Edmund Storms wrote:
It is my belief, based on an extensive examination of the literature, that the few neutrons emitted from cold fusion experiments are not the result of a "cold fusion" process, but result from a process stimulated by relatively high energy. People have suggested that such high energy can result from crack formation.
I do not think people have found enough cracks to explain the neutrons generated in some experiments. My guess is that the neutrons come from secondary reactions. In other words, the deuterons fuse to form helium-4 (for reasons I cannot begin to imagine), and in a few cases, in rare circumstances, that reaction triggers a hot fusion event that results in a neutron.
The tritium also seems to be a secondary byproduct. Takahashi and others feel that it is inversely proportional to the heat, the way smoke is inversely proportional to fire. You might call it the product of "incomplete fusion," (like incomplete combustion), or a precursor reaction.
I hope to have another, later review paper by Iyengar et al. soon, that was published in Fusion Technology.
- Jed
