is cold fusion a viable reality for alternative energy?

The actual cold fusion desire lives on: NASA is actually developing cheap, thoroughly clean, low-energy nuclear response (LENR) technology that may eventually see vehicles, planes, and houses powered by little, safe nuclear reactors.

Whenever we think of nuclear energy, there are generally just two choices: fission and blend. Fission, which creates large sums of heat through splitting larger atoms in to smaller atoms, is what presently powers every nuclear reactor on the planet. Fusion is the alternative, creating vast levels of energy by fusing atoms associated with hydrogen together, but we’re still several years away from large-scale, industrial fusion reactors.

Some day over the rainbow one or both types of fusion will be commercially viable. Until then neither type produces any net energy. So the answer for today is no, zero energy is produced by that technology. Eventually that will change. It's worth continuing R&D because of the unlimited up side but don't hold your breath.

You can't use a big scale phenomena as an analogy to nanoscopic scale phenomena. You can't say "Starting a nuclear reaction with chemical effects is like trying to move a haulage truck by blowing on it." Because move a haulage truck is on the big scale, but when come to nanoscopic scales like molecules, you need Quantum Mechanics theory to explain physical phenomena at nanoscopic scales.

According to Quantum Mechanics, everything has possibility no matter how small the possibility is.

If you increase the number of experiment, the number of molecules that in the probabilities (to fuse) also increases. The use of the material (nickel) in powder form increases the number of experiment. Every grain of nickel is an experiment, If there are (say) 1,000,000 grains of nickel in a cold fusion device, that means there are 1,000,000 experiments going on simultaneously in that cold fusion device.

It is possible that cold fusion is one of the result of Quantum tunneling:

To understand the Quantum tunneling phenomenon: particles attempting to travel between potential barriers can be compared to a ball trying to roll over a hill; quantum mechanics and classical mechanics differ in their treatment of this scenario. Classical mechanics predicts that particles that do not have enough energy to classically surmount a barrier will not be able to reach the other side. Thus, a ball without sufficient energy to surmount the hill would roll back down. Or, lacking the energy to penetrate a wall, it would bounce back (reflection). In quantum mechanics, these particles can, with a very small probability, tunnel to the other side, thus crossing the barrier. Here, the "ball" could, in a sense, borrow energy from its surroundings to tunnel through the wall or "roll over the hill", paying it back by making the reflected electrons more energetic than they otherwise would have been.

So as a result, particles that crossed the barrier will undergo fusion. The barrier here is the repulsive force between positively charged nuclei.

An interestingly worded question. While cold fusion is potentially an alternative to traditional fossil fuels it today little more than a theory and claims. These do not seem to rise to a level we could call a "viable reality." So .... no.

Personally, I think cold fusion is wishful thinking and self-delusion. Starting a nuclear reaction with chemical effects is like trying to move a haulage truck by blowing on it.

Regular (high-energy) fusion is still on the cards, and there are alternative safer fission power schemes to the traditional enriched uranium reactors (originally picked as a means to make nuclear weapons).

Yes, just as soon as someone figures out how to do cold fusion, which hasn't happened yet, or even been proven possible yet.

So, to put it another way:

No, not yet.

Lockheed-Martin think so they are working on a small beta fusion plant now, and they are quite confident they can get it up and running.