Fusion energy gets a boost from cold fusion chemistry

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1:00Welcome back to the Nature Podcast. This time, a clever chemistry method to boost fusion power. and how microbes help chocolate get its taste. I'm Sharmini Bandel and I'm Nick Pedro Chow.

1:22Researchers have long been interested in nuclear fusion and its promise of abundant clean energy. This is down to a number of factors, but one is that fusion events, where two or more atomic nuclei combine, are quite rare. Now though, inspired by the controversial case of cold fusion, researchers have used some clever chemistry to boost how often these fusion events occur in a small desktop reactor. We're able to enhance the nuclear fusion rates by as much as 15%. This is Curtis Berlinger, one of the team behind the work. Now, it must be said this is not cold fusion, the claim that fusion could occur at room temperature.

2:12That was dismissed in 1989 due to a lack of credible evidence. But Curtis and a team of researchers have been investigating some of what the original cold fusion researchers did to see if there's anything that could allow fusion to become a bit more scalable. Conventional fusion relies on known science, but the engineering is very difficult to scale. We have to build these really large facilities in order to keep these fuels at high energies within a really confined space. And so we use really massive magnets, for example, to try to confine these particles within these regions. In our work, we're taking the opposite approach and we're trying to explore unknown science with the hope of finding something that's interesting and that could potentially be much easier to scale and engineer.

3:08And that way we can actually deploy our technology at a much faster rate than conventional fusion processes. They landed on palladium. This is a silvery metal that was used in the original cold fusion claim. Now palladium has some interesting properties for fusion as its lattice structure allows it to absorb hydrogen isotopes. In fusion reactions heavy hydrogen isotopes like deuterium are used as the conditions for fusion are easier to achieve with them. As palladium can absorb deuterium Curtis and the team thought it could help them increase the rate of fusion events. so they set about trying to cram as much deuterium into a piece of palladium as possible.

3:54This can be done by using intense pressures but that's very energy intensive so Curtis and the team tried a different approach, electrochemistry. They bathed the palladium in heavy water, water where the hydrogen has been replaced with deuterium and then used the palladium as a cathode. by introducing what's known as an electrical bias the palladium absorbed the deuterium using only a single volt of electricity next the deuterium rich palladium would need to be shot with a high energy deuterium beam to trigger fusion but aware of the history of such research curtis and the team also wanted to make sure that they were accurately able to measure and verify if fusion was happening.

4:42We really wanted to come up with an experiment that was reproducible and could be validated by others. And in this case, we were able to measure a clear signal against the noise. To do this, they built a neutron detector into their reactor. When nuclear fusion happens, protons and neutrons along with energy are released. So by directly measuring this by-product, they could get a reliable measure of the rate of fusion events. This avoids a pitfall of the original cold fusion study that used temperature as a proxy for fusion, something that Curtis and the team found to be quite unreliable. When they finally fired up their reactor and bombarded the Palladium with a beam of deuterium at about 5 ,000 times the speed of sound, they saw an increase in the fusion rates of 15%.

5:33I think fundamentally the ability to create 15 % more neutrons using electrochemistry is a pretty remarkable advance and one that lays the foundation for potentially many years to decades of very exciting fusion research that could lay the foundation for a sustainable energy future. This is Jen Dionne, a material scientist who's writing a News & Views article on the new fusion result. She was excited about the potential of the new study, especially as electrochemistry is a somewhat unexplored avenue for fusion research, likely due to the controversy over cold fusion. Electrochemistry could help boost future fusion reactors, as Amy McEwan-Green, a chemist who co-wrote the News & Views article, explains.

6:25I would be very interested at trying some different metals. So palladium is not the only metal that has this ability to soak up hydrogen or deuterium. There are other metals that could be used as a potential target. And so I'd be interested to see how the choice of metal impacted the nuclear fusion rates. That's not to say that Amy and Jen weren't sceptical about this new paper initially. I first heard the words palladium and heavy water splitting and got a little nervous because right there is the 1989 paper where they kind of reported without any of this ion bombardment, incredibly high heats, which were attributed to nuclear fusion.

7:00So I was a little bit nervous. But then as I read into the methodology, I was like, I thought it was so clever. I loved this idea of, you know, using this electrochemical like preparation of a target. Jen would also like to know more about exactly how this is all working at the nanoscale. I would be very interested to see researchers use techniques like in-situ electron microscopy or in-situ x-ray spectroscopy to better understand the physics of how it is that this electrical bias is increasing the amount of deuterium that gets loaded into the lattice and also better understanding the rates of fusion that are occurring essentially at the nanoscopic and atomic scale.

7:43And while Amy and Jen were impressed by Curtis and the team's results, he was a bit more modest. Anything that is measurable in this particular case was exciting for us and so by virtue of the fact they were able to see any effect we provided the first experimental link between electrochemistry and fusion science. The promise of fusion energy has always been that it's able to produce more energy than is put in and that wasn't the case here but Curtis thinks this is still an important step in the journey towards fusion energy. We are not claiming any energy miracles in this particular paper. This is a fundamental science discovery that provides us with one small step towards helping advance our understanding of the fusion science.

8:30Now critics of fusion energy have pointed out that it is always seemingly 10 years away and the results haven't matched expectations so far. Curtis though is undeterred. Nuclear fusion holds enormous potential as a clean energy source. And, you know, for us going into this line of inquiry, we always knew it was going to be a long shot. But I think our work really does show the younger generation of scientists that it's okay to take risks and to take long shots. And when you go exploring, you're going to learn something new along the way. And there's lots of offshoots from this particular line of inquiry that I think are very important.

9:12We have a much better understanding of metal hydrogen systems that are relevant to hydrogen storage, high temperature superconductivity, and even the construction of drugs, for example. And this is something that we've shown in some other studies is that we can now deuterate drugs, which is a benefit to society as well. This research may not herald a viable fusion reactor yet, but it could open up a new avenue of electrochemical research in the field. For Curtis, he's most excited by the compact nature of their reactor, known as Thunderbird, as he hopes it will get more people involved in fusion research.

9:52We're excited by the Thunderbird reactor because we believe it helps democratise fusion research. It really does bring these large reactors onto the benchtop that chemistry group, for example, like ours, was able to design, build and operate. And so we're excited by the possibility of having many more people in the field come and join us and help advance the nuclear fusion sciences. That was Curtis Berlinger from the University of British Columbia in Canada. You also heard from Amy McEwen-Green and Jen Dion from Stanford University in the US. For more on that story, check out the show notes for some links.

10:31Coming up, how microbial fermentation of cocoa beans could be used to make premium chocolate tastes. Right now, though, it's time for the Research Highlights with Dan Fox.

10:46A species of ant might hold the secret to effective teamwork. Researchers have observed that as weaver ants work in bigger and bigger groups, the efficiency of each individual ant rises. You may have experienced a phenomenon called the Ringelman effect, where the bigger the team, the worse an individual's performance becomes. That's true for humans and also for animals, but not, it seems, for weaver ants. Researchers studying how chains of weaver ants pull on a leaf found that each of the ants in a 15-member team exerts almost twice as much force as an ant working by itself. The team say the ants can probably credit their efficiency to division of labour, with some ants in the chain pulling and others helping to store force and provide stability.

11:39They suggest the research could aid the development of optimisation algorithms for super-efficient robot swarms. Read that paper in full in Current Biology.

11:53Ancient silver coins bearing a rising sun and an ancient Indian religious symbol have been found on opposite ends of Southeast Asia, suggesting that there were extensive, undocumented trade routes across the region. Ancient coins were typically made by pressing a blank metal disc into a stamp with a design on it, imprinting the pattern on the metal. Researchers analysed 245 coins from the first millennium from museums in Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand. They found that a single stamp had been used to make one coin found in Bangladesh and another in Vietnam, and that both coins had probably been originally minted in Myanmar.

12:39Another 67 coins found in Cambodia were all made from the same set of stamps. The discovery of coins with identical designs across Southeast Asia indicates there were ancient land and maritime trade networks, with coins acting as standardised currency or silver bullion used in trade. Find that research in antiquity.

13:07Next up on the show, there's been some research out that's all about chocolate. Now, of course, as soon as I found out that there was important chocolate science to be reported on, I nobly volunteered. I said, yes, I am willing to go and do a deep, deep, possibly undercover investigation. I will test all the chocolate just to make sure that I really understand this science. But unfortunately, one of our colleagues got there first. Isn't that right, Nick? That is right. I'm afraid nature reporter Katie Gavanagh beat you to the punch on this one because she's been writing a new story all about how manipulating the microbes involved in the fermentation of cocoa beans could be used to get better chocolate tastes.

13:53So cocoa beans normally undergo fermentation but not much has actually been known about this process. So this new study has been trying to work out exactly what's going on here and what are the factors that we can manipulate to get even better tasting chocolate. I caught up with Katie earlier this week to talk about the study and she gave me a taste of what the researchers found. Katie thank you so much for joining me how's it going? I'm good how are you? I'm great thank you and I'm really interested in this story because you know it's all about chocolate so I was wondering just to start us off Katie what got you interested in writing this story?

14:32I think immediately seeing the science of chocolate is something you can't really not focus on absolutely and so this is a study that's looked at how to i guess manipulate chocolate flavors or how chocolate flavors come about but i was wondering what was known before this study about how chocolate gets its flavor so it was known that during the fermentation process similar to the way beer and wine and cheese are fermented that microorganisms are involved. But the difference is with cocoa bean fermentation, this happens spontaneously. So different microorganisms join from the environment around and that seems to give different quality and flavour around different regions.

15:16But it wasn't exactly known why or what those interactions were. And this is just how it's been done for a while, just relying on the microorganisms from the environment. Yeah, so there hasn't been any intervention from the farmers. They just leave the cocoa beans in the box and let the microbes assemble in their natural way from the environment. And it's been this way for about 100 years or so? Yeah, it hasn't really changed over the past 100 years. And so what was the motivation of these researchers? Why were they interested in looking into this process? So one of the lead researchers said it was just a mystery that he really wanted to look at.

15:49But it's a way to be able to manipulate flavour and quality without adding different artificial additives and like editing it very early on in the process which could lead us to more customisable chocolate and also just improving quality. And so what did they do to try and investigate what was going on here? So they looked at the fermentation of cocoa beans across three different farms in Colombia and first they had a look at the genetic profile and found that this was similar between all three regions. So this wasn't a factor for the different quality and flavour. So then they looked at pH and temperature and how this interacted with the microbial communities involved in each fermentation process.

16:30And when they looked at this, what did they find? When they had a look at the pH and temperature dynamics, these differed between two of the regions. And when they later on made cocoa liqueurs from these cocoa beans, they found that similar temperature and pH translated to similar flavour and the same with the microbial communities. So fiddle with the pH, fiddle with the temperature and the microbial community, different kind of chocolate flavour. Yeah. And when you say flavour and quality of the chocolate, how did it differ? So there's fine chocolate characteristics and these come from different microbial communities and they're after reducing these to quite a small amount that they're able to use to make an artificial starter so then they can reflect this in the lab and make fine chocolate okay so they could just literally be like okay these are the conditions these are the microbes that would make the best kind of chocolate premium chocolate and just do that yeah oh wow and so could this make even new flavors would it be a way to make all kinds of new chocolate yeah so they're looking into designer chocolate and how even if you're in somewhere that doesn't have really good cocoa beans and fine flavor characteristics that you could in the lab manipulate this by using the starters made from certain microbial communities and associating that with the pH and temperature that's like optimum for fine chocolate and then tweak the little flavours because they have different microbes that are associated with different flavours.

17:55So then tweaking that to make designer chocolates. And one thing that people may have heard of is that cocoa production is facing all sorts of challenges from climate change and that sort of thing. Could this in any way help with that? Definitely. So this could improve the quality and keep it more stable because sometimes it can turn out really badly and the quality isn't good. But then also because there's no stable level, you can get really good chocolate sometimes and there's seasons that this is really good. But this keeps everything quite stable. And it means that when there's issues with climate change, that we can use all of this information to keep the optimum pH temperature and microbial communities to benefit the cocoa bean fermentation.

18:36hopeful news for chocolate connoisseurs then and so you also spoke to some other researchers who weren't part of this study about what they've done here what did they think of it so they thought that this would be a really valuable way of looking into designer chocolates so there was someone from the states who isn't from a big cocoa producing region and she described how she would be able to possibly in the future use this in the lab to develop designer chocolates and more upscale chocolates and also I spoke to someone from Colombia and he explained the impact that this is going to have on the communities that are directly responsible for developing chocolates because by improving the quality this could improve income for farmers and different communities that are directly involved with the fermentation process.

19:23And so I'm sure everyone listening is probably salivating at this discussion so I was wondering what happens now? So a little bit more work needs to be done and it would be really interesting to look into other microbial communities and how these play roles in different flavour characteristics and quality and which ones are essential for fine flavour characteristics. Well I'll be interested to maybe taste this research in the coming years but Katie thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having me. That was reporter Katie Kavanagh. For more on that story check out the show notes for a link to Katie's news article.

19:59And I'm afraid that is all for this week. But don't worry, we will be back again next week. Although, if you cannot wait that long, why not reach out to us? We're on X. We're on Blue Sky. You can find us at naturepodcast or send us an email. We're podcast at nature.com. I'm Sharmini Bandel. And I'm Nick Perchardt-Chow. Thanks for listening.

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