In the history of LENR there have been several positive efforts (claimed) which were generally ignored or not replicated - where the main operative tactic was to add a tiny amount of "hot" emitter material as a catalyst for LENR. One of Rossi's early demos apparently depended on a startup routine from such a radioactive seed (according to Celani).
The thinking was/is that there is a second type of catalysis (manipulation of probability) operating beyond chemistry - such that the tendency to go through nuclear effects (such as nuclear tunneling) is somehow enhanced in a statistical way. See I.E. # 1, p. 46, "Cold Fusion in a 'Ying Cell' and Probability Enhancement by Boson Stimulation," by Nelson Ying and Charles W. Shults III The inventors claimed that bosons like deuterium could be activated by a small external radioactive field and would fuse easier if a bit of stimulant material such as americium-241 was added to an electrolysis cell. Gene Malorve tried to replicate their results but failed even though Shults assisted Gene with the replication. Essentially the goal of adding the LENR seed is to achieve massive trillion-to-one gains. The emitter would add only nanowatts of thermal equivalent but the "probability field" for LENR is then multiplied out of all proportion to the initial stimulation by electrical input. The reality of such a probability-field enhancement is not a generally accepted concept, and it is not about a particular kind of nuclear reaction but involves more general "decoherence" and "quantum entanglement" effect- and arcane types of information loopbacks. Anyway - the main reason to bring up this bit of ancient history now is that there seems to be a renewed interest in detecting radiation from a working LENR experiment. One possible way to do this would be to add a seed such as am-241 which would immediately increase the number of counts on its own but when power is added to the cell there is (hopefully) a multiplier effect which ends with far more counts being observed than from the seed. (assuming probability field enhancement).BTW another inventor to claim a similar probability-enhancement effect on LENR was Rusi Taleyarkhan at Oak Ridge. That chapter did not end well but his results were valid. Also, in one experiment Dennis Cravens added thorium as a seed. There could be something useful here, despite the past mixed results and it would go beyond LENR.
