The last piece of the puzzle

Like everybody else, it seems, I was skeptical of "cold fusion". After having investigated it enough over the last several weeks, I have reached about 90% level of being convinced that it is real. To me, 90% is good enough. That leaves some room for error, but not too big of one.

First of all, before I go too much further, my word doesn't carry much weight. I'm not a professional in the field, much less an authority. I am writing from the personal point of view. These are my own opinions, independently reached, for what that is worth.

Now, as I wrote before, there seems to me to be two conditions for fusion. One, is a sufficient energy level. Two, there needs to be a confinement strategy. Having enough energy alone isn't enough. Two atoms must be close enough so that the opportunity exists for fusion to take place. Hence, a confinement strategy. In stars, this is accomplished by gravity. Man made fusion strategies utilize different matter interaction forces in order to obtain sufficient confinement.

At this point of the search for fusion energy, the confinement methods appear to be insufficient. The confinement strategy I'm thinking of doesn't involve the fundamental interactions, so far as I know. If it does, it may be electromagnetism at the nanoscale.

Now, allow me to quote from Mallove's Fire from Ice

... Research was aimed at achieving in any of a number of competing configurations of magnetic bottles, a combination of temperature, density, and duration that would make hot fusion work. A plasma with a density of 3 x 10 ^ 14 particles per cubic centimeter would have to be held for one second at about 100 million degrees K to reach energy breakeven.

One mole of particles is 6.02 x 10 ^ 23.   Thus, the amount of particles needed to be energized at one time ( 1 second ) would be the electron volt potential spread out over the percentage of 1 mole of particles mentioned in the above quote.   This would be (3 x 10 ^ 14)  x 10^ 4 electron volts per atom.  Note: 10,000 electron volts is equivalent to 100,000,000 degrees Kelvin.   That would be 3 x 10 ^ 18 eV for the mass in question.   Since the calculation of conversion of electron volts to watts from the link ( in bold above) we obtain:

1 electron volts =  1.6 x 10 ^-19 joules, which equals only 1.6 x 10^-19 watts

substituting 1.6 x 10 ^ -19 watts for eV above gives 3x10^18 x 1.6 x10^-19 watts for all the particles collectively.   For the entire mass, that's 4.8 x 10 ^-1 watts for each second.  Not that much energy for what is a small mass.

The key is that it must all be in one spot at one time.  The way to do that is with a confinement strategy as mentioned above.  However, instead of a magnetic bottle, what if the lattice structure of atoms of a solid substance -such as palladium or nickel- was substituted?  The volume constraint should be easy enough.

Now 3 x 10 ^ 14 particles are needed to be confined in a cubic centimeter in a second.  In molar quantity, that would be 3x10^14 divided by 6.02 x 10^23 particles in a mole of any substance.  For light hydrogen, the atomic weight is approx 1 g per mole.  That would therefore be less than a billionth of a gram.  But that's not the problem.  The problem is that for any gas at standard pressure, the molar quantity of atoms take up a much larger volume.  Hence, we need to confine the gas.

For nickel, multiply by 60 grams per mole atomic weight, and the number is still small.  The volume required is tiny in terms of the solid nickel.  Billionths of a gram of nickel?  Not much, clearly.  If the hydrogen gets caught up in the nickel's solid structure, confinement is obtained.  If the required energy is applied over the duration shown above, fusion is possible.  The confinement makes the probability of fusion feasible, by definition above.

Admittedly, this is from an amateur.  There could be errors.  This is my personal view.  Anybody is welcome to make a comment.  I throw it open for discussion.  Tell me I'm wrong.  I'm all ears.