[JamesP81]

But a room temperature reaction provides no energy that we could easily convert into traditional power.

I don't think the goal is a 'room temperature' reaction. I think the previous comment about it being cold relative to stellar temperatures applies. If the reaction can be made to operate at the sort of temperatures you find in a power plant's boiler, as opposed to the temperatures found in the center of a nuclear detonation, then you have something workable.

Personally, I remain highly skeptical. The last time someone crowed about cold fusion it turned out to be crap. The comments about true cold fusion making oil obsolete may be true in the long term, the thing that annoys me is that we have nuclear fission reactors that already do that. The enviros won't let us use them, however. And if this cold fusion experiment leads to practical applications, I'm sure they'll find a way to regulate it into oblivion like they have everything else that might actually work.

[Wonder Warthog]

"The last time someone crowed about cold fusion it turned out to be crap."

There is a significant difference between "difficult to reproduce" and "crap". CF hs proven to be difficult to reproduce, but it HAS been reproduced. See the links in some of my replies on-thread. The work with the track-etch detectors used exactly the same type reactor as used in the first Pons-Fleischman experiment.