI International, where the explosion occurred, delayed the
tests by three months. The safety division did not want SRI International
to be involved in the tests, but lacked the equipment to do them itself.
Attempts to organise proper analysis of the cell ‘turned into a lawyer-letter
kind of activity’, says one of the people at SRI.

Å®ÉúСÊÓƵs at Lawrence Livermore will look for evidence that a burst
of neutrons was released in the explosion. Using gamma-ray spectroscopy,
they will search for chemical elements that would have formed as a result
of being irradiated by neutrons.

These measurements must be performed immediately, says Patrick Grant
of Lawrence Livermore, because the reaction products, if they exist, have
been ‘steadily decaying towards extinction’ over the past three months.
No radiation was detected at the scene of the blast.

Further tests will examine in microscopic detail the physical state
and chemical composition of the metal vessel that surrounded the cell, looking
for fractures in the metal and residues from the explosion. These may provide
some hint of the pressures inside the cell at the time of the blast and
the chemical makeup of the brew that exploded, killing Andrew Riley.

Grant has asked SRI International to hand over the cell’s palladium
electrode, so that the laboratory’s scientists can look for traces of helium
characteristic of nuclear fusion. The laboratory has had experience in the
past looking for signs of fusion in ‘cold fusion’ electrodes.