LENR, is it plausible? part II

From Widom-Larsen's paper

For our example,let us suppose that an initial concentration of lithium very near a suitable metallic hydride surface is employed to impose a substantial chemical potential difference across the hydride surface. In such a case, the existence of weak interaction produced surface neutrons allows for the following chain of reactions

⁶₃Li+n→⁷₃Li ,
⁷₃Li+n→⁸₃Li ,
⁸₃Li →⁸₄Be+ e−+¯νe ,
⁸₄Be →⁴₂He+⁴₂He . (30)

It appears that if the catalyst in Rossi's black box is lithium, then we may have a plausible scenario for energy production.  This scenario ends up with the appearance of deuterium fusion, but is not.  It provides a plausible scenario for the appearance of cold fusion, but would actually be LENR.

The production of slow neutrons is no small feat.  Presumably, the suitable metallic hydride somehow enables this production.

However, one of the reaction products in the above chain is helium.  No helium production has been reported in the E-cat.

Let's return to vanadium.   Let's look at its concentration in nature, its proclivity toward neutron absorption, and the energy production from beta decay:

Almost all vanadium naturally found is vanadium 51, it tends to be a good neutron absorber

It isn't too expensive, nor too rare to find

vanadium neutron absorption leads to chromium transmutation, with stable isotopes, chromium is not a good neutron absorber

A respectable amount of energy is formed

 The amount of energy formed from this is not as large as lithium.  Is there an advantage?  I could look into that later.  As for now, you can have more than one option for LENR.  But I still don't think this explains Rossi's E-cat.

One possibility is that he does use vanadium, and that is his secret.  Why?  Could it explain other anomalies in the reporting of the E-cat?  If helium is formed, the gas has to be vented.  Perhaps Rossi doesn't want that to happen, as it may give up the game.  If chromium is formed, it is a solid, and won't need to be vented.  But it can be detected when examining the "ash".  What if Rossi is hiding the real ash, and substituting fake ash so as to preserve his secret?  If chromium is being produced by the E-cat, that could be a way to hide the secret.