Fifteen years after the University of Utah made the now infamous announcement that two of its chemists had produced "cold fusion" in their lab, the U.S. Department of Energy will review a new batch of claims by other researchers.

Even though most mainstream scientists consider cold fusion literally cold — as in dead cold — and at least one prominent critic thinks the DOE will be wasting its time, a band of researchers who have refused to give up are delighted by the review.

Although the DOE has received no proposals for new studies or provided new funding in the controversial field, research by what James F. Decker, deputy director of DOE Office of Science, calls some "excellent scientific institutions" the past 15 years deserves a look.

His interest was apparently sparked at least in part by a story in the Wall Street Journal on research results being reported at the 10th International Conference on Cold Fusion.

U. chemists B. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, announced March 23, 1989, that they had captured the process that powers the sun in a small apparatus working at room temperature.

The hope of limitless, cheap, electrical power faded quickly, even with a $5 million appropriation from the Legislature, as scientists around the world raced — with mixed outcomes — to duplicate the results. Eight months later, a special DOE review panel concluded that the research was almost surely an illusion.