deuterons

If deuterons could fuse with other deuterons in a metal lattice, this would have been seen ages ago, just by accelerating deuterons into a deuterium-loaded material.

In these experiments, an energy source (gamma rays) is used to heat up the deuterons to start the reaction.

It was theorized something along the lines that high electrostatic charges in the metal cracks accelerate the deuterons, etc.

Per the Seaborg process, you must bombard U-238 with deuterons to get Neptunium-238, which then further decays into Pu-238.

What happens in these tubes is the vast majority of deuterons lose energy by ionization and don't undergo nuclear reactions.

From the article: Electron screening makes it seem as though the deuterons are fusing at a temperature of 11 million °C.

Can they generate muons, combine them with deuterons, and lase them before the muons decay?

In reality, the metal lattice remains much cooler than that, although it heats up somewhat from room temperature as the deuterons fuse.

The only way this might work would be if one could accelerate the deuterons directly and beam them at a deuterated target.

People have been putting moderate energy deuterons into deuterated materials since the 1930s.

Yes, and that was because no energy source was being used to start the reaction; the metal with deuterons in it was just sitting there.

The few irradiated deuterons and the products of their collisions have speeds (kinetic energies) many millions times higher than those corresponding to the room temperature.

There is more than just a change of name involved with LCF: the statement "it still requires energetic deuterons" means the deuterons still have to be hot.

> There is more than just a change of name involved with LCF: the statement "it still requires energetic deuterons" means the deuterons still have to be hot.

They are very careful to avoid the label: "LCF isn’t cold fusion—it still requires energetic deuterons and can use neutrons to heat them."

In the new method, a neutron source “heats” or accelerates deuterons sufficiently such that when colliding with a neighboring deuteron it causes D-D fusion reactions.