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.
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