Discovery of the Cold Fusion Phenomenon: Development of Solid State-Nuclear Physics and the Energy Crisis in the 21st Century, by Hideo Kozima
Reviewed by Dieter Britz

Kozima is associated in the cold fusion area with his TNCF (trapped neutron catalyzed fusion) theory, and this book focusses on the theory. Kozima was one of the first to attempt a replication of the FPH paper, immediately he received a telefaxed preprint of the FPH89 and the Jones group's paper in 1989. He was fortunate also to get results at the first attempt, in the form of neutrons. He soon realised that the process(es) are/were stochastic, and therefore difficult to repeat at will. The early history, starting with Paneth & Peters in 1926, is given, then moving on to Fleischmann and Pons and on from there. The major groups and their findings/claims are gone through, problem areas are identified, such as the "riddles of cold fusion", summarised succintly at the end of chapter 9. Then in chapter 11, TNCF is outlined and all the riddles treated with the theory. A single parameter, the density of trapped neutrons in the reaction space, is required to quantitatively account for a large number of observations. The neutrons come initially from cosmic infall, later from the reactions leading on from the initial reactions of neutrons with various species. There is at last a table of 53 cases, where TNCF explains observations reasonably well. Other proposed theories are then also described, critically. There are hundreds of references including close to 100 by the author himself.