“I’ve read their patent. You could build one of these reactors and buy the fuel materials all for under $1k.”
You must have missed this part, then:
“This patent does not include details of the catalyst that allows the powerful nuclear reaction to take place within the E-Cat. Rossi has said that the patent on this catalyzer would be applied for separately.”
Their catalyst isn’t magic.
Like I said before, if you know anything about the process by which vegetable oil is converted to margarine through hydrogenation, then you know all you need to know about to obtain the proper catalyst.