Mainstream French Science Magazine Science et Vie on Cold Fusion/Rossi

The following information and translated excerpts from Science et Vie have been kindly provided and translated by ECW reader Benjamin Renaut. Copyright does not allow a full translation to be published here, and the magazine does not publish its articles online.

A very mainstream journal in France, Science et Vie (Science and Life), has published in its April 2015 issue an article about the 1MW Plant and LENR in general, including the picture of Rossi and his team inside the plant. The journal is not a scientific publication journal; rather, it is a widely read vulgarisation journal. The article is part of a larger one that describe three possible alternative to the ITER/Tokamak approach to
hot fusion (the larger article title reads: “FUSION: 3 machines défient ITER !” / “FUSION: 3 devices defy the ITER project !”). About the
journal itself, see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_%26_Vie

The French title of the article is: “Cold fusion: a first prototype has already been sold!”

[General infomation about the history of cold fusion and Rossi . . . ]

Bo Höistad, physicist at the Uppsala university and one of the scientists having performed the independent testing, confirms the report’s conclusions but says caution is still required: “LENR would be confirmed only if a second independent team were to reproduce our results”, he said.

‘Jean-Paul Biberian, a retired lecturer at the Aix-Marseille university in France and ardent defender of cold fusion, also advises caution: “While it is true that the high thermal energy and the transmutations witnessed are very interesting, I will be totally convinced only when other researchers reproduce those results”.’

[Asks why there is so much caution . . . Mentions some doubt Lugano test based on methodology flaws and thatn Rossi handled fuel at the Lugano test. . .]

‘Bernard Saoutic, the deputy director for the research institute on magnetic nuclear fusion at the CEA (translater’s note: the Comissariat à l’Energie atomique, the main French public research and control organisation in the area of nuclear energy), remarked: “in order to be qualified as independent, this experiment should have been performed without any intervention by Andrea Rossi and, ideally, the reactor itself should have been built by the independent team based on published instructions”.’

[‘Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence’ invoked . . .]

‘A large majority of physicists remain up until now sceptical of the LENR research area. Igniatios Antoniadis, from the theoretical division at CERN in Geneva, despite being the organizer of a cold fusion seminar in 2012 at CERN, declares: “They [cold fusion researchers] tend to announce their results in the press instead of scientific publications, and moreover they tend to give few details on the exact experimental protocols they follow”. Alain Becoulet, director of the institute on magnetic nuclear fusion of the CEA, adds: “The cold fusion community has closed in on itself”.’

‘Despite all this, however, Jean-Paul Biberian stays optimistic: “Various experimental apparatuses have been proposed and the anomalous production of excess heat has been produced tens of times. . .  Our scientific publications are not read widely; we suffer from an almost nonexistent funding”. Jacques Foos, retired director of the laboratory for nuclear sciences of the French national conservatory of arts and crafts, also adds: “This is a regrettable situation given the stakes; especially since a few millions of Euros would be enough to advance the situation”‘

Meanwhile, Andrea Rossi and his e-cat aim to change this. The engineer has one year to present definitely convincing tests to the world. He now has his back to the wall – but also may be about to revolutionize the world of energy production.’

A final remark: this may not be 100% clear in the translation and I don’t know if it is an interesting point, but it seems the author of the article directly communicated with Rossi before writing the article; I translated:
“Selon les informations que Andrea Rossi nous a communiqué” with “Based on the information communicated by Andrea Rossi”, but a more correct translation would be: “Based on the information communicated to us by Andrea Rossi” – the French sentence clearly underlines the fact that they reached Rossi directly.