I wrote:
> As far as I know, the first person to advocate the use of nickel was > Martin Fleischmann, FRS. The reason he was interested is obvious. Early on he estimated how much energy can be produced with palladium, given the total world stocks and mining output. as I recall he determined that palladium can only produce about a third of the energy we need. Perhaps it was more . . . I do not recall. Anyway, it wasn't enough. So he was hoping to find another host metal. As I recall even in 1989 he said people should look at Ni. After hearing his analysis, I investigated how much palladium there is in the world and what the maximum power density can be. I did a back-of-the-envelope estimate based on the temperatures in catalytic converters, and the amount of thin-film palladium they use. I too concluded that there would not be be enough palladium to produce all of the energy needed, and the best use of palladium would be in baseline central electric power generators, where the duty cycle is close to 100%, and all of the palladium can be recycled. If the palladium transmutes into something else, all bets are off. You could not produce a significant fraction of the world's energy in that case. I discussed all this in chapter 2 of the book. Very early on, many people including me had our fingers crossed hoping that Ni or Ti could be used instead of Pd. I do not recall a single instance of anyone making fun of the concept or dismissing results. People such as McKubre and I felt pessimistic about it because Srinivasan and others could not replicate. - Jed
