Reading through that mess, I saw no mention of the identities of any of the chemicals involved. The closest it came was to mention some kind of "mud" that apparently is prone to very exothermic reactions if exposed to air. As I see it, that highly reactive "mud" is sufficient to account for any rise in temperature occurring during that experiment. The energy output of chemical reactions can be incredibly high... explosives are a good example. I know that the "mud" cannot be nickel; to my knowledge, nickel does not react strongly upon contact with air.
The reaction 58Ni + p → 59Cu is a little unlikely; the Coulomb forces required to shove that proton into the nucleus are so high that, as I saw one physicist explain it, that much energy does not exist in the entire universe. If you want to transmute nickel to copper, I think the approach would be to shove a neutron into the nucleus, and wait for a beta decay. It would be quite a wait; the half-life of 59Ni is 75,000 years, and the decay product (from a positive beta emission) is 59Co, not copper.
I thought nickel was on the wrong side of the curve of binding energy. When did that change?