For a number of reasons, nickel has surged 41 per cent in London trading this year. It is still below historic highs. http://www.infomine.com/investment/metal-prices/nickel/ Some of that price gain is supply related, but given the impending announcement of Rossi (hopefully positive), demand pressure could continue to push the price higher. Nickel is also used in lithium ion batteries and with Tesla's giga-factory adding to demand - more upward pressure. Speculators will magnify this trend. Yet - Palladium is at $863/oz and nickel is about ~$9/pound. The price difference is a ratio of about 1500:1 by weight. Since Mizuno's recent positive testing uses deuterium with nickel, then as a future trend we may be seeing the demise of palladium as having much of a viable role in LENR, except possibly as a few percent in an alloy or as a surface plating. The reasoning is that if deuterium works well with nickel electrodes, as Mizuno indicates - then why would anyone want to pay hundreds of times more for palladium? It may not work as well, much less better. However, there is evidence that an alloy of 90%Ni and 10%Pd is superior to nickel alone. Even if the price of nickel doubles, relative to Pd, it will still be 750 times cheaper by weight.
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