Reply To: Look at this

[jamesr]

I found this report from a few years ago http://www.enea.it/produzione_scientifica/pdf_volumi/V2008_16Cold_Fusion_Italy.pdf

see page 171-180 for a related experiment.

From this report I seriously doubt their claims.
For example the copper peak in the SEM-EDAX graph (p176) is tiny – look at the number of counts on the scale Poisson error on N counts is sqrt(N) so peak is barely above noise level. To me that graph just looks like the sample was badly cleaned and contaminated from other sources.

The measure flux of 10 neutrons /cm^2/s although higher than background is still very low. All other sources need to be ruled out, as they could easily come from experiments in nearby labs, or just false detections due to electrical noise.

There is no analysis of the isotopic composition of the nickel sample beforehand – there are many isotopes of nickel and ratios vary depending on where it was mined and how it was processed.

I suspect most of the energy is just chemical as in NiMH batteries. They force hydrogen into the metal first (charging it up) then let is discharge.

Above all though fusion needs the nuclei to get close enough to overcome the Coulomb barrier. To do this they must have enough kinetic energy – ie be HOT.