As you can see by Para's post above, Rossi only hinted at the Uppsalla professors building a replication device and running an experiment with non-phase-change water calorimetry. Rossi didn't claim that the results were positive. So it seems unlikely that the physicist Mario Menichella's claim that the Uppsalla scientists have replicated (without publishing the results) the Rossi effect came from Rossi himself.
It may be that I am mistaken in the way you say ... but I recall a different post. I'll see if I can find it.
Menichella doesn't appear to be much of a physicist. He goes with Rossi's claim about the temperature of the SK plasma hook, line, and sinker whereas it is obvious nonsense. I think that Rossi simply doesn't understand the physics behind blackbody spectra and I don't think Menichella has the knowledge base to correct him. Menichella is a good writer however. For the first time I think I understand how Rossi fit a blackbody curve to his data. I am amazed how naive and clutzy and just plain old wrong his procedure was, but now I think I understand it.