Jones, while I feel the task to replicate Rossi would be very difficult, I do not believe it is impossible. Rossi was able to get lucky so I feel my chances are good given the quality of the people in this collective. And given that we have already narrrowed down many of the factors, like powder size, degassing procedures, catalysts and other things, I feel that it would not take that long to replicate Rossi. Besides, I'm still young and semi-retired and I've got nothing else to do. This R&D seems like a worthwhile endeavor. Even If I do not achieve a breakthrough, it is still worth it in keeping me from getting bored and end up doing something useless with my time.
And I am not a stranger to lab research myself as I have done experiments of significant complexity during my graduate years. You're the physicist, tell us engineers what to do and what procedure to use, what equipment to use based on your current understanding. Like I said, your insight will go a long ways in helping set the research direction. Keep the ideas and the theoritical speculations coming. They may seem irrelevant but builders like us are gaining a lot of insights from it. But anyways, I am taking a lot of precautions. My reactor will be placed inside a 4" pipe that will act as a first blast shield, then put the set up in a corner behind my vacuum pump, then place some 3/8" steel plates, then place it in a blast chamber with 8" concrete walls. The concrete wall will act as a radiation shield and a blast shield. I suspect my blast chamber will withstand a stick of dynamite. And since my reactor is small, I do not expect a massive and devastating explosion, although I am hoping for an explosion so that I will know I have identified the catalyst.
