It can't be done...or can it?

"...in the hills overlooking Santa Fe, New Mexico,
a retired scientist named Edmund Storms
has built a different kind of fusion reactor. It
consists of laboratory glassware, off-the-shelf
chemical supplies, two aging Macintosh computers
for data acquisition, and an insulated wooden box
the size of a kitchen cabinet. While JET's 15
European sponsor-nations have paid about US$1
billion for their hardware, and the US government
has spent $14.7 billion on fusion research since
1951 (all figures in 1997 dollars), Storms's
apparatus and ancillary gear have cost less than
$50,000. Moreover, he claims that his equipment
works, generating surplus heat for days at a time.

Storms is not an antiestablishment pseudo
scientist pursuing a crackpot theory. For 34
years he was part of the establishment himself,
employed at Los Alamos on projects such as a
nuclear motor for space vehicles. Subsequently he
testified before a congressional subcommittee
considering the future of fusion. He believes you
don't need millions of degrees or billions of
dollars to fuse atomic nuclei and yield energy.
"You can stimulate nuclear reactions at room
temperature," he says, in his genial, matter-of-
fact style. "I am absolutely certain that the
phenomenon is real. It is quite extraordinary,
and if it can be developed, it will have profound
effects on society."

Then further on in the article, Russ George from
SRI says...

Any production of helium would be stunning proof
that fusion is occurring, because helium only
results from nuclear reactions. No known chemical
interaction can create it."

Then why not just call it an unknown chemical
reaction that generates heat and leave it at that?

What's the fixation with the word 'fusion'?

I still say the great discoveries in this and any
other areas will be made by amateur tinkerers using
shoe strings and completely untied to the billions
ripped from the taxpayer and managed by bureaucraps.

These tinkerers are the people who don't know what
can't be done.

And if it doesn't work, the only ones who lose are
those directly involved.

And in the latter case, what would be the sense in
taking a whole lotta taxpayers with no interest down
the tubes together?

The whole report.