Let me say that almost everyone concerned, other than Andrea Rossi himself - would be delighted if tritium had been found in the spent fuel of the HotCat. If tritium were found in proportion to thermal gain - this would explain the mechanism in accordance with Ed Storm's theory - and not only that: the ash would become a valuable by-product as well. It would make everything clearer and pave the road to commercialization.
However, aside from that - the best reason to think that that Rossi has it right this time, and has made a major breakthrough with the HotCat relates to his bombshell patent change to "bet the farm" on Ni-62. This comes into the tritium discussion through the back door, in a perverse way. There is no obvious reason why tritium would have any connection to Ni-62. It does not. Consequently, if tritium were proved to be responsible for the gain via proton fusion, then it would also indicate that Rossi "lost the farm," on his bet, since he would have little IP protection. I apologize to Ed for coming-off as unnecessarily derogatory of his theory as applied to Rossi's results, but it should be clear to all concerned that if Ed is correct, Andrea loses almost everything in the race to market by holding a worthless patent. Most of us are interesting in finding the scientific truth - regardless of who wins the pot-of-gold; but if tritium turns up, Rossi is toast in more ways than one, and there seems to be a bit of unfairness there. There are very different implications for framing a valid theory based around the one isotope. This starts with the realization that Rossi (possibly at the insistence of Focardi) did perform experiment with all of the various nickel isotopes, and out of that effort he is now convinced that he has found the one which is responsible: the smoking gun. This opens up a new avenue for understanding which may be more difficult, but not impossible to navigate. Maybe Rossi deserves some kind of penalty for his antics, but in the 'big picture' it also looks like he may have come around at the perfect time to revive a languishing technology. perhaps making the next "age of man" the Nickel Age. after all he is. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded <http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=L-4zfsy6rsM> &v=L-4zfsy6rsM Hope that is not overly dramatic. and . yes, there is the little problem of "not yet proved". but if it arrives soon, Rossi may insist that we start the Calendar over next January and call 2014 the year 1 AR. Jones
