Comments on "A new look at low-energy nuclear reaction research".

Cold fusion researchers have accumulated a large body of anomalous results over the last 20 years that they claim proves a new, mysterious nuclear reaction is active in systems they study. Krivit and Marwan (J. Environ. Monit., 2009, 11, 1731) give a brief and wholly positive view of this body of research. Unfortunately, cold fusion researchers routinely ignore conventional explanations of their observations, and claim much greater than the real accuracy and precision for their techniques. This paper attempts to equally briefly address those aspects of the field with the intent of providing a balanced view of the field, and to establish some criteria for subsequent publications in this arena.

Diffusion of H through Pd-Ag alloys (423-523 K).

H diffusion constants have been determined from steady-state fluxes through Pd-Ag alloy membranes. The upstream side is maintained at a nearly constant pup (and consequently at a nearly constant rup=H/(Pd(1-x)Agx)) atom ratio, whereas the downstream side is at pH2 approximately 0 (rdown=0) (423-523 K). It is shown that the permeability is a maximum for atom fraction Ag, XAg=0.23 (423-523 K) at both pup=20.3 and 50.6 kPa. DH has been determined for some Pd-Ag alloys as a function of r in the dilute region, and it decreases with r even at small H contents for alloys with XAg<0.35. The concentration dependence of DH(cH) has been determined for the Pd0.77Ag0.23 alloy over a large concentration range. The effect of nonideality on DH(r) and ED(r) has been systematically determined as a function of XAg, where XAg is the atom fraction of Ag in the H-free alloy. (dDH/dr) increases with XAg up to XAg=0.35 and then changes from negative to positive at approximately 0.35. The activation energies for diffusion, ED(r), have been determined as a function of H content in the dilute range for several Pd-Ag alloy membranes, and the conversion to concentration-independent E*D values has been carried out in several different ways.