How can lithium be used for cold fusion through thermal neutron activation?

[JuanCasado]

I would like to ask if any of you can comment on the thermal neutron activation of lithium in order to produce energy as a cold fusion-like process?

 

[.Scott]

It can certainly result in much more than "cold fusion".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Bravo

 

[e.bar.goum]

The thermal neutron cross section isn't very big. http://www.nndc.bnl.gov/atlas/atlasvalues.html and the energy release isn't especially large. Q~7 MeV. Though, the Q value is sufficiently large that there's a good chance you'd breakup the resulting 7Li (Q_BU = -2.47 MeV), so that'll complicate things. Indeed, 6Li + n -> a + t is a way to breed more tritium in fusion reactors.

Then you have to get a thermal neutron source from somewhere, so you're basically running a nuclear reactor, so why don't you just use that as a power source?

 

[JuanCasado]

There are more than one way to get neutrons:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_source
(Incidentally: Could some nuclear waste be used in order to do so?)
In case a nuclear reactor was the best choice, there is a reason of scale: A much smaller reactor is required to produce enough neutrons than to obtain the overall energy expected from the combined device...

 

[e.bar.goum]

Yes, I didn't mention other neutron sources as they wouldn't be what you'd end up using. You just can't get the flux from a AmBe source, as convenient as they are.