Ed Storms officially retired from his cold fusion work at Los Alamos National Labs after the U.S. government stopped funding the research in 1991. But he just couldn't kick the habit. Despite a general skepticism about the viability of the technology from the rest of the scientific community, 13 separate successes in the lab gave him reason to believe that, with persistence, low-energy nuclear reactions (LENRs) were still a very real possibility. From the basement of his New Mexico home, he continued his experiments in private.

Now 74 years old, Storms has become the poster boy for an international cadre of solitary researchers tinkering in basements and garages around the world in hopes of discovering that perfect recipe for drawing almost unlimited power from a safe, low-energy chemical reaction. If they're successful, they could eliminate the need for fossil fuels in an instant, since cold fusion would let companies create nuclear reactors tiny enough to fit inside a cell phone or powerful enough to motor a Hummer around town with almost no waste gases.

If you want to get in on the ground floor of the cold fusion game, all you need are three things: a solid grounding in chemistry and material science, a talent for constructing technical equipment, and a whole lot of money.

"Certain basic equipment is needed, some of which can be purchased and some of which has to be constructed," says Storms. "The more skill a person has in designing and constructing scientific equipment, the less money has to be paid to people who have such skills. In addition, tools such as are normally available in a machine shop are necessary."

But don't expect results right away, cautions Storms. "Once the equipment is set up, you can count on spending a year getting to know how it works, its flaws, and bugs. At some point during this process, you might get lucky and see anomalous behavior. You will then take weeks to assure yourself that what you saw was real. If you have the patience and money, you will gradually prove to yourself that the anomalous events are real. From that point on, your life will not be the same. A mistress is cheaper and less demanding."

Though the necessary hardware for Storms' cold fusion reactors could be assembled by anyone with an acutely technical mind, it's unlikely that an untrained amateur could get results in his own garage. Just building an understanding of how these reactions work requires extensive study, and several at-home researchers have received Ph.D.'s in electrochemistry and material science based on their experiments with cold fusion.

Storms and other LENR researchers make their research and papers, along with photos of their lab experiments, available to the public at www.lenr-canr.org. There you can learn just about everything you need to know to build essential cold fusion equipment like this particle preparation system used by Storms in his home lab.