Magnetic and inertial confinement approaches to controlled nuclear fusion have been shown to involve heating the fuel to high temperature and then confining it long enough for a sufficient quantity of fusion energy to be generated; high temperatures are required in order to counter the effect of Coulomb repulsion among the fuel ions. In contrast, the attainment of fusion energy at low temperature is based on the notion that the effect of Coulomb repulsion can be significantly reduced by a selective and temporary state of pseudo-charge neutrality among the fusile reactants.