Apologies re the time in between drinks; hopefully I’ll get a few more out this year.  This time I’ve put together a rather detailed view of Cold Fusion, due mainly to the fact that there has just been an independent verification, commercial release and business plan sewn up for one of the players, with presentations of another’s in a couple of months.

There have been several plausible explanations put forward to explain the results of cold fusion (CF), or as it is now mainly known LENR (low energy nuclear reactions), not only as it is becoming more likely that the reaction is not what is generally considered to be true fusion, but also because of the mud that was thrown and stuck to Pons & Fleischmann with the original declaration by University of Utah (against the better judgement and recommendations of the scientists in question).  I’ll list the most likely and/or well-known ones here, the people/companies involved, and also detail some of the claims and devices in production.

In case you think that there isn’t much literature backing up the occurrence of LENR then I recommend you visit 
http://lenr-canr.org/
which has over a thousand papers detailing positive results, with links to well over an additional two thousand. 

Unfortunately due to the virtual black-ban on even mentioning CF within the Western scientific community this overwhelming amount of evidence is virtually unknown in institutions such as CSIRO (or, as I found, ignored even when it is pointed out, for reasons I won’t go into here).  Many otherwise respected journals have a policy of censoring any debate on CF, regardless of how well founded it is, including the Scientific American – e.g. see
http://lenr-canr.org/wordpress/?p=1373
There are also a large number of scientists and industry groups who have vested interests in CF not being successful, due to reasons as diverse as ego, lack of prestige, loss of (governmental or market) control, or the most common one – money.  The latter is a very important one, as a cheap, readily available energy device that requires virtually no fuel, and whose fuel is readily available nearly worldwide, obviously has the potential to wipe billions of dollars off the worth of fossil-fuel related industries (not to mention less efficient “alternative” technologies such as solar and wind).

As a historical note, Pons and Fleischmann were not the original discoverers of cold fusion/LENR; the Russian Scientist Filimonenko Ivan Stepanovich was producing excess energy using a similar apparatus back in 1957 – see e.g.
http://beforeitsnews.com/free-energy/2011/07/russian-cold-fusion-video-documents-1957-start-845968.html
The idea dates back even further, however; Austrian scientists Friedrich Paneth and Kurt Peters hypothesised in the 1920s that it should be possible to produce a nuclear reaction that doesn’t produce substantial amounts of waste products or radiations, and in 1926 published (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01579126) that they had fused Hydrogen to Helium using Palladium, although they later retracted their findings, saying they had measured helium from the air instead (which is interesting in itself; Helium makes up only about 5.24 parts per million of our atmosphere by volume, once water is removed).  Their primary concern was actually the production of Helium, due to the near complete control the USA had over the market & their refusal to sell it to Austria and Germany.

Swedish scientist John Tandberg (co-inventor of the gas-absorption refrigerator) was intrigued by the initial report and in 1927 stated that by using an electrolytic cell under high pressure with Palladium electrodes he too had created Helium from Hydrogen, and also reported that the process produced excess energy.  He tried to patent the device but the Patent Office rejected his application on the basis that he “could not explain” what was happening – on that basis the Wright brothers would never have been able to patent their flying machine.

Now some (more modern) background.  Contrary to what some hydrogen “experts” may proclaim, it has been known for over a century that most metals (including Palladium) can absorb large amounts of Hydrogen gas (especially under pressure) and release it when heated (e.g. see Major P. Litherland Teed’s 1919 publication “The Chemistry and Manufacture of Hydrogen”).  Helium, however, is not so absorbed.  Both Hydrogen and Helium only have electrons in the innermost “shell” surrounding the nucleus, and as Helium has 2 protons attracting the surrounding 2 electrons, as opposed to Hydrogen’s single proton, this results in the orbit of the Helium’s electron’s being smaller than that of the Hydrogen – i.e. a Helium atom is smaller than a Hydrogen atom (covalent radius of 28pm, compared with 31pm for Hydrogen), so should be more easily absorbed than Hydrogen.  The reason this is not the case is because it is not actually the Hydrogen atom, but the Hydrogen nucleus (a naked proton in the case of normal Hydrogen, aka Protium) that is absorbed into the metal lattice, whereas the electron is split off and becomes part of the “pool” of electrons in the metal that give it its metallic lustre and high conductivity of both heat an electricity.  Helium, being a noble gas with a full electron “shell” is extremely reluctant to part with its electrons, and so does not get absorbed.

The structure of most metals can be viewed as a 3-dimensional lattice of 6 sided dice in all directions, with the corners of each cube representing the location of a metal nucleus (although this is an idealised representation; in reality there are many holes and other flaws, and the “dice” don’t have to be just 6 sided), with the electrons floating around like a gas within the metal.  The rather large (in comparison) metal nuclei are as close together as they can get as allowed by Coulomb (electro-magnetic) repulsion (with a bit of extra distance for quantum fluctuations and vibrations caused by temperatures above absolute zero), but as the Hydrogen nuclei (i.e. proton, or paired neutron and proton for Deuterium) is much smaller it can sneak through the gaps and sit in the middle of each cube (one per die).

Now for a discussion on the main types of cold fusion/LENR announced in the last decade.

1) Superwave Cold Fusion.  The explanation resulting from this theory utilises the fact that after loading Hydrogen, or to be precise Deuterium, nuclei into a metal lattice you have a lot of neutron/proton pairs “stuck” in a nice regular formation.  Once you fill up all your cubes the majority of nuclei are restricted in their movement – e.g. if you’re driving on the free-way with trucks in front of you, behind you & on either side you don’t have much room to manoeuvre.  A waveform is then introduced into the metal lattice, which as it travels through the lattice compresses sections locally.  This supposedly results in some of the locations in which Hydrogen nuclei can sit to temporarily disappear, meaning due to quantum tunnelling pairs of nuclei end up in same location.  Once the nuclei are within 10fm of each other the strong nuclear force overcomes Coulomb repulsion and the 2 proton/neutron pairs combine to form a Helium nucleus, plus a high-energy gamma ray (due to the lower energy state of a Helium vs. 2 Deuterium nuclei).  The Helium nucleus quickly attracts 2 of the relatively free-floating electrons and is expelled from the metal lattice, whilst the gamma ray due to the dense structure of the metal lattice generally impacts a metal nucleus, resulting in additional vibration of the lattice (i.e. heat, rather than potentially lethal radiation being released from the metal).  This process is demonstrated very nicely in the video at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQ2M_SE67RM
with more explanation of the underlying theory at
http://www.rexresearch.com/dardikcf/superwave.htm
Problems with this theory include the fact that some of the gamma rays should escape the metal lattice and be detectable, and certain other events which should occur if true fusion is taking place do not; a number of these are discussed further at
http://pesn.com/2010/03/22/9501630_Krivit_says_cold_fusion_is_not_fusion_but_LENR/
Also, despite the publishing of the underlying theory back in 2009 no working demonstration models (at least none that I am aware of) have yet to be created.

2) Electroweak interactions.  At the time of Pons & Fleischmann (and prior to that) little was known about electroweak interactions.  It was not until 2008 when Srivastava, Widom and Larsen (in “A Primer for Electro-Weak Induced Low Energy Nuclear Reactions”) proposed that the electromagnetic energy stored in many relatively slow moving electrons can under appropriate circumstances be collectively transferred into fewer, much faster electrons with energies sufficient for the latter to then combine with protons to produce neutrons via weak (force) interactions. The neutrons can then initiate low energy nuclear reactions through further nuclear transmutations, resulting in a large net gain in (heat) energy, without the production of a large amount of gamma radiation or other conventional fusion-related products.  The main advantage of this theory is that the combination of the proton and electron actually benefits from electromagnetic attraction; there is no Coulomb repulsion to overcome.  The theory also incorporates some of the latest understandings of quantum processes.  For no apparent reason that I can find Srivastava’s name is generally ignored and most people who mention the theory (including NASA) instead refer to it as the “Widom Larsen” theory.

NASA confirmed in 2011 that they were working on determining whether this theory could be demonstrated practically, see e.g.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/05/nasa-confirms-widom-larsen-theory.html
This link also lists one of the possible reaction paths; 6 protons could combine with 3 electrons to create Lithium-6, 9 anti-neutrinos and a net gain of 28MeV of (heat) energy.  Another interesting result is that the energy density for the materials involved is even higher than normal hot fusion; you can get 88 GJ/g for Uranium 235 fission (about 1.9 million times the most energy-dense chemical reaction), 337 GJ/g for hot fusion combining Hydrogen into Helium, and 370 GJ/g for this form of LENR.  Only matter-antimatter combinations are more energy-dense.

Problems with this theory include the fact that under the Standard Model of particles if you combine a proton and an electron (both of which are fermions, i.e. they have half-integer spin) you should get a boson (which has whole integer spin) – but a neutron is also a fermion with half-integer spin.  The combination also seems to break the law of conservation of mass-energy, although this energy could come potentially from the extra energy imparted by the motion of the individual particles (kinetic energy).  [Update March 2014 – this could be fixed by the absorption of an electron anti-neutrino at the same time.] There are a couple of other issues as well; these could potentially be solved with a few modifications (not currently accepted by conventional physicists) to the Standard Model and the explanation as how particles react, e.g. as an electron in orbit around a nucleus gains energy it may actually follow a helical/spiral path, getting closer to the nucleus; there are more details at
http://peswiki.com/index.php/PowerPedia:Cold_Fusion_Theories

3) Brillouin Energy Corporation’s hypothesis combines both of the above.  As per
http://newenergyandfuel.com/http:/newenergyandfuel/com/2012/04/23/three-cold-fusion-processes-coming-to-market/
(see both the video and diagram on the page) you have a metal lattice and introduce a waveform (“q-wave”) to compress the lattice, forcing particles together.  In this case, however, rather than combining deuterium nuclei there is supposedly an electroweak interaction causing a proton and electron to combine to form a neutron.  Some neutrons then get close enough to a proton to form a Deuterium nucleus (proton plus neutron), then with repeated waveforms and more neutron formation the Deuterium becomes Tritium, and the Tritium Quadium (3 neutrons and a proton).  Quadium is highly unstable and via beta decay (release of an electron and electron anti-neutrino) forms a Helium nucleus and energy in the form of heat.  A much more detailed version of the hypothesis can be seen at
http://www.brillouinenergy.com/docs.php?doc=energy_hypothesis

BTW, the video isn’t quite correct; even at absolute zero there is movement (vibration) of atoms within the lattice due to quantum fluctuations.  Despite this being well known in quantum physics it is often ignored in conventional physics.

Anyway, in addition to the issues discussed above concerning proton/electron combination, there’s the fact that in the (admittedly limited number of) laboratory tests done Quadium does not form Helium via beta decay, but turns back to Tritium via neutron emission.  Also, statistically speaking it is much more probable that any free neutrons created would be absorbed by the atoms of the metal lattice rather than attaching to Deuterium to form Tritium, and even less likely to attach to the Tritium.

Despite these issues a prototype has supposedly been independently verified – see
http://pesn.com/2012/04/19/9602078_Brillouin–Understanding_How_LENR_Works_Will_Enable_Us_to_Be_First/
However, there has been no news from the company for over a year now; so it’s unclear whether they really have something and are laying low, or whether problems have been identified and yet to be resolved.  They may have something that does work, but not in exactly the way they believe.

4) Andrea Rossi PhD is the main person who reignited public interest (at least outside of the Western media news blanket).  Rossi is an Italian inventor and scientist with a long history in the alternative energy field; he conducted research back in the 1970s that led to technologies to initially turn household garbage into usable heat, and then into oil, coal and gas replacements, and even had (via a company he formed) a plant producing 20 tons fuel/day from household waste.  He became interested in cold fusion after the 1989 Pons & Fleishmann (well, University of Utah) announcement, and started carrying out experiments.  After an extremely long (18 year) period of trial and error he managed to produce a stable system with repeatable results that he called the ECAT (energy catalyzer).  After convincing a respected expert in the field (Professor Emeritus Sergio Focardi of the Bologna University) in 2007 that the device worked they spent a further 2 years developing a safe device.

Unlike the other systems Rossi admits that his device does produce potentially dangerous gamma radiation, which is why the device has lead shielding.  This is dense enough to capture all of the gamma rays and convert them to heat (numerous test with probes both inside and outside the ECAT have confirmed this).  20 minutes after the device is turned off the gamma radiation has been fully absorbed, and by this time there are no unstable isotopes left within the device, so there is no nuclear waste, and no dangerous substances if the ECAT is disassembled after this time (meaning there are potentially issues with especially small-scale transport with crashes potentially breaking a device which is still producing dangerous levels of radiation).

A number of tests (some public, some private) were carried out in 2009-2011 (most of the public ones in 2011), attracting quite a bit of media attention in Italy and Greece especially (although I’ll lay odds you never heard of it at all here).  At the same time several more generations of prototypes were developed.

A major prototype capable of developing 1MW of heat was created by connecting a number of ECAT devices together on racks in a shipping container.  This was tested semi-publicly (invitation only, but included media) on the 28th October 2011.  The system produced an average of 479 kW over 5.5 hours in the test; some basic problems (leaky seals in a number of the ECAT devices) prevented it from producing the rated output, but it was still convincing enough for an “unknown customer” to purchase the device for 1 million Euros.  It was later revealed that the scientific expert who was observing the test on behalf of the customer (and who had had substantial discussions with Rossi beforehand concerning the technology) was a retired US Navy officer and nuclear engineer, leading many to believe the customer was in fact the US Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR), which would make sense as they are one of the few organisations in the Western world that has maintained an interest in CF technology since 1989.

Since then Rossi has further developed the 1MW plant and with Focardi et al established relationships with a number of business people to set up licensing arrangements around the world (just completed in early June 2013), and relationships with various companies for supporting technologies (e.g. National Instruments for the control circuitry).  Independent third-party testing with the new versions of the ECAT begin in December 2012 and the major report was published on 16th May 2013 – see
http://arxiv.org/abs/1305.3913
and
http://pesn.com/2013/05/20/9602320_VINDICATION–3rd-Party-E-Cat_Test-Results-show-at-least-10x-gain/
Although admittedly very conservative the authors still agree that the devices are definitely producing a noticeable amount of excess heat, and that it is at least an “order of magnitude greater than conventional energy sources” (the Ragone plot on the second URL above makes this very clear; note all the conventional means of producing/storing energy clustered together in the bottom left, then look out to the top right where the ECAT is).

So, in this case we have a device that not only has received third party confirmation from a number of sources, but has already had one sale, and is now commercially available (well, the 1MW shipping container version is; a “home” unit is still some ways off, unfortunately).

Some attributes of the ECAT include:

• The fuel is Hydrogen (Protium only; apparently heavier isotopes actually stop the device working) and Nickel (powder), but not all of the Nickel reacts with the hydrogen.  This suggests it is only one (or a few) of the rarer isotopes of Nickel that is (are) actually being used in the process; e.g. Ni-61 and Ni-64 only make up about 1% each of naturally occurring Nickel but are stable, whilst Ni-59 which only makes up a trace of normal Nickel is a likely candidate – it is a radionuclide, but with a half-life of 76000 years.  This view is backed up by a statement by Rossi that testing on the Nickel from an ECAT that had been running for some time showed that the ratios of the various isotopes had substantially changed.
• There are variations of the ECAT which run at hotter temperatures and produce higher levels of energy; the basic ECAT has a COP (co-efficient of performance, the ratio of energy out to energy in) of around 6; newer devices are around 20 (measured over the course of a day or so).  Apparently some lab prototypes were running at around a COP of 400, but they tended to be unstable and occasionally explode, suggesting that once you get beyond a certain running temperature (and/or a certain purity of Nickel) the reaction is unstable.  This implies that there might be some “critical mass” or critical temperature (cf. nuclear fission), and also that even though not consumed most of the Nickel could be of use in damping this sort of runaway reaction.
• The consumption rate of the “fuel” in the basic ECAT is 0.1g of (the appropriate type of) Nickel and 0.01g of Hydrogen (Protium) which produces 10kWh of (thermal, via gamma radiation) energy, over the course of an hour.
• Copper is produced; the rate being linear with respect to the energy produced.  Measurements were done on 1 device after running it for 6 months straight & found that 30% of the “active” Nickel was now Copper.  This suggests that the overall reaction (ignoring intermediate steps), is 
  Ni + H -> Cu + energy (gamma radiation)
  Nickel has 28 protons, Hydrogen (Protium) has 1, and Copper 29, so this certainly looks like fusion to me.
• Other elements (currently unknown; this is one of the trade secrets) are used in the process, probably both as catalysts and dampers, in addition to the Lead shielding.
• The device takes some time to “power on” – it needs to be heated slowly to a certain temperature before the reaction produces more energy than it consumes.

A possible explanation for the reaction in the ECAT is presented at
http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?p=338&cpage=3
by Prof. Ch. E. Stremmenos (who is on the Board of Advisers of the Journal of Nuclear Physics, which Rossi established to publish information on the results he was getting and to some extent the science behind it, seeing as conventional publications refused to acknowledge the field even existed).

To summarise, Stremmenos believes that once you load up the Hydrogen nuclei (i.e. Protium nuclei, i.e. Protons) that as the electrons are spread throughout the metal lattice in what is effectively a “non-localised plasma”, that it is possible at the attosecond (10^-18) time-scale for unstable Protium “atoms” to form, with one of the electrons temporarily orbiting one of the protons trapped in the lattice, but much closer to the nucleus than would normally occur – potentially within 10fm, so nuclear forces take over and even if the proton and electron do NOT combine to form a neutron, they LOOK like a neutron (i.e. electrically neutral).  As such Coulomb repulsion is overcome and they can potentially move within 10fm of a Nickel nuclei, especially with the help of thermal vibrations (which increase as the metal is heated).

Time-wise this is not an issue, as nuclear reactions can happen on a time-scale of around 10 zeptoseconds (10^-20), with the “life-span” of these altered Protium atoms being ~100 times as long.

Once this unstable Protium atom moves within 10fm of the Nickel nuclei it is captured.  Rather than forming an isotope of Nickel, as would happen with a true neutron, the atom quickly decays, resulting in the Nickel becoming Copper (due to the addition of a proton).  I would have thought that the electron would be released at speed resulting in what is effectively Beta radiation, but Stremmenos believes instead the new Copper nucleus releases a positron (anti-matter version of the electron) which then annihilates the electron resulting in a photon (i.e. gamma radiation).  Furthermore, rather than being a high-energy (and more dangerous, harder to shield) photon as would normally result as per the Mossbauer effect (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%B6ssbauer_effect), much of the energy of the photon is instead absorbed by the new copper nucleus, which then recoils into the metal lattice (resulting in heat).  The reason for this is that being an isolated Copper atom, rather than Nickel as per the surrounding atoms, the new nucleus is not part of the lattice and instead acts as if it was in a (quasi-) gaseous state.

I think that as per the other explanations this relies on a potentially unlikely series of events to occur, but statistically speaking it could be possible.  The other issue is the possible formation of a Protium atom of size smaller than 10fm within the lattice, which is certainly not recognised by conventional science, but thanks to Heisenberg & Planck (i.e. quantum effects) is not beyond the bounds of possibility.

Whether or not this is actually what is happening, the fact is that the ECAT has proven on multiple occasions to produce excess energy reliably and repeatedly, so this is definitely a technology that needs to be studied.  For more validations and discussion see
http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Andrea_Rossi%27s_E-Cat_Validations

5) Defkalion were originally in partnership with Rossi, but due to disagreements about patents and the way forward had what appeared to have been a relatively amicable parting of ways in August 2011.  Whilst in partnership, however, they appear to have been given a great deal of access to the technology, and despite not having actually seen inside the devices were apparently able to deduce what was going on from the readings of numerous probes and a spectroscopic analysis (by the University of Padua), and then set out to develop their own version of the technology, which they announced shortly after the breakup.

Now, whilst this certainly seems like an open-and-shut case of theft of intellectual property, so far Rossi and co. have made no moves to stop Defkalion.  I don’t know if they’ve made some unreported behind-the-scenes deal, or Rossi’s lawyers are waiting until Defkalion start making some money & then will start asking for a cut, or if Rossi thinks that they will be dealing with different markets and there’s enough money for everyone, or if they just don’t care & want the technology to get out there & believe that it’ll be harder for the vested interests to stop it if it’s on two different fronts.  Or some completely different issue.

Anyway, Defkalion made a device suitable for use in a home called the Hyperion (back when they were with Rossi, then improving on it afterwards), and on October 18th 2011 released reports showing that the device had been independently tested and was producing energy with a COP of at least 3:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2012/10/20/cold-fusion-gets-a-little-more-real/2/
Thanks to some ineffective blacking out of information, the “secret” tester was revealed to be Michael A. Nelson, a long-standing (30+ years) employee of NASA (although he was not doing this on behalf of NASA, who at that time & pretty much still now were only willing to concede that LENR based on electroweak interactions might just work, and that there certainly aren’t any working devices yet as they haven’t made one themselves).

In late November 2011 Defkalion then released an extensive technical specification of the Hyperion (and a souped-up version basically combining 9 Hyperions) which you can still get from 
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/11/praxen-defkalion-reveals-technical.html 
The specs are very detailed, with the size of the units, mass, amount of fuel used, recharge schedule, noise produced, discussion of a built-in fail-safe that would cause the device to safely (without leaking radiation) self-destruct if badly damaged etc etc.  Some of the most interesting stats are an output of 5-11kW of heat for the base Hyperion unit at a COP of better than 25, with a maximum electrical consumption of 200W to run the device, with “refuelling” only required twice per year.

A few days later Defkalion “went dark” and stayed that way for over a year; they shut down the web site & pulled all the information they could off the internet (although thanks to archiving and coverage by other parties most of the information remained if you knew where to look) and stopped responding to requests for information.  It turns out the reason for this was that they wanted to focus on building the business & ignore the increasingly more frequent calls from media and interested parties, and were also having issues getting the business going.  Defkalion started in Greece, and thanks to the GFC (and the general capabilities of the Greek government) were having lots of issues getting their factories built, permits issued, etc.  They eventually gave up in disgust and sent representatives to a number of countries, and whilst Turkey was an early front-runner the Canadian government offered not only very generous support to set up a company in their country (providing $3 for every $1 Defkalion spend) and easy access to parts and materials, but also guaranteed access to their national energy laboratories and Universities for further research.

The move (to Vancouver) obviously took some time, but then they really burst back into the (limited) public awareness in December 2012 with an interview with the Greek newpaper (To Vima) reporter Anastasios Kafantaris.  You can see a translated version of this at 
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8mt4mJOTGvBRnh4Y1h2aDJ6Q00/edit?pli=1

The reporter turned out to be well studied in science in general, and physics and LENR in particular, and asked some rather probing questions, which revealed the following interesting snippets of information:

• There are 3 catalysts used in the reaction; one of which appears to be Potassium Carbonate; the other two may include Barium and Strontium.
• Conditions inside the device allow for super-conductivity, despite the relatively high (340C) temperature for such conditions to occur, by forming a plasma in the device
• Magnetic monopoles (not recognised in conventional Western science) are formed within the device, and some manipulation of these helps with the reaction (speculated, not confirmed)
• The main secret to Defkalion’s fuel is a “special shaped” nano-crystalline powder, the details of which they are keeping secret (it may just be that using a nano-crystalline powder means a vastly increased surface area, so it would be much easier to achieve a consistent level of Hydrogen loading into the metal lattice, plus it would also be easier to form a uniform plasma with heating)
• Coulomb repulsion is overcome using Rydberg molecules (see below)

Defkalion also revealed that they had been approached by a vice-president of Exxon, who admitted that whilst they would have been “shut down” for coming up with such technology in the recent past, the oil majors now admit that fossil fuels are not a long-term investment, and will be quite happy to see this new technology to succeed, at which point they will “make them an offer they will not be able to resist” (hopefully monetarily rather than the usual persuasion of this type levelled by representatives of vested interests against inventors of technology that could bankrupt them).

The main item of interest in terms of explaining the science behind cold fusion is the use of Rydberg molecules.  As per 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rydberg_molecule
these are electrically excited molecules which have unusual properties, one of which is that the atoms are massively bigger than normal, thanks to the electrons having a much larger average “orbital radius” due to this excitation (kind of the opposite of the explanation according to Rossi’s colleague) – potentially thousands of times larger.  They are of great interest in the field of quantum computing, as per
http://phys.org/news192376064.html
especially because this increased size can result in interactions between atoms being up to a million times stronger than between regular atoms, and the use of photons to measure and trap (Rydberg) atoms won Serge Haroche the 2012 Nobel prize in Physics.

Like the planets in the solar system (only more so) this orbit can be more of an oval shape (or egg shape in three dimensions) than circular; when this is taken to extremes the atom varies between 2 states – for a Protium atom when the electron is very far away from the nucleus (aphelion for a planet) the atom appears to be a naked proton, but when the electron is close (perihelion for a planet) it can be so near that the atom appears to be a neutron, similar to Stremmenos’s idea of a “mini-atom” above.  As per above the atom in this state can then be captured by the Nickel nucleus, thus causing fusion resulting in a Copper atom and (due to electroweak interactions) energy, although Defkalion apparently make this interaction more likely with the use of “magnetic fields and pressure”.

Defkalion also say that not only Copper (Nickel +1 proton) but Zinc (Copper +1 proton) is formed in this fashion, and that some nucleosynthesis also occurs (e.g. by combination of 2+ of these Protium atoms in their ‘perihelion’ state to form a Helium isotope nucleus).

Defkalion’s explanation has the advantage of being based on conventionally accepted (albeit very new in some areas) scientific theories, and it would appear that they can probably back up their statement that they understand the technology better than Rossi does, and as such are able to produce more reliable and better controlled devices.

The next major release of information was not until April 2013 when Defkalion invited Sterling Allen (a long-time independent reporter on exotic energy technologies) to interview them as they’d promised to do over a year previously.  The interview of about an hour can be downloaded (or streamed) from 
http://pesn.com/2013/04/04/9602290_Defkalion-laying-low-preparing-to-make-a-big-splash/ 
and the page also includes a summary of points made within the interview.

Some of the major points of interest are:

• Defkalion have set up what appears to be a very good business model; whilst they retain ownership of the core technology, they have licensed out the applications to a number of existing companies who are already expert in their fields, to allow for a quick transition to market (or at least quicker than would be the case for developing it from scratch).
• Some of the applications include water desalination, thermal boilers, trains, shipping, mining, metal smelting, cement, and eventually small scale (cars, motorcycle) transport (cf. the “Mr Fusion” reactor from the “Back to the Future” series of movies), satellites
• They can retrofit existing power plants, including nuclear fission, allowing them to shave over 90% off the cost of centralised large-scale electricity production (e.g. to about 0.35 c/kWh)
• The home unit (i.e. Hyperion) would have a running cost of less than $600/year for a 55 square home (about double the size of a normal home).  This would be for both heat (water, space heating) and electricity (and also cooling for areas which need it via heat pump technology).  The main cost is not the fuel but the labour involved in replacing the fuel (and presumably amortising the cost of the technological development over time).
• The COP increases over time (and as such is effectively meaningless), as the device is nearly self-powering after it gets to 180C (just needs a small pulse every 10-15 seconds); output temperature is 350-500C.  So the COP averages out at 5 over the first 24 hours, then would be close to 10 after the 2nd day, 15 the third, etc etc.
• The first major technology should go commercial in the 2nd quarter of 2014, but there will be a major demonstration of at least one prototype at NIWeek; a respected annual conference run by National Instruments, held over August 5-8 this year.  They will also be making a scientific presentation at the conference (unfortunately due to issues with getting certification for home use the Hyperion won’t be available for purchase until the end of 2014 or later).

One of the few applications that Defkalion are rolling out themselves is shipping, due to national interest; Greece has the largest merchant tanker fleet in the world, and one of the largest combined fleets of any type of naval vessel.  Defkalion are stripping out the bunkers of (very polluting) fuel oil from tankers along with their (kind of diesel) engines, and replacing them with what are effectively steam engines powered by their technology.  In addition to reducing both water and air pollution and increasing cargo space, this results in a ship that can sail the world for a year or more without refuelling, and at a vastly reduced cost – e.g. for a large cargo ship of about 20000 tonnes that would chew up $20000/fuel each day, with Defkalion’s technology this would be reduced to about $500 – i.e. a 97.5% reduction in price!  This would also have the flow-on effect of making e.g. Australian industry much more vulnerable to cheap imports from countries with cheap labour thanks to virtual slave-like conditions and wages.

Anyway, another report just came out recently from Jeane Manning; a “normal” reporter who in 1981 started discussing exotic energy technologies after witnessing one first-hand.  You can read it at
http://changingpower.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Defkalion-2-page-JM-Article-100-3.pdf
In addition to some history she found out the following in addition to the above:

• The fifth-generation (so-far; the sixth is near completion) Hyperion takes only a few minutes to reach operating temperature, rather than the hours the original unit did (and Rossi’s ECAT still apparently does)
• The Hyperion stops producing excess energy virtually instantly when the electrical currents that create the plasma are switched off (implying the radiation also ceases, unlike the 20 minutes required by the ECAT)
• Approximately 3g of powdered Nickel and 2L of hydrogen (which at NTP would be about 0.16g) will power the device for 6 months
• Defkalion’s offices are next-door to the UBC (University of British Columbia).  UBC are looking at, amongst other things, advanced ceramic composites that could be used within the Hyperion to make the device stronger and safer.
• Defkalion have also established research laboratories in Italy (Milan), Greece (Athens) and will soon be creating one in Brazil.
• Rather than rejecting unusual ideas from young scientists on the team they actually listen to everyone, a lesson a previous employer of mine would be well-advised to learn.  One of the crucial breakthroughs was made by a 23 year old.

So, to summarise, there is a great deal of evidence and third-party validations to support the technology of Cold Fusion (or LENR, or whatever you want to call it), the media in several countries in Europe are already covering it, some devices are already commercially available with many more to appear early next year.  And yet in the Western world the phenomena is virtually unknown, there is no discussion within the media, and the whole field is treated with disdain when it is mentioned at all within our leading Universities, journals and research institutions.  This incredibly short-sighted view has to change if we do not wish to become a technological back-water in the future.

As an aside, advanced as CF technology is (relatively speaking), Mehran T Keshe, an Iranian nuclear engineer, may very well have worked out the real fundamentals of how atoms are formed and how to directly manipulate them, allowing for devices a generation more advanced, that can basically produce energy from the quantum foam (zero point energy) that surrounds us (even in the depths of intergalactic space).  Such technology would also allow us to manipulate magnetic and gravitational fields with such precision as to create vehicles that can fly (and move through space) by opposing the gravitational field of the Earth (or Sun, etc), and accelerate at great speeds thanks to the ability to ignore inertia.  This also is a technology that “respected” scientists refuse to even discuss the possibility of in our research institutions, even whilst Keshe is offering the technology to every Government of the world (an offer which the US government is flatly refusing, and “encouraging” everyone else to refuse as well).

All scientists and interested parties should make their colleagues and others aware of developments in this field, and how such developments could free us from the burden of expensive centralised energy, and allow us to dramatically reduce pollution across the planet, as well as giving inexpensive access to what are considered to be first-world benefits to what are classed as second- and third-world countries.