A new energy source from nuclear fusion

A process (international patent publication N. WO 2009/125444 A1) capable of producing large amounts of energy by a nuclear fusion process between nickel and hydrogen, occurring below 1000 K, is described. Experimental values of the ratios between output and input energies obtained in a certain number of experiments are reported. The occurrence of the e¤ect is justi…ed on the basis of existing experimental and theoretical results. Measurements performed during the experiments allow to exclude neutron and gamma rays emissions. 1. Introduction It is well known that in chemical reactions, and more speci…cally in processes used to obtain energy, as for example oil, gas and carbon combustion, only some electronVolts (eV) can be obtained for every couple of atoms involved. This depends on the fact that binding energies of external atomic electrons are in the eV range. On the other hand, in nuclear transformations, the energy quantities that can be absorbed or released are of the order of mega-electronVolts (MeV) for every couple of nuclei involved in the process. As a consequence, for every given amount of energy obtained, the mass to be transformed by a nuclear process is about a millionth of that necessary for a combustion. It is a general rule, valid for all stable compounds, that the mass for a compound is lower than the total mass of all constituents. In such conditions, the mass-energy conservation principle guarantees stability against the spontaneous disintegration into the components. As a consequence, for the nuclei, the mass of every stable nucleus turns out to be lower than the sum of the masses of all its components (protons and neutrons). If we denote bymp andmn the mass values of free protons and neutrons, and by np and nn the numbers of protons and neutrons belonging to a given (stable) nucleus N, the nuclear stability is insured by the always positive di¤erence = npmp + nnmn mN (1)