Michel,
This certainly occurs, I don't think anyone denies this, but the question is,
at what rate, if it's e.g. once per century it's no use of course. Many CF
researchers believe it occurs more often in the conditions of CF experiments,
and your more recent developments aim at increasing the rate further, right?
The detail which are either leaving out, or minimizing, is the
all-important issue of metal matrix confinement.
Although one deuteron will easily fit into the interstitial space of an
FCC metal structure like Pd, this small space will accommodate two
(bound or unbound) deuterons, and that is presumably when the LENR
reaction is poised to occur with higher than QM probability.
In this 'confinement situation", the deuteron's lone electron - which
you see as impeding the reaction - may actually be pulled away by the Pd
electron cloud, so that the nucleus is effectively bare for a short time
(femptoseconds ??) and the statistical probability of the reaction then
relates to having both of them bare at the same instant.
However - there are two or more (arguable) alternatives to the simplest
model:
D + e- + D -> He + e- + gamma
And one would be utilizing a temporary Cooper Pair (2e-)
D + (2e-) + D -> He + e- + e-
It should be noted that Pd deuteride is a superconductor. It should be
noted that if the (2e-) is somehow 'degenerate' in the sense of lower
kinetic energy then some of the extra energy of the expected 24 MeV
excess - could go into bringing them up to ground state - and that is
why the gamma is seldom seen.
And the other situation would involve either a temporary or permanent
excursion of one (or both) deuterons to the below ground state condition.
Jones
