Andrea Rossi – Sergio Focardi: A New Energy Source From Nuclear Fusion

It is well known that in chemical reactions, and more speci…cally in processes used to obtain energy, as for example oil, gas and carbon combustion, only some electronVolts (eV) can be obtained for every couple of atoms involved. This depends on the fact that binding energies of external atomic electrons are in the eV range.

On the other hand, in nuclear transformations, the energy quantities that can be absorbed or released are of the order of mega-electronVolts (MeV) for every couple of nuclei involved in the process. As a consequence, for every given amount of energy obtained, the mass to be transformed by a nuclear process is about a millionth of that necessary for a combustion.

It is a general rule, valid for all stable compounds, that the mass for a compound is lower than the total mass of all constituents. In such conditions, the mass-energy conservation principle guarantees stability against the spontaneous disintegration into the components. As a consequence, for the nuclei, the mass of every stable nucleus turns out to be lower than the sum of the masses of all its components (protons and neutrons).