The important lesson I need you to acknowledge is that you cannot avoid the production of water in combustion, because it is the production of water that allows energy release.
Hmm, so, (I got the rest of it, BTW, including no fission involved, forgot that, d'oh!) the amount of water produced then is not enough to extinguish the fire? Wait, Why does water put out fire? It cools it down... I'm guessing the amount of energy required to change water from liquid to gas state decreases the energy of the reaction causing the fire enough to put it out, and, perhaps in addition, smothers the fire a bit by reducing the oxygen available (oxygen can't get through the liquid when the liquid is covering the object burning, and, the gaseous water displaces oxygen).
So, is the reason the water doesn't put out this reaction perhaps the fact that the gaseous water vapor is already at a high temperature due to the reaction from whence it was formed?
My questions before were a bit misguided, as I somehow thought that it was being suggested that the reason this reaction couldn't produce power was that the water formed would extinguish the fire... where I got that I don't know.
What you are
actually saying, is that the energy released from the (thanks for the other explanation too, whatsisname) bonds isn't enough to power both the radio generator and still have enough left over to do anything, correct?
Sorry to be such a noob, but I haven't really bothered thinking about any of this stuff since chemistry (which, now that I am being reminded of it, is starting to come back, along with nightmares of trying to balance stubborn equations that just wouldn't compute right... probably because I have terrible handwriting when I'm in a hurry, and thus can't always accurately read back what I originally wrote)
My interest got piqued when I stumbled across the article in the OP, which I really should have Googled a bit more before posting... didn't bother, as I figured that if not one but three tv broadcast stations picked it up, it must have already passed level-headed inspection.... I mean, it wouldn't do to look stupid if it doesn't work, right? Ha, I guess when it doesn't work and they find out they just never mention it (who wants egg on their face over reporting something erroneous, right?), resulting in conspiracy theories when those who saw the broadcast don't see the promised tech / inventions that were suggested would now be possible.
EDIT: z64555, watsisname, thanks, (I was aware of matter neither being created nor destroyed, however, is converting matter completely into energy considered it's "destruction"... (if not, matter being neither created nor destroyed seems like a logical extension of 'for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction', as, if you take something out of existence, something else would have to come into existence.. heh, that'd be a bit boggling) or do we simply not know how to do that (convert matter completely into energy) yet? (i.e. is it theoretically possible or theoretically impossible, obviously we don't have a way of actually doing it yet... and since burning doesn't do it (now that I think of it, the energy released from fission of an atom into two less dense atoms.. that should have tipped me off that whole atoms weren't being converted into energy by combustion.. lol

)