Beside neutrons, there is another less traveled road to the initiation of nuclear reactions that has been under the radar in the nuclear community.
Many years ago, it was shown that high energy lasers could induce fission and fusion if the power of the laser pulse was strong enough
http://physics.aps.org/story/v5/st3
Photo induced nuclear reactions begin to occur when the power density of the infrared light reached just under 10^^20 W/cm2.
Since the time of unaided photo nuclear reactions were demonstrated at the turn of this century, it has been shown that gold nano-particles used as nano-lenses can amplify and concentrate infrared light by 9 orders of magnitudes(Silver by 11). This is experimentally verified performance that comes out of the science of Nanoplasmonics.
Now with gold Nano-particles, it is logical to expect nuclear reactions will occur when laser light with an intensity of 10^^10 W/cm2 to 10^^12 W/cm2 will occur. If you are interested, experimental results have been published as verification. That is 9 orders of magnitude less than unaided photo irradiation. Experiments using gold nano-particles in water suspension irradiated by laser light of this reduced level of intensity do in fact occur.
Since then, experimentally verified light amplification by nano-structures has been observed to reach a top end of 10 to the 15 power.
The idea is that if more and more nano-particle infrared photo concentration is applied to a system, then less and less infrared photon input energy will produce a nuclear reaction.
In current photo reactors under development, with additional tweaking of more effective methods and materials, together with improved nano-structure shapes and topology, it is not unreasonable to expect that 10 to the 20th power concentration or more of photo amplification might be reached.
In current photo based nuclear reactors, that means that it is reasonable to assume that nuclear reactions will occur if UNAPMLIFIED infrared light were to interact with properly engineered nanostructures.
Increased infrared photo amplification is what has been done in the design of the current crop of Nickel/Hydrogen reactors.
By the way, both the Mills reactor and the Santilli process are other examples of photo reactors but these inventors just don’t know it yet.
The Open Physical Chemistry Journal, 2013, 5, 17-27
Confirmations of Santilli’s Intermediate Controlled Nuclear Fusion of Deuterium and Carbon Into Nitrogen Without Harmful Radiations
J. V. Kadeisvili, C. Lynch and Y. Yang
Abstract: We present five independent confirmations of the intermediate controlled nuclear fusion of Nitrogen from Deuterium and Carbon without the emission of harmful radiations or the release of radioactive waste, first achieved by R. M. Santilli [12] following extended mathematical, theoretical and experimental research, and preliminarily confirmed by
R.Brenna, T. Kuliczkowski, and L.Ying [13].
http://www.benthamscience.com/open/topc ... 7TOPCJ.pdf
This is just another spark driven nanoplasmonic LENR system.
The photo driven anapole magnetic field produced by nanoparticles is recognized by the inventor but it is called a Santilli magnecules.
A pattern is forming involving spark driven nanoparticle based LENR systems: Santilli, Mills, Rossi and DGT.
The inventors of these systems all have a differing theoretical explanation of their reaction, but they are all basically the same nanoplasmonic driven photo reactors.
As a system's engineering principle, it is good to have many possible commercial products that may eventually make it into the LENR marketplace. We don't want to put all our eggs in one basket.
) also are far from convinced.