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Leaving aside the discussions about nuclear power, I'd like to respond to a couple of things:

SpliFF wrote:The problem with this whole discussion is everyone is throwing out statistics as if they have any meaning. They don't! Radiation is not something that spreads evenly and consistently. It will form pockets and concentrations. Different people will have different health effects based on age, general heath, type of radiation, amount of radiation, location of particles, genetic disposition, etc.

What? Are you claiming that because of the differences in distribution and response, there is no such thing as a safe limit? Surely you can see that this is nonsense.

If not, I strongly recommend petitioning your local representative to outlaw the sale and consumption of natural almonds and cassava. They're both well known for their cyanide content, after all.

Nobody has "all the data" and even those who do cannot be trusted. There's a pretty high likelihood that anybody taking the time and expense to collect data has an agenda of some sort.

The only safe way forward is renewables, and that means people have to learn to switch off mainstream news and goverment "information" and dig deeper into whose interests the nuclear and fossil fuel industries really serve. They need to realise that commercial tv, print and radio (especially "talk-back") serve hidden agendas more important to them than public safety.

Talk of agenda, in itself, is nothing more than a tiresome ad hominem. Certainly, a purported source having an agenda is grounds for skepticism (indeed, any conflicts of interest should be disclosed immediately for precisely this purpose), but - unless actual lies of omission or commission are demonstrated - that's all it amounts to.

If a person has an agenda and gives true information, why does their agenda matter?
If a person has an agenda and gives false information, why waste time discussing agenda when you can simply point out the falsehoods?

Also, reading your paragraph as quoted, I can only ask: Do non-governmental organizations, "fringe" groups etc. not have interests or hidden agendas of their own?

what he is saying is not that a safe limit can not be pinned down, but you can not measure in 1, 10 or a thousand places and decide whether the limit is reached or not. you would have to measure everywhere all the time, and thus it is impossible in practice.

hoijui wrote:what he is saying is not that a safe limit can not be pinned down, but you can not measure in 1, 10 or a thousand places and decide whether the limit is reached or not. you would have to measure everywhere all the time, and thus it is impossible in practice.

But what's better? Taking a few measurements now and doing the best that we can with what's available, or just saying "It's unknowable!" and just being scared to death of radiation?

he is saying, that these measurements are a mere alibi thing, and people take them as the whole truth. it is very hard to accept that what you know is not the whole truth. as soon as you get a little info, it becomes the truth. the best thing you ever get is a very very tiny fraction of the whole truth, and you even know it is, then it could be better to know nothing instead.
you are making it to simple; life does not work like that.

hoijui wrote:what he is saying is not that a safe limit can not be pinned down, but you can not measure in 1, 10 or a thousand places and decide whether the limit is reached or not. you would have to measure everywhere all the time, and thus it is impossible in practice.

It's a stupid argument, though. We have a pretty good idea of how much radiation is safe, and we have a pretty good idea of the things or processes the give it off in significant quantities. We don't NEED to measure 'everywhere all the time' to know where there's dangerous radiation. We know that people in Denver get way more radiation than anywhere else in the world, and somehow everyone there is fine. We know that banana's give off comparatively massive amounts of radiation compared to other similar items, we know that fires create radiation, and what separates that normal radiation from radiation emitted from long-life isotopes who will be around for a long time.

Can we ever KNOW that water is safe without sampling every drop that goes through our pipes? Can we ever KNOW the air we're breathing is safe without sampling every molecule and particle floating around us? Can we ever KNOW that the food we're eating is safe without every single item being thoroughly tested for contaminants or other dangerous substances?


The answer to all those questions is YES. You cannot sample and test everything all the time, so you take a sample size and spread and extrapolate results from that. This is extremely basic science, guys. Don't use such ridiculous arguments, you're not doing your side any favors.

hoijui wrote:the best thing you ever get is a very very tiny fraction of the whole truth, and you even know it is, then it could be better to know nothing instead.

What the hell, it's better to know nothing instead? Now you're just being absurd.

I'll say it again, nuclear power has been around for basically 50 years now, and it has a grand total of ONE incident. Was it a bad incident? Absolutely, nobody is denying that. But we know how it happened, we know why it happened, and we know how to keep it from happening again. Nuclear is a totally safe method of producing power, the small amount of waste that it produces is 100% contained(unlike coal and oil), it requires comparatively very little fuel, which even in the case of uranium, though it requires a very delicate and expensive enrichment process, is still very cheap when considering power output. And in the case of thorium reactors, that's not even necessary. It can sustain reaction longer and more efficiently than uranium with a cheaper and more plentiful material, while producing less, and shorter-lived waste.

Hobo Joe wrote:It's a stupid argument, though. We have a pretty good idea of how much radiation is safe,

Yes, it's none.

and we have a pretty good idea of the things or processes the give it off in significant quantities.

nuclear fission

We don't NEED to measure 'everywhere all the time' to know where there's dangerous radiation.

Which will be of little consolidation to you when that piece of radioative caesium, that came from a vegetable, that was fertilised by a dead bird, that ate a fish, that swam past Fukushima gets lodged in your glands and causes your body to eat itself.

We know that people in Denver get way more radiation than anywhere else in the world, and somehow everyone there is fine.

and you of course know that EVERYONE in Denver is fine.

We know that banana's give off comparatively massive amounts of radiation compared to other similar items

ha ha ha. that's just... well.. WHAT?

we know that fires create radiation

it's called light and heat

and what separates that normal radiation from radiation emitted from long-life isotopes who will be around for a long time.

a long, long, long, long, long, long time yes.

Can we ever KNOW that water is safe without sampling every drop that goes through our pipes? Can we ever KNOW the air we're breathing is safe without sampling every molecule and particle floating around us? Can we ever KNOW that the food we're eating is safe without every single item being thoroughly tested for contaminants or other dangerous substances?

So adding more radiation and pollution to the mix proves your point how?

The answer to all those questions is YES. You cannot sample and test everything all the time, so you take a sample size and spread and extrapolate results from that. This is extremely basic science, guys.

Exactly... it is extremely basic to the point of being inaccurate and misleading.

Don't use such ridiculous arguments, you're not doing your side any favors.

I didn't know fear of radiation poisoning was a side. I guess you must be on the side of eating lead?

hoijui wrote:the best thing you ever get is a very very tiny fraction of the whole truth, and you even know it is, then it could be better to know nothing instead.

What the hell, it's better to know nothing instead? Now you're just being absurd.

When that vague and inaccurate data is used to convince people a dangerous activity is "perfectly safe" then yes, it would be better to know nothing.

I'll say it again, nuclear power has been around for basically 50 years now, and it has a grand total of ONE incident.

So Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima and all the little fuck-ups inbetween all count as ONE incident? How many fingers am I holding up?

Was it a bad incident? Absolutely, nobody is denying that. But we know how it happened, we know why it happened, and we know how to keep it from happening again.

The Atomic Accident that Couldn't Happen - Popular Science 1961

Nuclear is a totally safe method of producing power

... until it totally explodes

the small amount of waste that it produces is 100% contained(unlike coal and oil),

.. and Fukushima.

Its not like everything must be 100% safe.. in many situations caution is advised. It is realistic to have some fears of nuclear fission. Can we trust our energy suppliers to implement the safest measures without cost cutting and publicise accurate (as accurate as they can be) risk assessments? Theoretical best practises are just that.. theoretical.

HeavyLancer wrote:Cold fusion is widely derided in the scientific community, because all attempts to this day that have 'proved' it are from experimental errors. Show me a cold fusion technique that has been proved to work, in a peer-reviewed journal on nuclear physics.

There are hundreds and hundreds of reports of tritium that was detected after experiments. It goes back as far as 1927. Just google.

In 1927, Swedish scientist J. Tandberg stated that he had fused hydrogen into helium in an electrolytic cell with palladium electrodes.[18]

(wikipedia)

There is a reason that it is widely derided. The idea that there is a very effective energy source that can solve a lot of our problems is something people simply don't accept. When the idea was first introduced many scientists laughed and made it ridiculous, because they couldn't believe it and because the scientists who discovered it didn't know why it works. Just like people couldn't believe the earth is actually round, just like people couldn't believe that microbiology is a real thing.

The technology has been labelled 'stupid' and 'impossible' by many scientists and the normal people copied this opinion. The first thing people think when they hear 'cold fusion' is 'conspiracy theories' and 'idiots'. However, nobody ever found another reason for the tritium and nobody ever proved that cold fusion is impossible. One of the scientists who hated it the most actually admitted that in 50% of his tests there was tritium after the test, but he still said that cold fusion is impossible.

If you read my first link in my previous post (especially the part starting at page 12, "a new approach") you see that there is significant progress in explaining the results of the experiments.

After some more googleing:

Bologna, March 29 2011 tests

In March 29, 2011 two Swedish physicists, Hanno Ess├®n, associate professor of theoretical physics and a lecturer at the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology and former chairman of the Swedish Skeptics Society and Sven Kullander, Professor Emeritus at Uppsala University and also chairman of the Royal Swedish Academy of SciencesÔÇÖ Energy Committee, participated as observers in a test of a smaller version of the Energy Catalyzer. The test ran for six hours and the calculated energy produced was about 25 kWh. [9] In their report [10] they write "Any chemical process should be ruled out for producing 25 kWh from whatever is in a 50 cubic centimeter container. The only alternative explanation is that there is some kind of a nuclear process that gives rise to the measured energy production." According to Lewan[9], they were given a sample of the nickel powder used in the unit as well as some Rossi says have been used for 2.5 months; analysis showed the unused powder was pure nickel while the used powder contained 10 percent copper and 11 percent iron. They prefaced their discussion in the report with a disclaimer: "Since we do not have access to the internal design of the central fuel container and no information on the external lead shielding and the cooling water system we can only make very general comments."

Of course there is no evidence that makes it 100% certain. But there is at least the possibility, which is why I support it. People have been ignoring this technology for too long, but it can be the solution to all our problems. We just need to find out if it is, instead of dismissing it without even thinking about it.

SpliFF wrote:

we know that fires create radiation

it's called light and heat

Light and heat is dangerous to humans in high amounts. The former can cause blindness and the latter can cause organs to shut down.

So what? I only said that because people who compare radiation from coal, fire and bananas to nuclear fallout like they're the same thing are idiots. Enough of anything will kill you but you'd need a mountain sized pile of coal and god knows how many trillion bananas to get the same lethal dose as a few specs of plutonium. Chances are you won't be finding a mountain of coal, a banana plantation or a raging fire in your sushi roll any time soon.


@Hoi. Google and Wikipedia and "thousands of articles" are NOT peer-reviewed journals. Peer review requires you to consistently reproduce the test results, explain them and convince other respectable scientists that your test methods are sound.

Coldfusion does not appear in peer-reviewed journals because the only thing it does consistently is fail these reviews. That hasn't stopped people making claims but frankly I'd trust a roomful of independent* scientists over a thousand teeming idiots on the internet any day.

On the same note I should point out that no "climate sceptic" has ever had an article disputing climate change or it's causes published in a peer reviewed journal. Just something to think about the next time some radio dickhead starts quoting scientists as sources for their pro-oil rhetoric.

* the independent part is important, I'm not going to automatically trust anyone whose funding is provided by the same industry they claim to be studying.

SwiftSpear wrote: I'm a linguist. I neither believe in the prestige of standard language, nor do I fear language change. In-fact it excites me. Irregardless is an intensifier of regardless, and I love to use it to strengthen a proposal.

Irregardless, if it were a word, would mean not regardless. I think that's the opposite of the meaning you want.

Hoi wrote: Of course there is no evidence that makes it 100% certain. But there is at least the possibility, which is why I support it. People have been ignoring this technology for too long, but it can be the solution to all our problems. We just need to find out if it is, instead of dismissing it without even thinking about it.

People have obviously not been ignoring it if there are still experiments with it. But no matter how much you wish something works, it doesn't change whether it will work. Have you ever considered why the scientific community has rejected cold fusion for decades? Is it merely because it wants to ignore new technology that could solve the world's problems? No. Cold fusion has been, for a long time now, attempted, reported, and rejected continually. The reason for the rejection is that it simply isn't proven in manners consistent with scientific procedures.

Even if the process of cold fusion is real, there is no technology for it now. Even the results from the experiments could not be reproduced reliably with the same setup. Normal fusion is much closer to actual implementation, and it, too, would be the solution to the world's energy needs.

SpliFF wrote:So what?

I was trying to add humor to this serious thread.

fc14159 wrote:Irregardless, if it were a word, would mean not regardless. I think that's the opposite of the meaning you want.

Agreed, I hate that word (if you can call it a word) because people who use it think that...

SwiftSpear wrote:Irregardless is an intensifier of regardless

which is so frustrating.

See also the meaningless statement "I could care less" (derived from "I couldn't care less").

SpliFF wrote:nuclear fission

Nuclear fission is 100% contained, it releases no radiation under normal operation. Contrast to coal burning which releases massive amounts.

SpliFF wrote:Which will be of little consolidation to you when that piece of radioative caesium, that came from a vegetable, that was fertilised by a dead bird, that ate a fish, that swam past Fukushima gets lodged in your glands and causes your body to eat itself.

The amount of cesium released at Fukushima was miniscule, once again, for comparison, the amount of cesium released at Fukushima is dwarfed by the amount of similarly radioactive particles released when burning coal.

SpliFF wrote: and you of course know that EVERYONE in Denver is fine.

I was making a point that radiation is a natural energy that's present everywhere, some places more than others, and that the higher level of radiation in Denver is still well within safe boundaries. I was making a point that radiation in itself isn't dangerous, in the same way that heat isn't dangerous - until there is a large amount.

SpliFF wrote: ha ha ha. that's just... well.. WHAT?

Same as above. I guess you didn't get the idea.

SpliFF wrote: it's called light and heat

Radiation is a completely separate form of energy and you would do yourself a favor if you actually read about what it is before saying blatantly ignorant things like this. Fire releases radiation, and it's a completely different beast than light and heat. A good point though - smaller fires release less light and heat, and larger fires release more light and heat. It's the same with radiation, the more there is, the more radiation it will emit.

SpliFF wrote: So adding more radiation and pollution to the mix proves your point how?

Once again, nuclear releases zero radiation and pollution under normal operation, everything is completely contained, which makes it look pretty damn clean compared to coal which releases very large amounts of radiation and more important, huge amounts of pollution.

SpliFF wrote: Exactly... it is extremely basic to the point of being inaccurate and misleading.

Not at all, once again this is a method that involves EVERY field of science and every aspect of life. YOU CANNOT MEASURE EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME! All the measurements you learned in your science classes, the things you learn when you read the news, any time there is a measurement of something of large quantity, the measurements you see are extrapolated based on a certain sample size. This is not assumed inaccurate. Once again, please get at least a very basic understanding of these things before saying uninformed crap like this.

SpliFF wrote: I didn't know fear of radiation poisoning was a side. I guess you must be on the side of eating lead?

Yes, extreme hyperbole is a great way to have a calm debate.

SpliFF wrote: When that vague and inaccurate data is used to convince people a dangerous activity is "perfectly safe" then yes, it would be better to know nothing.

It is neither vague nor inaccurate. Please research this before making unbased claims.

SpliFF wrote:So Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima and all the little fuck-ups inbetween all count as ONE incident? How many fingers am I holding up?

The total number of total NPP failures is 3. The total number of NPP disasters is 1. Neither TMI or Fukushima cause any casualties or environmental fallout.

SpliFF wrote: The Atomic Accident that Couldn't Happen - Popular Science 1961

We have learned massive amounts in 50 years.

SpliFF wrote: .. and Fukushima.

All the radiation released by Fukushima was within safe boundaries and in fast decaying forms.

SpliFF wrote:So what? I only said that because people who compare radiation from coal, fire and bananas to nuclear fallout like they're the same thing are idiots.

I was not comparing bananas to nuclear fallout. I was trying to give some perspective on the Fukushima disaster, making a point that was release was NOT a nuclear fallout and was all in negligible amounts.

SpliFF wrote:Enough of anything will kill you but you'd need a mountain sized pile of coal and god knows how many trillion bananas to get the same lethal dose as a few specs of plutonium. Chances are you won't be finding a mountain of coal, a banana plantation or a raging fire in your sushi roll any time soon.

Funny you should say that, because we DO burn mountains of coal. Every day. And it releases uranium, thorium, and arsenic, all very long lasting radioactive isotopes directly into the atmosphere.


There has only been one event in the history of nuclear power that has released any long-term radioactivity, and only one event that has released any pollution. By contrast, every coal plant releases massive amounts of both daily under completely normal operation.



Not to be rude Spliff, but the comments you're making are all extremely uninformed and do you no credit, it's obviously you've spent little to no time bothering to research these things before spouting very extreme condemnations, while turning a blind eye to all the obvious faults of conventional (coal, oil) power production. Please research radiation and nuclear power, as well as coal and oil power.

SpliFF wrote:So what? I only said that because people who compare radiation from coal, fire and bananas to nuclear fallout like they're the same thing are idiots. Enough of anything will kill you but you'd need a mountain sized pile of coal and god knows how many trillion bananas to get the same lethal dose as a few specs of plutonium. Chances are you won't be finding a mountain of coal, a banana plantation or a raging fire in your sushi roll any time soon.


@Hoi. Google and Wikipedia and "thousands of articles" are NOT peer-reviewed journals. Peer review requires you to consistently reproduce the test results, explain them and convince other respectable scientists that your test methods are sound.

Coldfusion does not appear in peer-reviewed journals because the only thing it does consistently is fail these reviews. That hasn't stopped people making claims but frankly I'd trust a roomful of independent* scientists over a thousand teeming idiots on the internet any day.

On the same note I should point out that no "climate sceptic" has ever had an article disputing climate change or it's causes published in a peer reviewed journal. Just something to think about the next time some radio dickhead starts quoting scientists as sources for their pro-oil rhetoric.

* the independent part is important, I'm not going to automatically trust anyone whose funding is provided by the same industry they claim to be studying.

Well you kind of give the answer I want to give you. Peer-reviewed isn't everything, and in general, nothing that is not generally accepted and supported by classical theories is allowed to be in those magazines.

Peer reviewed journals don't really allow articles that involve major changes in the laws of physics or ground breaking ideas, and therefore you shouldn't expect anything cold fusion related in them before we use it as a main power source (if we ever will).

Also many of the researchers are independent and/or accidentally had experiments that indicate the existence of cold fusion (they were not researching cold fusion but found traces/evidence of it).

its sad that academia rejects such groundbreaking ideas (not just in the realm of physics of course) and damns them to a sort of intellectual purgatory where all of the rejected ideas, regardless of their merit, must rub shoulders with bicycle powered airplanes and alchemy

Cold fusion did appear plenty in journals and even more failed attempts at replication

If it was exploitable effect you would already have cold fusion water heater at least...

There were dozens of startups with plenty of venture capital to develop this technology.

But they are always "just about to enter market".
(=> just enough to ask for more funds)

I see spliff and others mentioning cancer and radioactivity etc. This is all nonsense:

Things more radioactive than Fukushima people are commonly exposed to:

• Living near a coal burning power station
• Getting an X Ray for broken bones
• Chemotherapy
• Medical radioactive markers
• Heavy Industry or mining
• Living in areas prone to Radon gas ( quite common )
• Irradiating food to prolong its shelf life ( happens quite a lot, most food is irradiated to kill off bacteria )
• One can even argue high intensity sunbeds are more likely to give you cancer than living near fukushima daichi

the list above affects the vast majority of civilians in Western civilisations, and is no doubt only a fraction of the full list.

But ignoring that, lets say that you did indeed eat a fish, that ate some plankton, that was chock full of radioactive stuff released by Fukushima, imported all the way from Japan:

• Most of it would be iodine isotopes, and would have decayed into stable Iodine isotopes long before it was packaged. By the time ti reached your dinner plate, there would be no discernable difference between the iodine in the fish, and the iodine sold at your pharmacist
• The strontium and ceasium found in the fish ( already at quantities insignificant in comparison to the soviet disasters cited, but lets assume they were comparable ) would not be of significant quantity to cause cancerous cells to result, and would in the likeliest situation, have been partially excreted by said fish already anyway, leaving a diminished proportion.
• The radioactivity of said fish, unless intensely radioactive, would not be of any cause for concern since it's likely you have far more radioactive elements carried on your person in your electronic possessions.
• Such a fish of such high radioactivity is unlikely to occur, purely because the radiation needed to kill you would have killed the fish long before it got caught, and fishermen don't get paid for rotting fish.

But assuming the fish did indeed have immense radioactive immunity, that a being many times its size was incapable of absorbing safely, and that this fish was indeed eaten...

• Some of this radioactive material would pass through your digestive tract and out the other end.
• A lot of the material would have such a half life as to not warrant concern
• The most likely negative result of any radiation is cell death, not cancerous cells. Considering the cells closest in proximity to said material already have a high turn over rate as a consequence of their function...

and assuming should you did indeed get cancerous cells as a result of this digestion...

• Cells crippled by radiation have a habit of committing suicide or dieing before being quickly replaced. There are many safeguards that cause a cell to commit suicide should it turn cancerous.
• Cancerous cells occur on a regular basis in healthy individuals already, and the body has numerous mechanisms to detect and clean up cancerous cells. You will have thousands of cancerous cells in your blood right this moment, but that doesn't mean you have cancer or that you are not healthy.
• Life threatening cancer would require a large dose of radiation, much larger than drinking the water directly from the leak in the fukushima plant. Of course this is inadvisable regardless of any radiation it may hold purely because its from an industrial setting and not a clean water source.

So you see, that the thing feared and discussed here is so insanely improbable and unlikely to occur, such that your more likely to get cancer and health issues from worry and stress over the fukushima plant, than you are from radiation poisoning.

If anything the fine particulants from incinerators and coal burning stations, the alcohol consumed, passive smoking, poor refuse collection routines, and car exhaust emmissions , are far, far greater threats, than any leak from a 40 year old plants that did what it was supposed to until a major fluke tsunami washed away its backup cooling generator

fc14159 wrote:

SwiftSpear wrote: I'm a linguist. I neither believe in the prestige of standard language, nor do I fear language change. In-fact it excites me. Irregardless is an intensifier of regardless, and I love to use it to strengthen a proposal.

Irregardless, if it were a word, would mean not regardless. I think that's the opposite of the meaning you want.

Or the 'in' prefix could be locative. Either that or it could be considered double negative, which is common in todays language, and "wrong" based on an arbitrary assumption that meaning is binary instead of qualitative.

Hoi wrote:Well you kind of give the answer I want to give you. Peer-reviewed isn't everything, and in general, nothing that is not generally accepted and supported by classical theories is allowed to be in those magazines.

Peer reviewed journals don't really allow articles that involve major changes in the laws of physics or ground breaking ideas, and therefore you shouldn't expect anything cold fusion related in them before we use it as a main power source (if we ever will).

Also many of the researchers are independent and/or accidentally had experiments that indicate the existence of cold fusion (they were not researching cold fusion but found traces/evidence of it).

Hey man! Have you heard of this new theory? It's called Plate Tectonics! Turns out that the earth underneath us is moving all the time, and it's broken up into many different pieces!
This theory was ridiculed until there was evidence that proved it.

And hey, there's also this other wacky theory - Quantum Mechanics! Einstein didn't like it either, but scientists performed experiments and it turns out to work really well at the sub-atomic levels where General Relativity breaks down.

That's the thing. Just mere speculation is not what science is about. Science is about doing an experiment, being able to verify and duplicate your results if something weird occurs, and then developing a theory around it. Peer-review is an important part of this process, because it allows fellow scientists in the same field to see if they can verify their results. If your experiments and theory don't stand up to peer-review, it's not science.

And AF, you forgot 'sleeping next to another person' and 'taking an airplane flight' as other significant received doses of radiation. There's a lot of radiation around. It's a bit like alcohol - it's fairly OK to have a little, but too much of it is bad for you.

Hoi wrote:

SpliFF wrote:So what? I only said that because people who compare radiation from coal, fire and bananas to nuclear fallout like they're the same thing are idiots. Enough of anything will kill you but you'd need a mountain sized pile of coal and god knows how many trillion bananas to get the same lethal dose as a few specs of plutonium. Chances are you won't be finding a mountain of coal, a banana plantation or a raging fire in your sushi roll any time soon.


@Hoi. Google and Wikipedia and "thousands of articles" are NOT peer-reviewed journals. Peer review requires you to consistently reproduce the test results, explain them and convince other respectable scientists that your test methods are sound.

Coldfusion does not appear in peer-reviewed journals because the only thing it does consistently is fail these reviews. That hasn't stopped people making claims but frankly I'd trust a roomful of independent* scientists over a thousand teeming idiots on the internet any day.

On the same note I should point out that no "climate sceptic" has ever had an article disputing climate change or it's causes published in a peer reviewed journal. Just something to think about the next time some radio dickhead starts quoting scientists as sources for their pro-oil rhetoric.

* the independent part is important, I'm not going to automatically trust anyone whose funding is provided by the same industry they claim to be studying.

Well you kind of give the answer I want to give you. Peer-reviewed isn't everything, and in general, nothing that is not generally accepted and supported by classical theories is allowed to be in those magazines.

Peer reviewed journals don't really allow articles that involve major changes in the laws of physics or ground breaking ideas, and therefore you shouldn't expect anything cold fusion related in them before we use it as a main power source (if we ever will).

Also many of the researchers are independent and/or accidentally had experiments that indicate the existence of cold fusion (they were not researching cold fusion but found traces/evidence of it).

Wrong.

What peer reviewed journals don't allow is claims based on experiments that cannot be repeated, or claims that are not evidenced.

There has been many times the scientific community was turned on it's head when someone proved something that wasn't known before and published it. There are no processes in place preventing peer reviewed work from being controversial or ground breaking.