I received a question from a New Energy Times reader a few days ago:

“What exactly is causing the energy to be produced in the LENR reaction according to the Widom-Larsen theory? Is it energy produced due to the transmutation of elements, or something else entirely?”

According to the Widom-Larsen theory, the reaction chain includes this four-step process:

I describe this process in my article “Widom-Larsen Theory Simplified” as well as in the chapter I co-wrote with Joseph Zawodny of NASA for the Wiley Nuclear Energy Encyclopedia.

Let’s first answer a question the reader didn’t ask: “How much energy is required to initiate the reactions and where does it come from?”