The Violante paper was a fine effort; and it clearly identified one source of gain which was somewhat expected: nickel to copper. It is a mistake to assume that there could not be more avenues for gain than this particular one.
Certainly, there could be other channels which were outside the scope of the experiment and were missed. Even if the V-team did indeed identify the predominant or even the only way that nickel can transmute to copper, which could be the case, they did not analyze the nickel isotopes. So, if nickel goes to nickel with gain (i.e. Ni58 -> Ni60) or if protons fuse to deuterons (Storm’s model) or if there is a non-nuclear gain such as f/H or hydrogen dropping into DDL, then this is not accounted for in this paper. That is our hope. In short, there could be much more gain than what they see – but the fact that they did such a good job identifying what they did report – all of these other pathways look more interesting - since any of them could feed off the large 7 MeV gain from the Ni64 to Cu65 channel since it does not involve the prompt gamma and may involve spin abnormalities. From: Bob Higgins Sorry about your caffeine deficit, but 10g of Ni doesn't cost more than a barrel of oil. A kilogram of Ni powder I use was sent to me as a sample. No one would sample 100 barrels of oil. Ni is cheap. But did your sample work? :-) Not being intentionally glib, but the nickel Rossi uses is somehow special and possibly costly – who knows? The QSI nickel nanopowder which gave a small amount of gain in the Ahern experiments costs about $20/gram as I remember. The Arata nickel powders are even pricier since they are spin cast. But yes – I agree that once the best powder is found - the volume price will come down with mass production. The disappointment for many will be that the Rossi effect, if it is limited to the one isotope - may not be the slam-dunk solution to the energy crisis which we all hoped that it would be. IOW 10 grams of nickel would give the equivalent heat of about a barrel of oil. That makes the bottom line problematic, since 10 grams of nickel powder will cost more than a barrel of oil… assuming this is accurate. (operating on a caffeine deficit) Jones
