It is energetically true that 7Li + p --> alpha + alpha is a net exothermic reaction, whether or not you posit that the (energetically disallowed) 8Be is an intermediate state. I guess Rossi is finally capable of looking up the relevant three numbers in a reliable source.
However, not being a nuclear physicist (or, apparently, talking to nuclear physicists) he didn't get around to realizing that this is a familiar reaction. Mr. Rossi is not the first person to think about it, so it's unusually easy to recognize the extent to which he's making stuff up out of thin air.
First: his stick-and-ball diagrams are ... um ... not standard. It appears that they were invented by Cook, who is some sort of psychologist or computer scientist or something, and it is self-published (or what passes for self-publishing in the modern predatory-publishing world), and recognized nowhere. That said, as far as I can tell, the intention is to graphically keep track of a certain set of quantum numbers. However, insofar as what they're actually doing is looking up some (standard) angular-momentum assignments and selection rules, then drawing colorful pictures of them, I'm not particularly bothered.
OK, so let's look at the "result."
First, they posit that (a) the e-cat is mysteriously full of an excited state of 7Li (we'd call it 7Li(1/2-), or 7Li*, depending on how specific we're being) instead of the ground state; they say (b) this makes sense because it's such an unusually low-lying excited state. They suggest (c) there's a huge fusion cross section p + 7Li(1/2-) --> alpha alpha, and that (d) all together this explains how the e-cat gets nuclear power without emitting gamma rays, but (e) it doesn't help make the nickel transmutations make sense but never mind.
This is all gibberish. (Well, not (e)).
(In case anyone cares.)
However, not being a nuclear physicist (or, apparently, talking to nuclear physicists) he didn't get around to realizing that this is a familiar reaction. Mr. Rossi is not the first person to think about it, so it's unusually easy to recognize the extent to which he's making stuff up out of thin air.
First: his stick-and-ball diagrams are ... um ... not standard. It appears that they were invented by Cook, who is some sort of psychologist or computer scientist or something, and it is self-published (or what passes for self-publishing in the modern predatory-publishing world), and recognized nowhere. That said, as far as I can tell, the intention is to graphically keep track of a certain set of quantum numbers. However, insofar as what they're actually doing is looking up some (standard) angular-momentum assignments and selection rules, then drawing colorful pictures of them, I'm not particularly bothered.
OK, so let's look at the "result."
First, they posit that (a) the e-cat is mysteriously full of an excited state of 7Li (we'd call it 7Li(1/2-), or 7Li*, depending on how specific we're being) instead of the ground state; they say (b) this makes sense because it's such an unusually low-lying excited state. They suggest (c) there's a huge fusion cross section p + 7Li(1/2-) --> alpha alpha, and that (d) all together this explains how the e-cat gets nuclear power without emitting gamma rays, but (e) it doesn't help make the nickel transmutations make sense but never mind.
This is all gibberish. (Well, not (e)).
- There's lithium in an excited state in your system? Listen, guys: the idea "hey, our magic powder has spontaneously excited a nucleus by 477 keV" is your law-of-physics violating step here. 7Li(1/2-) cannot be created out of 7Li by any chemical or thermal reaction. It's a hugely endothermic process, requiring a lot of extra energy to be transported to a single nucleus. It's just as impossible as all of the other "horribly endothermic nuclear reaction happens spontaneously, la la" that have been proposed over the years.
My guess is that Rossi didn't notice what he was doing here. He hid his impossible step in one throwaway line ("start with 7Li(1/2-)") and spend the rest of his paper talking about all the clever things he can do with all this 7Li(1/2-) now that he has it. - No, 7Li(1/2-) is not unusually low-lying. I mean, sort of? A bit towards the low end but nothing to write home about?
- You know what happens to 7Li(1/2-) in the real world? It doesn't sit around in Italian powders waiting for protons to wander past. Instead, it decays to 7Li ground state by emitting a gamma ray. It takes something like 10 femtoseconds. Not a great thing to suggest to have sitting around in the special system you're inventing that can't emit any gamma rays. 7Li(1/2-) is a gamma emitter. 7Li(1/2-) bombarded by protons is also a gamma emitter.
- We know what the 7Li fusion cross sections are. Nowadays, everyone knows about it because it's one of the standard reactions of nuclear astrophysics, it's how the Sun destroyed its primordial 7Li stockpile. The funny thing is this is the first accelerator nuclear reaction ever run, literally. p + 7Li --> alpha + alpha was the first reaction observed by high-voltage-pioneers Crockroft and Walton.
Nature 129, 242-242 (13 February 1932)
Drat the luck! You try to pick a nice, obscure nuclear reaction you can lie about with no one noticing, and you accidentally pick the longest-studied nuclear reaction on Earth.
Now, I wouldn't have minded if Rossi's cross-section guesswork had been true---if, by sheer luck, or by virtue of those graphs keeping a correct account of selection-rules, maybe it is true that 6Li(p,alpha) is rarer than 7Li(p,alpha) is rarer than 7Li*(p,alpha), and all three have been measured.
Burcham and McCauley 1958 measured the 7Li(p,alpha) and 7Li*(p,alpha) reaction rates---the former both forwards and backwards, the latter backwards only. Contra Rossi's stick-and-ball hopes, both cross sections are about the same. Oops.
doi:10.1016/0029-5582(58)90012-9
Also, it's known in stellar physics---I will look up the lab cross sections later---that 6Li is actually burned faster than 7Li, i.e. the low-energy cross sections are higher. Rossi was hoping to explain why his reactor (supposedly) consumed 7Li faster than 6Li. Oops again.
- Finally, contra Rossi's hope that 7Li(p,alpha) could be a totally-gamma-ray-free reaction ... well, that's sorta true at first order. It's better than anything else he's suggested on that front. But it's still not true. Bombarding metallic Ni with alphas---which is what will happen if you do this in a box of nickel powder---causes particle-induced x-ray emission, i.e. an extremely large flux of 7.8 keV x-rays at the nickel K-edge. Enough, I'm pretty sure, to kill everyone in the room with an E-cat even after the majority of them have been stopped by shielding.
(In case anyone cares.)
