Nope, you're mostly right. If the wiki is to be believed [1], then nickel's a little bit of an exception to iron's rule. But the curve itself plateaus in that r

Nope, you're mostly right. If the wiki is to be believed [1], then nickel's a little bit of an exception to iron's rule. But the curve itself plateaus in that range, implying that there isn't an extreme preference in output like helium fusion: at that end small jumps in atomic number result in colossal energy changes, whereas fusion in the mid range result in rather small energy changes. (I certainly haven't jumped toy textbooks, but I suspect the energy released is noisy enough there's plenty of opportunity for both endo- and exothermic transmutations in this region (though only one maximum, Fe).) Of course, small for fusion can still be enough to make something glow orange, just not enough to vaporize the lab (if the pictures in the paper are legitimate). [1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_binding_energy http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_binding_energy