Energy Office Funds High-Risk, Innovative Research: Department of Energy division that explores highly novel ideas evolving from basic research has supported work in cold fusion experiments

Seven years ago, when physicist Steven Earl Jones of Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, was looking for funding for a muon-catalyzed fusion research project, he was turned away from the Department of Energy's fusion research program and directed to a small division at DOE that specializes in very highrisk, innovative research. Similarly, when electrochemists Martin Fleischmann of the University of Southhampton, U.K., and B. Stanley Pons of the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, went looking for support for their unusual fusion experiments (C&EN, April 3, page 4), they ended up at the same office. Other scientists with new ideas, from plastic battery electrodes to measuring resistivity of geologic structures, have found help from DOE's Division of Advanced Energy Projects. The objective of the division is to explore the feasibility of extremely novel energy-related ideas evolving from basic research. These projects are at a very early stage of scientific evaluation and usually not yet of ...