My reading of the fuel used in the Lugano demo is that it was pretreated in a way that the treatment method generated extensive transmutation on the surface of the fuel particles. The nickel fuel particle was covered with all kinds of heavy Z elements including a full range of rare earths. It is doubtful that Rossi salted the fuel with heavy elements because these elements were not detected in the bulk element analysis of the fuel load. My guess is that this pretreatment process involved spark discharge into the nickel particles in the same way that Mizuno activates his nickel surfaces. This pretreatment was energetic enough to produce sintered particles where many 5 micron nickel particles combine into some numbers of 100 micron particles. Yes, pretreatment of the nickel is the key to a successful LENR reaction.
It takes a lone time to load energy into the Exotic Neutral Particles (ENP) as shown by the weeks of laser irradiation that Holmlid uses to make his iron powder LENR active. Rossi may be producing ENPs into hs fuel through the use of electrical arcing treatment.. The half life of these ENPs are measured in days.
