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Comment by ngvrnd | Hacker News Reader

It's claimed to be producing energy via so-called "low energy nuclear reactions" involving hydrogen. You have to supply hydrogen (which you can get by electrolyzing water once the systems is up and running) and re-form the catalyst when it wears out. It's not claimed to be a perpetual motion machine, so stop attacking a straw man.

I remain highly skeptical about this, but it's not a perpetual motion scam.

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Yes, it's true that cold fusion isn't, itself, perpetual motion. It does indeed meet that standard.

My invocation of perpetual motion is as a fencepost. If you can get people to believe in that, you can get them to believe in anything.

People like clean energy sources. They have good reasons – logical and factual reasons – to desire them. They also don't understand them very well. This has been true for centuries, as illustrated by the history of perpetual-motion scams, and thus it will likely remain true for the foreseeable future. People want to believe, and they will.

He didn't. He pointed out that people still invest in perpetual motion scams as reason to believe people will keep investing in cold fusion. The fact that cold fusion is less obviously a scam than perpetual motion actually strengthens his point.

Doesn't it require deuterium as opposed to normal hydrogen? If so, how are they producing deuterium?

Deuterium is pretty much everywhere. They generally concentrate it in water for most uses if memory serves.

It doesn't require deuterium.

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