Foreword: I gave Ric Werme permission to do this essay. I don’t have any doubt that the original Cold Fusion research was seriously flawed. That said, this recent new development using a different process is getting some interest, so let’s approach it skeptically to see what merit it has, if any. – Anthony
Cold fusion isn’t usual fare for WUWT, at best it’s not a focus here, at worst it’s sorry science, and we talk about that enough already. However, it never has died, and this week there’s news about it going commercial. Well, it won’t be available for a couple years or so, but the excitement comes from a device that takes 400 watts of electrical power in and produces 12,000 watts of heat out.
Most people regard cold fusion as a black eye on science. It’s credited with the advent of science by press release and its extraordinary claims were hard to reproduce. Yet, unlike the polywater fiasco of the 1970s, cold fusion has never been explained away and several experiments have been successfully reproduced. Neutrons, tritium, and other products kept some researchers working long after others had given up. Even muons (from Svensmark’s Chilling Stars) have been suggested as a catalyst. Everyone agrees that theoretical help would provide a lot of guidance, but for something that flies in the face of accepted theory, little help has come from that.
Grandiose claims of changing the world have been lowered to “show me something that replaces my water heater.” Attempts at scaling up the experiments that could be reproduced all failed. Even had they worked, a lot of systems used palladium. There’s not enough of that to change the world.
As media attention waned, the field stayed alive and new avenues explored. Some people active in the early days of Pons & Fleishman’s press conference are still tracking research, and research has continued around the world. There are publications and journals, and conferences and research by the US Navy. And controversy about a decision to not publish the proceedings of a recent conference.
The term “Cold Fusion” has been deprecated, as focus remains on generating heat, and heat to run a steam turbine efficiently is definitely not cold. Nor is it the 30 million degrees that “Hot Fusion” needs. The preferred terms now are LENR (Low Energy Nuclear Reactions) and CANR (Chemically Assisted Nuclear Reactions). I’ll call it cold fusion.
I keep a Google alert for news, and check in from time to time, and last week came across notice of a press conference about a cold fusion system that is going commercial. The reports beforehand and the reports afterward said little useful, but some details are making it out. Whatever is going on is interesting enough to pay attention to, and since WUWT has developed a good record for breaking news, it’s worth a post.
The bottom line is that Italian scientists Sergio Focardi and Andrea Rossi have a unit they claim takes in 400 watts of electricity and, with the assistance of nickel-hydrogen fusion, puts out 12 kilowatts of heat. Okay, that’s interesting and the power amplification doesn’t require some of the extremely careful calorimetry early experiments needed. The elements involved are affordable and if it works, things become interesting. (There are undisclosed “additives” to consider too.) The reactor is going commercial in the next few years, which may or may not mean it’s ready.
Several details have not been disclosed, but there will be a paper out on Monday. Dr. Rossi reports:
Yes, I confirm that Monday Jan 24 the Bologna University Report will be published on the Journal Of Nuclear Physics. I repeat that everybody will be allowed to use it in every kind of publication, online, paper, written, spoken, without need of any permission. It will be not put on it the copyright.
Major caveat – the Journal Of Nuclear Physics is Rossi’s blog. Peer review is:
All the articles published on the Journal Of Nuclear Physics are Peer Reviewed. The Peer Review of every paper is made by at least one University Physics Professor.
So it’s not like they’re getting published in Nature, Scientific American, or even a reputable journal. Still, it ought to be a welcome addition.
The mechanism involved is claimed to be fusion between nickel and hydrogen. This is a bit unusual, as the typical claims are for reactions involving deuterium (proton + one neutron) and tritium (proton + two neutrons) with the gas filtering into a palladium lattice. In this case, it’s reacting with the substrate.
Nickel has several isotopes that naturally occur, the belief is that all participate in the reactions. In http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/files/Rossi-Focardi_paper.pdf discusses finding copper, which has one more proton than nickel, and various isotopes that do not occur in natural nickel. It also observes that gamma radiation is not observed while the reactor was running. Comments in other articles make suggestions about why that is. Apparently they see a short burst of gamma waves when the apparatus is shutdown.
Rossi leaves several hints in his comments, e.g. instability when the pressure of the hydrogen is increased, including explosions. (The commercial unit is designed to need enough electrical power so it can be shut down reliably.)
The best summary of the calorimetry involved is by Jed Rothwell who has been involved since the early days. He notes:
The test run on January 14 lasted for 1 hour. After the first 30 minutes the outlet flow became dry steam. The outlet temperature reached 101°C. The enthalpy during the last 30 minutes can be computed very simply, based on the heat capacity of water (4.2 kJ/kgK) and heat of vaporization of water (2260 kJ/kg):
Mass of water 8.8 kg
Temperature change 87°C
Energy to bring water to 100°C: 87°C*4.2*8.8 kg = 3,216 kJ
Energy to vaporize 8.8 kg of water: 2260*8.8 = 19,888 kJ
Total: 23,107 kJ
Duration 30 minutes = 1800 seconds
Power 12,837 W, minus auxiliary power ~12 kW
There were two potential ways in which input power might have been measured incorrectly: heater power, and the hydrogen, which might have burned if air had been present in the cell.
The heater power was measured at 400 W. It could not have been much higher that this, because it is plugged into an ordinary wall socket, which cannot supply 12 kW. Even if a wall socket could supply 12 kW, the heater electric wire would burn.
During the test runs less than 0.1 g of hydrogen was consumed. 0.1 g of hydrogen is 0.1 mole, which makes 0.05 mole of water. The heat of formation of water is 286 kJ/mole, so if the hydrogen had been burned it would have produced less than 14.3 kJ.
What should we make of all this? In a skeptical group like this, some healthy skepticism is warranted. On the other hand, the energy release is impressive and very hard to explain chemically or as physical storage in a crystal lattice. It will be interesting to see how things develop.
anna v says:
January 25, 2011 at 9:26 am
We have a Greek proverb :”where you hear of many cherries take a small basket”.
In english they say “hold your horses”
I want to see experimental verification of this model.
Count me in. The easiest test I think is to measure abundance of 59Ni before and after a run. It is a radionuclide with a longish halflife (76,000 years), therefore it is extinct in terrestrial stuff but is supposed to be produced in the Focardi-Rossi device quite independent of the details behind the reaction. I am not an experimental nuclear physicist but I guess it can be done using an ordinary mass spectrometer. It would tell more than any amount of steam.
There’s a paper at Rossi’s blog written by Jacques Dufour (CNAM Laboratoire des sciences nucléaires) about the expected nuclear signatures in a “Rossi energy amplifier” and this one isotope stands out as an unmistakable fingerprint.
I can’t quite see why there’s no corresponding paper about what actually was found. Anyway, this aspect of the issue does not smell right.
But even if this Rossi is a fraudster (and unfortunately he looks like one), there still may be something to LENR (Low Energy Nuclear Reactions). If we venture as far as considering a true conspiracy theory, he may be payed by a hidden agent to induce budget cuttings worldwide for more promising lines of investigation via compromising the entire field once again.
As for checking neutron decays I can imagine it would not work because ultra cold neutrons could not make it to the point of decay due to the huge absorption cross section of the stuff around (even in thin films) at such low energies.
I think this calls for Keanu Reeves and his magic keyboard.
WOAH!
(See the movie “Chain Reaction”)
RockyRoad says:
January 25, 2011 at 11:45 am
But I thought LENR is about low energy Pd-D reactions induced by electric current. Rossi thing is apparently about medium energy Ni-H reactions, induced thermally, which allegedly produces “30+% Cu” in the sample “integrally bound to the amount of energy produced” from “pure Ni” and Ni “isotopes after the operations were substantially changed in percentage”. If someone is claiming something so epochal like this, not having analysis outputs at hand, not even half year later when asked again, it is a story-teller for me, and an “inventor’ only in the sense he invents the stuff up.
I would be glad if the CF research would lead to the commercialization, but what the potential investors to CF would do, if the Rossi’s blackbox/bluebox would show being a fraud?…
Anna V: “But even if this Rossi is a fraudster (and unfortunately he looks like one)”
One usual misconception is to think Andrea as a scientist. He is not and does not act like one, but an engineer although engineer who has Ph.D from engineering and sciences from University of Milan.
Also what helps me understand his behavior is that the amount of bull s**t Andrea has received from scientific community in form of public ridicule and funding cuts, must be enormous. Little wonder if he wants to do things by his own way, and do not want follow hypothetico-deductive scientific method.
Hypothetico-deductive science or falsificationism is odd method in its own right because 99% of progress in science due to generalizations made from careful gathering and examination of data. E.g. discovery of DNA double helix was plain induction and there was nothing that can be contributed to hypothetico-deductive science. And DNA double helix was indeed real science unlike some wild cosmological speculations that can be verified (i.e. falsified) only by indirect observations.
I have followed now almost week this thing and I think that Andrea is not a clever con artist, but he has a real thing there. Although there are still great uncertainties remaining, I think that I can bet 62 euros for that Ni-H LENR is a real thing!
tume says:
January 25, 2011 at 5:43 pm
Nope. LENR stands for Low Energy Nuclear Reactions. It isn’t bound to paladium cathodes immersed in heavy water, although a significant amount of research into LENR has come from that arrangement. There are many other possibilities–any element with an atomic weight below iron can be fused (any element above iron must be split). Paladium is simply used to pack neutrons closer together (from one theory, that is).
But let me comment on the “30+% copper” number that’s been bandied about. Obviously I’ve not communicated with anybody in Rossi’s group (not that they’d confide in me anyway), but I can see how such a figure could be arrived at, having done research on various opaque ores using electron microprobe analysis.
We’ve been told that the nickel exists as finely divided crystaline particles. Were I to analyze daughter products after operations, these particles would be mounted individually and examined for alteration of the metal grains. The probe would be able to detect changes in composition from nickel to copper, and I’m betting the copper would be located on the periphery of said metal grains, as that is where the reaction would most likely take place. Could some analyses indicate that 30% of some nickel grains had been converted to copper? Why not? I seriously doubt that 30% of the entire charge of nickle had been converted to copper, as that would indicte huge energy production. But from select nickel grains–and obviously enough to corroborate a nuclear transformation, I can accept it. And such numbers stick when discussion begins.
Chronon says:
January 25, 2011 at 5:53 pm
You erroneously quote the following as my statement:
“But even if this Rossi is a fraudster (and unfortunately he looks like one)”
Please be corrected. The quote is not mine but of
Berényi Péter says:
January 25, 2011 at 1:56 pm
I seldom attribute fraud where self delusion can be rampant.
Berényi Péter says:
January 25, 2011 at 1:56 pm
As for checking neutron decays I can imagine it would not work because ultra cold neutrons could not make it to the point of decay due to the huge absorption cross section of the stuff around (even in thin films) at such low energies.
Trust me, a neutron at rest even, will decay with a lifetime of some 800+ seconds into a proton, a neutrino, and a positron.
The positron can get out from the film, also its characteristic 0.5Mev gammas get out from the film.
If these are not detected in a simple nuclear experiment, then the mechanism proposed is not there.
Chronon :
January 25, 2011 at 5:53 pm
That quote is not mine. A previous post has been lost to spam I guess.
http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?p=395
Andrea Rossi
January 25th, 2011 at 2:40 PM
TODAY I RECEIVED A POST I LOST CLICKING ERRONEOUSLY, BUT I REMEMBER IT BECAUSE IMPORTANT AND I ANSWER ANYWAY. I APOLOGIZE WITH THE AUTHOR, WHOSE NAME I LOST.
HE SAID, SUBSTANTIALLY, THAT MAYBE THE COPPER WE FIND IN THE POWDERS WE ANALYZE AFTER THE OPERATION OF THE REACTOR CAN BE THE COPPER IMPURITIES CONTAINED IN THE NICKEL POWDERS WE UTILIZE.
THE ANSWER IS: THE AMOUNT OF COPPER WE FIND AFTER 6 MONTHS OF OPERATION IS OF ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE MORE THAT THE IMPURITIES IN THE 99.9999 Ni WE USE.
WARM REGARDS,
A.R.
anna v says:
January 25, 2011 at 10:13 pm
“Trust me, a neutron at rest even, will decay with a lifetime of some 800+ seconds into a proton, a neutrino, and a positron.
The positron can get out from the film, also its characteristic 0.5Mev gammas get out from the film.”
Er… no! Neutrons decay into a proton, a neutrino and an electron. The decay products will have only the excess energy of the original heavy electrons above the reaction threshhold; since they are formed in a deep energy well (which is how the original electrons got to be heavy), they will have insufficient energy to escape to infinity, unless the neutrons themselves have already exited the well. This they cannot do, without an active pumping mechanism, or we’d have a perpetual motion machine; the neutrons would have to remain virtual, and thus relatively short range.
But in this model even real neutrons would almost all be absorbed before having a chance to decay (in proportion to the respective reaction times to decay lifetime).
Paul Birch says:
January 26, 2011 at 3:38 am
You are right, I must be checking everything after all. The decay will be proton electron antineutrino,( I think because of lepton number conservation), but the electron will have a characteristic three body spectrum .
The momentum of the electron peaks at 40 or so KeV and can be measured. Spectra are on slide 17.
If the neutron is captured in the crystal lattice it will still decay ( beta decays of nuclei) and the energy comes from the mass difference between proton (938.272MeV/c^2) and neutron(939.65MeV/c^2)), it does not need external energy.
In a thin film,if the neutrons are seen, it will prove the mechanism exists.
After all the capture crossection cannot be infinite because the thing would explode.
anna v says:
January 26, 2011 at 12:18 pm
“You are right, I must be checking everything after all. The decay will be proton electron antineutrino,( I think because of lepton number conservation), but the electron will have a characteristic three body spectrum .
The momentum of the electron peaks at 40 or so KeV and can be measured. Spectra are on slide 17.”
It will only have a simple three body spectrum if momentum cannot be transferred to the lattice (which in this model it probably can) and if the particle masses are equal to their free space values (though the model requires them to be renormalised due to the intense field, with the electron masses in particular being increased by a factor~5). Also, the electron energies at infinity will be reduced (by amounts ~700keV) because in this model they are climbing out of a potential well of that sort of depth (which in practice would mean that they cannot escape at all). This is why I keep pointing out that the neutrons should be virtual, not real, unless they are somehow gaining enough energy to make up the deficit from the imposed excitation.
“If the neutron is captured in the crystal lattice it will still decay ( beta decays of nuclei) and the energy comes from the mass difference between proton (938.272MeV/c^2) and neutron(939.65MeV/c^2)), it does not need external energy.”
Only if it is a real neutron (does not already have an energy deficit), and only if the electrons produced by its decay within the lattice are not heavy (do not require in excess of 0.5Mev for their production).
“In a thin film,if the neutrons are seen, it will prove the mechanism exists.”
Not really, since they might be generated by other mechanisms. Nor would a failure to detect them disprove the mechanism (for the reasons I have previously mentioned).
“After all the capture crossection cannot be infinite because the thing would explode.”
I don’t understand your argument here. One would expect the rate-limiting step to be the production of these neutrons (which presumably depletes the intense field that facilitates their anomalous creation); their capture could be arbitrarily fast. I’m guessing a bit here, but from the description I would expect any ULM neutrons to be mopped up in times less than or of order a nanosecond (perhaps much less), so only ~1 in 10^12 would survive long enough to decay conventionally. This would be consistent with the very low neutron fluxes found in these experiments (where neutrons are detected at all).
Paul Birch says:
January 26, 2011 at 1:35 pm
“In a thin film,if the neutrons are seen, it will prove the mechanism exists.”
Not really, since they might be generated by other mechanisms.
True, but any neutron creation would be a total surprise anyway. More experiments would be needed.
What do you think of this explanation for the original proposal, i.e. Ni58 to Cu60?
Re: Paul Birch says:
January 26, 2011 at 1:35 pm
I think you are right about the neutron thing. It may not be easy to directly detect them.
However, Focardi & Rossi do report some experimental results. If we dismiss their theoretical speculation about proton capture through the Coulomb barrier of Ni isotopes facilitated by an ill-specified “electron screening” process and stick with the Widom-Larsen theory of ultra cold neutrons, we may get into trouble.
Curiously enough they used to have a pdf version of the paper at Rossi’s blogsite: http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/files/Rossi-Focardi_paper.pdf, which is not identical to the blog text referenced above. It looks like the pdf version is not available anymore (“Forbidden – You don’t have permission to access /files/Rossi-Focardi_paper.pdf on this server.”), however, I have a copy of it locally (which I may consider putting on the web, provided copyright issues do not get in the way).
It is in this version they state: “In our case, the proton-electron system might be shielded by the nuclear Coulomb potential, with the possibility of penetrating the Coulomb barrier.” (Section “3. Theoretical interpretation” is missing from the blog text.)
Anyway, they also claim “In the long period sample, the mass analysis showed the presence of three peaks in the mass region 63-65 a.m.u. which correspond respectively to Cu63, elements (Ni64 and Zn65) deriving from Cu64 decay and Cu65. These allowed us the determination of the ratio Cu63/Cu65=1,6 different from the value (2,24) relative to the copper isotopic natural composition.”
That is, they claim after an experimental run copper is found in the sample with an unnatural isotopic composition. They also claim elsewhere original copper contamination of nickel of was extremely low.
Natural isotopic composition of copper is 69.17% 63Cu & 30.83% 65Cu. Their claim is equivalent to 61.54% 63Cu & 38.46% 65Cu.
Let’s suppose the “long period” they are talking about is the one between 5 March 2009 & 26 April 2009. It is 52 days, about 4.5 million seconds. If we go with the neutron capture pathway, copper can only be produced by beta decay of the corresponding nickel isotopes.
63Ni->63Cu+e+neutrino (halflife: 100.1y – 3.16×10^9 sec)
65Ni->65Cu+e+neutrino (halflife: 2.5172h – 9.06&time;10^3 sec)
63Ni & 65Ni are of course not stable isotopes, they can only be produced from the stable isotopes 62Ni & 64Ni by neutron capture in the “energy amplifier” device.
62Ni+n->63Ni+neutrino
64Ni+n->65Ni+neutrino
Natural abundance of these nickel isotopes is as follows: 3.634% 62Ni & 0.926% 64Ni. That is, there is 3.92 times more of the lighter isotope than the heavier one.
Let’s suppose further the neutron capture cross section of the two stable nickel isotopes above is the same. In this case the production ratio of 63Ni & 65Ni is also 3.92:1. However, halflife of 63Ni is vastly longer than that of 65Ni, so one would expect much more 65Cu in the waste product than 63Cu on timescales substantially shorter than a century.
There are a couple of possibilities to resolve this issue, including much higher initial copper contamination than claimed, but data supplied so far by the authors is insufficient to perform this task.
They do talk about an upcoming paper in arXiv.org: “More details on this analysis will be given in a successive paper [8] A. Carnera, S. Focardi, A. Rossi, to be published on Arxiv”, but it is not there yet, although almost a year has passed since the publication of their paper referenced above on 22 March 2010.
anna v says:
January 26, 2011 at 11:45 pm
“True, but any neutron creation would be a total surprise anyway. More experiments would be needed.”
Excess neutrons (at very low mean fluxes) have been reported in some LENR experiments (though not these Rossi ones). It has been suggested that these may actually result from small bursts of hot fusion due to transient high energy discharges from sudden fractures in the substrate, and similar phenomena.
“What do you think of this explanation for the original proposal, i.e. Ni58 to Cu60?”
I’m afraid it seems gibberish to me. Charitably, one might blame it on language problems. In order for the atoms to be shrunk sufficiently to permit adequate tunneling through the Coulomb barrier, the electrons would have to be extremely massive (say of order the muon mass – since replacing them by muons is one well known method of achieving fusion). However, the Widom-Larsen theory only requires an electron mass a few times its normal rest value (and even that requires enormous field strengths), which wouldn’t shrink the atoms anything like enough. Neutron production + capture would always seem orders of magnitude easier than direct fusion. In any case, it’s not the size of atoms that counts, but the size of molecules or the bond lengths; that is, the separation between the actual nuclei we wish to fuse. It is conceivable that delocalising electrons of high effective mass could enhance bond strengths, increase the effective number of bonds between the relevant atoms, and thus reduce nuclear separations in the required way; however, this doesn’t seem to be what is being suggested here.
Berényi Péter says:
January 27, 2011 at 1:54 am
“If we … stick with the Widom-Larsen theory of ultra cold neutrons, we may get into trouble.
… If we go with the neutron capture pathway, copper can only be produced by beta decay of the corresponding nickel isotopes.
63Ni->63Cu+e+neutrino (halflife: 100.1y – 3.16×10^9 sec)
65Ni->65Cu+e+neutrino (halflife: 2.5172h – 9.06&time;10^3 sec)”
I think you’ve missed a trick here. These copper isotopes can also be produced by neutron capture from lighter ones, by routes such as:
58Ni+n->59Cu+e, 59Cu+n->60Cu, 60Cu+n->61Cu, 61Cu+n->62Cu, 62Cu+n->63Cu
59Ni+n->60Cu+e …, 60Ni+n->61Cu+e …, …
There will also be alpha decays back to Fe and Co, and neutron captures back up again from there.
I would also say that the assumption of equal reaction cross-sections for the various isotopes seems most unlikely to be correct. We could easily see orders of magnitude difference between them.
Brian Josephson (Nobel prize in 1973) took part in this thread
for information purposes, his famous ‘pathological belief’ 2004 talk where he discusses cold fusion quite a lot :
http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/JosephsonBpathologic.pdf
The more I read about Rossi & Focardi the more intriguing their announcement is.
I’d not seen Dr. Josephson’s ‘pathologic’ paper before, but from my having earned degrees in physics and electrical engineering in the ’70’s and ’80’s, his name and work is known to me and his past statements regarding ‘cold fusion’ research results certainly makes it easier to be open minded going forward.
Paul Birch says:
January 27, 2011 at 4:03 am
I think you’ve missed a trick here. These copper isotopes can also be produced by neutron capture from lighter ones, by routes such as:
58Ni+n->59Cu+e […]
Does a reaction like 58Ni+n->59Cu+e(+neutrino) occur with substantial probability? One would think adding a neutron to 58Ni would simply produce 59Ni (subsequently decaying to 59Co with a halflife of some 76,000 years). I can see no copper here. Am I missing something?
Berényi Péter :
January 28, 2011 at 3:15 am
In the Rossi proposal it is
58Ni +p –> 59Cu
Where they hand wave that the proton is shielded and gets close to the nucleus.
In a shell model, the 58Ni in the potential well will have a “resonance” with a proton at the energy value of 59Cu, but how this is visualized is a mystery.
The proton can be sitting in the center of the face of a cubic crystal but whether the collective lattice energy can give it a probability (collective energy) to access the resonance is an unknown point.
Berényi Péter says:
January 28, 2011 at 3:15 am
“Does a reaction like 58Ni+n->59Cu+e(+neutrino) occur with substantial probability? One would think adding a neutron to 58Ni would simply produce 59Ni (subsequently decaying to 59Co with a halflife of some 76,000 years). I can see no copper here. Am I missing something?”
Since we don’t understand the basic mechanism, who knows what the relative reaction probabilities might be? However, in general terms, reactions that produce two or more particles are easier than those that only produce a single nuclide (because of energy and momentum conservation). So even when we seem to see eg 58Ni+n->59Ni, we might actually have something like 58Ni+n->59Cu+e shortly followed by 59Cu->59Ni+positron (which might not necessarily be a real positron emitted to infinity), or the electron capture variant 59Cu+e->59Ni; we would thus have the possibility of the 59Cu picking up another neutron before it decays back to nickel. (I’m ignoring the neutrinos/antineutrinos).
anna v says:
January 28, 2011 at 7:47 am
58Ni +p –> 59Cu
Where they hand wave that the proton is shielded and gets close to the nucleus.
I know Focardi & Rossi are pushing the proton capture theory, but that one looks even more weird than the W-L picture. I am just trying to establish here if their experimental findings are consistent with the latter one or the Widom-Larsen theory can be considered having been falsified (at least as a general explanation for LENR phenomena).
However, to do that I am afraid one would need a much better description of the experimental results than the one they’ve published. A most careful analysis of initial copper contamination is especially wanted.
Dr. Edmund Storms, a pioneer in LENR:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMpLX8478Y8&w=480&h=390]
.
There is a review paper by Dr. Storms.
Naturwissenschaften, Volume 97, Number 10, 861-881
DOI: 10.1007/s00114-010-0711-x
Status of cold fusion (2010)
Edmund Storms
A preprint is available at LENR-CANR.org.
Dr. Storms writes (on page 28 of his review paper):
“Addition of neutrons, as several authors have suggested (Fisher 2007; Kozima 2000; Widom and Larsen 2006), is not consistent with observation because long chains of beta decay must occur after multiple neutron addition before the observed elements are formed. The required delay in producing the final stable element and resulting radioactivity are not observed.”
That is, according to him, the Widom-Larsen theory is dismissed. Although he also seems to stick with the notion of deuterium primacy over protons, which is inconsistent with the Focardi-Rossi process.
Unfortunately at the end of the paper he can’t resist the temptation to insert some distasteful remarks about the looming climate disaster.
“At the very least, this energy may offer a solution to the global warming problem. […] In a rational world and in the face of growing ecological disaster from using carbon-based fuels, every possible energy source would be explored, no matter how unlikely.”