Bob,
While it is true that Rossi's first demo had lead shielding, none of the recent versions have had any shielding. You can see in the new paper and pictures - there is no shielding. At the first demo 2011 - the radioactive signal seen by Celani et al was seen at startup only. BTW - there was an elaborate detector setup used to look for radiation in the initial and many other demos - in which sensors were placed under the lead - and none of them saw radiation. There has never been data showing of tens of keV - so there is no reason to imagine that there ever was any - other than at startup. The reason for this situation of needing lead shielding at one time - IMO is that Rossi used only natural nickel at first, and this required a radioactive trigger at startup, but now he no longer uses bulk nickel so he does not need a trigger nor shielding. That changeover of design could have been because Rossi discovered (some time in the last year) the identity of the active isotope. Once he pinpointed the active isotope, then he was able to enrich and no longer needs the trigger nor the shielding. From: Bob Higgins As a Rossi watcher, I notice what he has done historically. All of his low temperature reactors have been lined with a thin layer of lead. Rossi states that the reaction emits low energy photons in the 10's of keV up to about 100keV. This is consistent with the amount of lead that has been seen in photos of his reactors. I don't believe this lead would be needed if the photons from the reaction were only in the neighborhood of 300eV. The 300eV photons would be absorbed in the nickel-rich fuel, and the containing stainless cell. While the reaction you are describing could exist (I am unqualified to say), I don't believe it is consistent with the "Rossi effect". Jones Beene wrote: As mentioned previously, the value of ~300 eV could be a key to understanding the excess heat of the Rossi effect. This mass-energy level would be witnessed as a photon at the upper limit of ultraviolet spectrum or a soft x-ray. This value is most unusual for photon emission in condensed matter - being far above chemical and far below nuclear origin; but it fits the experimental results in a way that nothing else has been able to do.
