Not sure I fully understand your complaint, but there are several such claims, e.g., as made in this 1987 patent by William Barker:
This choice of an example kind of makes the point. It’s not LENR. There are no nuclear reactions claimed. The blue sky claims of waste remediation I referred to involve transmutation to more stable isotopes, which could be demonstrated by putting a radioactive sample in a LENR device, and taking out a less radioactive sample.
As for the patent, well sometimes patents are granted for claims that have not been realized, and considering that this idea has not been widely implemented and has not resulted in fame and glory for the inventor, it’s a safe bet this is one of those patents. I don’t know if one should take seriously an inventor who thinks 2 of the 3 most important isotopes in nuclear waste are U-238 and U-235. U-238 is not particularly radioactive, but in any case, neither isotope is actually made in the reactor. U-238 was there (in nature) to begin with, and U-235 is *depleted*. Not that that diminishes the importance of affecting alpha-decay with small electric fields — if it were possible — but it says something about the inventor’s competence in the field, in addition to the point made by HGB.
“I vaguely recall claims to change activity among LENR researchers, e.g. George Miley. The question for me is whether there is any reproducible "lab rat" experiment to be found among or derived from such experiments.”
Your recollections are vague, because the claims are vague. Reducing the activity of a radioactive sample would not be a vague claim. But yes, I’m referring to claims that other qualified scientists can verify.
“This would surely be interesting, but possibly inconsistent with whatever mechanism might be at play assuming a subset of LENR results are real.”
Ah yes, nature contrives to make any unambiguous indication of LENR inconsistent with whatever mechanism might be at play. That’s why levels of tritium or neutrons or gamma rays commensurate with excess heat are never seen. Nature also seemed to foil every attempt to determine the rest frame of the ether, until Einstein came along and declared it superfluous.