Meanwhile, my own 20 Kg test reactor is nearly ready to test out.
Not April 1st anymore, so I take it you are serious? Sorry I missed if you mentioned this before.
Brillouin Energy Corporation (BEC) updates.
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Actually, I don't think I've ever said that there should never be any secrets at all.
There must be secrets or patents, or there can be no profits and no business. I think it would be impossible to keep something so important a secret, so patents are the only path to making any money. If you do not have secrets or patents you might as well give away the IP for free. Perhaps there is a way to make money doing this, but I don't know what it would be. Yesterday, Toyota announced they will license 24,000 hybrid automobile patents for free. I think their plan is to sell parts to other companies. The IP is free but the parts will cost you. They are ahead of others, so they can do this. BLP or Brillouin could not possibly sell parts to major industrial corporations. They could not manufacture 0.1% of what is needed.
The Toyota news is here:
https://www.autoblog.com/2019/…-to-share-hybrid-patents/
On NHK, the Toyota spokesman said they are doing it for the good of humanity, which I did not believe for one second. I was wondering what their strategy might be until I read this article today.
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Any sensible person would understand that all I was saying is that you don’t need a lot of knowledge to know that an unlimited, cheap and safe energy source would be tremendously valuable.
No, that is not what was said. SOT said there is no point to discussing the advantages of cold fusion, and no point in telling the public and investors about these advantages, because the advantages are self-evident. Everyone can see them. I pointed out that the advantages are not self-evident, and I know many investors who do not see them. SOT is flat out wrong. So you have changed the subject and you pretend the debate is about something else.
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I am not sure I completely agree with that. Mankind has used things without understanding how they worked for most of its existence
But not in first world countries in the 21st century. This is no longer acceptable.
The idea that you must first understand the theory of something prior to using it is entirely divorced from most of the human existence.
For most of human history this was true. Starting around 1800 we began to understand things. Around 1960, in the first world, the public began to demand that manufactured products be understood in great depth, and controlled as much a possible to reduce danger and pollution. The demands made on industry in the modern era are unprecedented.
We do not even understand how our own brains work and yet we soldier on.
The brain is not a manufactured product. We have no choice about it, and no control. No one can be held responsible for defects. However, in the future, if the brain is better understood and it becomes possible to prevent things like mental illness, I am sure that society will demand every citizen be giving the means to do so. That is, the medication or medical treatments. Nowadays when there is a cure for some other disease, such as kidney dialysis, in nearly every first world country the citizens demand everyone be given access to it. (Except the U.S.)
Our control over other natural phenomena such as food production has increased so much that people do demand industry control product quality and safety at levels that would be unthinkable in previous eras. They also demand things like non-GMO foods.
People made fire and they did not know about basic chemistry.
When people discover useful chemical reactions nowadays they must do many tests to ensure safety. New machines such as hybrid cars and self-driving cars are put through extensive safety testing. I expect self-driving cars are being put through more testing for more hours at greater expense than the entire transportation sector underwent through all of recorded history.
Modern safety standards and testing began in 1880 with the founding of the ASME. There were purity and safety standards for things like beer and furnaces as far back as 1480. This is not a new thing.
Mankind is much less risk-adverse than what you seem to think. If a machine is shown to provide tremendous benefits and has not proven to be incredibly dangerous (at this stage, no one is dead from radiation poisoning at Brillouin), it will not be prohibited for safety reasons.
Yes, of course. I am not suggesting that cold fusion will be banned for safety reasons. Everyone will soon see it is much safer than other energy sources, so it will be allowed. However, it will only be allowed after extensive safety testing. This will take millions of hours and cost billions of dollars.
Every person who understands automotive technology knows that self-driving cars are now much safer than human driven cars. We also understand they are not perfectly safe. They have killed one person, and when they are deployed they will kill many more people. People are not capable making a perfectly safe automobile, and we must not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. On the other hand, it makes sense to spend millions of hours and billions of dollars testing and improving self-driving cars before they are deployed. It costs a lot of money, but it will save even more money, with reduced accident costs and insurance costs. Plus, society demands that new technology but much safer, better and more reliable than the technology it replaces. I think sometimes society goes too far, but that is how public opinion works.
The billions of dollar spent ensuring that cold fusion is safe will be a trivial sum of money compared to the cost savings and improved safety from cold fusion. We will earn back that amount every few days. No one should hesitate to spend that money now, or worry about it. No modern industrial corporation would hesitate to develop the technology because of the cost of ensuring safety. All corporations nowadays understand that the public must be assured there is no danger.
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Sorry' that was a typo I have only increased the reactor mass to 2Kg so far.
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No, that is not what was said. SOT said there is no point to discussing the advantages of cold fusion, and no point in telling the public and investors about these advantages, because the advantages are self-evident. Everyone can see them. I pointed out that the advantages are not self-evident, and I know many investors who do not see them. SOT is flat out wrong. So you have changed the subject and you pretend the debate is about something else.
I was responding to what you said to ME, not what you said to SOT. So how about if you not ascrbe his opinions to me and then argue with me about them? All I had to say on the subject is that an energy source like cold fusion would obviously appear to have great value even if one can think of only a small fraction of the ways that it would be valuable. But as usual you took it as an opportunity to slash at a straw man.
You always lecture people about whether they are qualified to make comments on this technical forum. I would estimate that at least two-thirds of all the comments at this forum are nothing more than pissing contests with at most minimal technical content. At awful lot of folks here are just spoiling for a fight and they make one up if they can’t find one to their liking.
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I was responding to what you said to ME, not what you said to SOT. So how about if you not ascrbe his opinions to me and then argue with me about them?
You two are difficult to tell apart. Are you a sock puppet of SOT, or vice versa? Anyway, what you said is also flat out wrong:
Me: “I don’t think it is a mystery what could be done with a energy source like cold fusion.”
Yes, it is a mystery. It is as much a mystery to us as the "what can be done with the internet" was a mystery in 1990. No one can begin to predict what can be done. Arthur Clarke and others have predicted, and no doubt they are miles ahead of the rest of humanity, but they probably missed 90% of what can be done.
To put it another way: If you are clairvoyant and you knew what could be done with the internet in 1990, why aren't you as rich as Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg? If it is not a mystery to you what can be done with cold fusion, why don't you write a critique of my book or this paper, and show me all the mistakes I made?
https://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJcoldfusionb.pdf
I am sure I made many mistakes, but unlike you, I am not clairvoyant and I think the future potential of technology is mysterious.
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JedRothwell: All your points are very sound and I do agree with you that it would be pretty hard to commercialize an LENR device and say "we have no idea how it works but it does so f*** it." But, on the other hand, almost no one understands the devices we use every day. Our relationship with technoscience is mostly "I don't know how it works but someone somewhere does and that's enough for me to trust it", which is quite close to religion, in a way. And I think we have that attitude because, deep down, we know that we are finite beings and don't understand what we are, how we work and what our purpose is, so ignorance, as long as it is covered with the pretence of knowledge, is acceptable to us.
I am sure that, if one day LENR power becomes available, almost no one will care whether or not the theory behind it is an adequate representation of reality, as long as we can put our trust in someone who says he understands it. And I am sure a theory will be provided to reassure people with the existence (but not the understanding) of a reason why it works (let's hope BLP does not succeed, cause their theory sounds bonkers and Randell Mills would become the Messiah).
On risk/safety, I have to say that I am of the opinion that, if you take out crazies such as antivax and all their cohorts, people are mostly only afraid of things that will kill them violenty and in the near future. LENR devices do not create that kind of danger. At this stage, it does not even appear to generate radiation, so I have a hard time seeing what potential safety issue you are speaking of.
One side-note: I do agree about all your points on economic consequences of LENR. If you has asked people of the early 1800's what steampower was going to change, they would probably have said that it was going to put windmills and watermills out of business. Like any other transformative technology, it will destroy entire sectors of the economy and create new activities. What we can try to show, and it takes a lot of work, is the sectors it will destroy, and the human capital that will be freed by such destruction. But as for new activities, who knows? What can be done with that much inexpensive power? Only time can tell.
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All your points are very sound and I do agree with you that it would be pretty hard to commercialize an LENR device and say "we have no idea how it works but it does so f*** it." But, on the other hand, almost no one understands the devices we use every day.
We understand today's devices far more than we understand cold fusion! If we understood cold fusion as well as we understand nicad batteries or automobile engines, our civilization would be powered by cold fusion. For many modern devices our understanding is empirical, but it is vast nonetheless. Just about every manufactured product is described in thousands of pages of technical specifications, regulations and textbooks. Back when books were printed, the technical specifications and regs. for the telephone industry filled a large room in Washington DC.
No doubt there are aspects of uranium fission power we do not understand. Much of our knowledge is empirical. The cause of the Fukushima disaster was well understood, but many of the results came as an unpleasant surprise. However, what people know about uranium fission reactors would fill a library of printed books.
No one will be manufacturing or installing cold fusion devices until there is a library of books describing the reaction, the manufacturing techniques, the dangers, the regulations, and every other aspect of the technology. Modern society, modern governments, and the public will not stand for the kinds of risks and unknowns that were accepted decades ago. The people at Brillouin imagine they will quietly sign contracts, and manufacturers will begin shipping machines to customers. That is a pipe dream. That cannot happen! First, because it is light years away from how modern industry and government works, as I said. Second, because after 5 or 10 machines are installed, people will find out, experts will say "yes, it is real" and that will be biggest brouhaha of the 21st century. It will be the biggest news story, dominating headlines and news website for weeks. You can no more keep this under wraps than you could keep it quiet if someone invented a machine to convert lead into gold, and began manufacturing tons of gold.
After a few months, every industrial company on earth will be frantically working on this. Brillouin will have spent years laboriously increasing their COP to 10 (or whatever), and a few months later, dozens of huge corporations will achieve COPs of 1,000 or 10,000, leaving Brillouin in the dust. (Cold fusion works with zero input power, or a COP of infinity, so there is no reason to think they will not achieve 10,000.) The whole notion of keeping this quiet to achieve a level of commercial advantage is hare-brained. You cannot compete with GE or Toyota!
Our relationship with technoscience is mostly "I don't know how it works but someone somewhere does and that's enough for me to trust it",
The people who make things know how they work. They have encyclopedic knowledge.
On risk/safety, I have to say that I am of the opinion that, if you take out crazies such as antivax and all their cohorts, people are mostly only afraid of things that will kill them violenty and in the near future.
People may be afraid of that, but legislators, regulators, manufacturers and insurance companies worry about product liability. They know that if they make a mistake and sell something that is dangerous, they will be in huge trouble. This is not the 19th century. Most people have no idea how dangerous things were back then, or how cheap human lives were. British mining companies employed children in the 19th century. The children were killed in accidents so often, some companies had a rubber stamp form they filled in to pay death benefits to the parents.
LENR devices do not create that kind of danger. At this stage, it does not even appear to generate radiation, so I have a hard time seeing what potential safety issue you are speaking of.
No one can say what potential safety issues there may be. That's the whole point! We have no idea how it works, so how can anyone say it is safe? Even if a theory emerges and we have some assurance cold fusion is safe, we still will not know that for sure without extensive testing. There have not been even 10 hours of safety testing with mice or other species. No one has done tests similar to automobile crash testing, where a catastrophic accident is deliberately produced. For example by pushing a device up to high temperatures to see what happens when it melts. At this stage, we can't even control the reaction, so we cannot even begin safety testing.
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No one will be manufacturing or installing cold fusion devices until there is a library of books describing the reaction, the manufacturing techniques, the dangers, the regulations, and every other aspect of the technology.
If you doubt that, you should watch Japanese national TV (NHK) more often. As I said, yesterday they announced that Toyota has 24,000 patents for their hybrid cars. That's a lot of paper! They generated 24,000 patents and thousands of other documents before the first Prius was sold to the first customer. That's why it cost $1 billion to develop. (At least. Who knows how much. They have sold 13 million hybrid cars, so the R&D cost ~$76 per unit so far.)
To take another example, the other day NHK broadcast a documentary about progress in self-driving cars. They showed meetings of industry and government experts from several different countries who are hashing out the new laws, regulations and insurance regulations to cover the cars. They met in a room with a large shelf full of documents about these issues. There must be other rooms full of technical documents describing the radar, lidar, computer programming, and other aspects of the technology. These issues are partly secret. Every company is frantically developing the technology and trying to keep the methods secret from their competition. But the R&D is also partly open. Automobile manufacturers worldwide are collaborating on many aspects of the technology, and coordinating. They have to, whether they want to or not. Governments insist on it. There must always be technical standards for complicated machines of this nature, especially with regard to safety. They have to agree about how to deal with pedestrians, and how to distinguish between radar noise and people crossing the street. The recent fatal accident was caused when the computer decided the woman with the bicycle was radar noise, not a real target. The cause of that mistake must be made public, and it must be addressed with industry-wide standards.
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Anyway, what you said is also flat out wrong:
Me: “I don’t think it is a mystery what could be done with an energy source like cold fusion.”
I am sure I made many mistakes, but unlike you, I am not clairvoyant and I think the future potential of technology is mysterious.
I have never encountered anyone as stubbornly obtuse as you.
I am not clairvoyant and don't claim to even have a clue about all the possibilities of cold fusion. Furthermore, I'm pretty sure you realize that I did not imply any such thing and are just being an obstinate boor about it.
You are a programmer so you supposedly understand logic. Yet you insist on interpreting "I don't think it is a mystery what could be done with cold fusion" to mean that it is not a mystery what ALL the things are that can be done with it. But the statement was not intended to be all-inclusive. Rather, the meaning of my sentence is that there is no mystery that there are at least some obvious uses for an unlimited, cheap, and safe energy source. Or do you have to read 1,000 papers and ponder for months even to leap to that conclusion? But this is to no avail because, as always, you have decided what to think and nothing is going to alter your stubborn insistance.
Like I said, you just are constantly gunning for a fight and an excuse to flaunt your astonishing brilliance rather than listening to what people actually have to say. What a fine spokesman for the world of cold fusion.
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LCC,
I would have to agree with Jed Does LENR produce harmful radiations? It is not going to be so simple, and to you and Godes credit you acknowledge that. It will be a good problem to have though, as it will mean we are in the home stretch. If BEC comes up with a market product, they, and their investors will make a fortune no matter the regulatory hurdles...it will just take a little longer than expected.
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JedRothwell: I don't think we are dealing with FDA levels of red tape, and most of that red tape would be related to the commercialization of LENR devices to consumers, which no one is currently seriously contemplating at this stage. I am ready to be proven wrong but I do not think new industrial machines require the level of research you are suggesting. Maybe you know much more about this than me but unless your product is destined to consumers, I am pretty sure rules are much more lax than what you seem to think.
"No one can compete with GE and Toyota" is the kind of statement that makes little to no sense to me. It's clearly false (GE is a mess, for one). R&D departments of big conglomerates are actually not as impressive as you seem to think. Just take the pharmaceutical industry, one of the most R&D intensive sectors, and you'll see that they keep buying start-ups at insane prices because no one in their right minds would develop a billion dollar idea as an employee. Industrial megafirms can provide incremental progress, but they are not places where breakthrough technologies actually thrive. Which explains why the most valuable companies in the world are mostly relatively young companies.
On potential safety issues, we're going to have a hard time coming to an agreement. My argument is just that if a non-consumer product has not proven to be dangerous, it will not be required to be proven to be absolutely safe. The burden of proof shifts when it comes to consumer products because of potential backlash. And there are countries in which even consumers product are lightly regulated.
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I am not clairvoyant and don't claim to even have a clue about all the possibilities of cold fusion. Furthermore, I'm pretty sure you realize that I did not imply any such thing and are just being an obstinate boor about it.
Hold it. You just said:
Me: “I don’t think it is a mystery what could be done with an energy source like cold fusion.”
Which is it? You don't have a clue about all the possibilities? Or you don't think it is a mystery? Those two assertions are pretty much opposite.
Maybe you mean you have a clue about 50% of the possibilities. Or 80%. How would you know? How can you tally up unknown possibilities? How many of the possibilities for the internet did you see in 1990? Did you predict it would revolutionize civilization worldwide? Were you able to list hundreds of specific ways it would impact people's lives? Because that is what it has done. If you cannot list ~20 specific reasons why cold fusion is likely to do that, then the future of cold fusion is a mystery to you. You don't see that because you do not realize the extent of your own ignorance. Your first statement "I do not think it is a mystery" is inoperative. (Okay, it is idiotic, and typical of the kind of narrow minded people who thought electricity, airplanes, computers, and the internet were no big deal, or passing fads.)
Of course anyone can see some of the major advantages of cold fusion, just as anyone in 1990 could see that e-mail is faster than first class mail. It turned out, that was not the only advantage of the internet.
I'll tell you what is tiresome, and who is an obstinate boor. A person who insists he is right even when he says the opposite of what he just said. A person who refuses to read anything about the subject, and who makes no effort to learn, yet who pontificates, struts, and has the gall to lecture the rest of us. A person who insists he knows everything important about the subject when he knows practically nothing, and then -- the moment he is challenged -- he shifts gears and says "I don't claim to have even a clue." First you say "I don't think it is a mystery" then you say "I don't have a clue." Your views are quantum mechanical, both X and not-X simultaneously, superpositioned until someone asks you what the hell you mean, at which point you mean whatever gets you off the hook for making dumb mistakes.
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"No one can compete with GE and Toyota" is the kind of statement that makes little to no sense to me. I
I meant that no small company such as Brillouin can compete with GE and Toyota. GM and Ford can! I meant two things:
1. There will be lots and lots of additional IP before the first cold fusion device is sold. Maybe not the 24,000 patents that Toyota filed for hybrid cars, but lots of patents. Brillouin cannot come up with more than a tiny fraction of them.
2. There are two ways to make money with cold fusion: IP, or actually manufacturing and selling machines. Brillouin cannot manufacture machines in competition with GE. GE has millions of times more equipment, expertise, and capabilities than Brillouin. The core cold fusion technology is only a small part of what is needed to make a product. It is like the CPU chip in a computer. It may be the most important part, but there are many other parts. Along these lines, Rossi's claim that he will manufacture things is ridiculous.
In yesterday's news, Toyota has apparently abandoned the IP protection method of making money with hybrid cars. In other words, they decided that instead of dominating the market with their IP advantages, and keeping out the competition, they can make more money by selling hybrid engines, controllers and other hardware to other automakers. They can do that because they have factories and production lines and thousands of highly trained engineers. Brillouin cannot do that. That option is not open to them. The only thing they can sell is the IP. As I see it, if they cannot secure IP and sell it, they can't do anything, and they might as well give up. I do not think there is any point to them sharpening up the technology now to bring it marginally closer to commercialization, by increasing the COP to the point where it is just barely adequate to the task. That will take years, and millions of dollars. They could make billions of dollars sooner if they would get a patent, license it, and let GE and Toyota find ways to increase the COP and do all the other things needed for commercialization.
On potential safety issues, we're going to have a hard time coming to an agreement. My argument is just that if a non-consumer product has not proven to be dangerous, it will not be required to be proven to be absolutely safe.
I think you lack imagination. You are not THINKING BIG. BIG. What I mean is, you fail to understand the world-wide brouhaha that will ensue if it ever becomes generally known that this is a nuclear reactor operating by unknown principles, and that it has the potential to revolutionize civilization. In short, that it is the most revolutionary invention in recorded history. Many people will realize that soon after it becomes generally known. So it will not be limited to non-consumer products for long. There will be a gigantic push to introduce it into any product that needs it, and any company that fails to meet that challenge will soon be facing bankruptcy, just as any large automaker that does not make self-driving cars will be bankrupt in 20 years.
The companies will know they must introduce this. Many people will have the opposite reaction. They will go into a tizzy. Because it is nuclear. They will demand that no reactor be allowed within a hundred miles of any city or town. Heck, they will say this must be banned worldwide, immediately, forever. I will be very surprised if there are not full page ads and editorials demanding that, surreptitiously paid for by the oil companies. Whether it is actually dangerous or not, many people will go ape shit and assume it is something like a portable thermonuclear bomb that might wipe out a city at any moment. They are bound to think that. And . . . the fact is, at this stage, no expert can be sure it cannot explode. Fleischmann and Teller worried that it might. Can you be sure they were wrong? We better find out!
Safety must be established, or the public will not allow this to be used anywhere, for any purpose. I think this public demand is perfectly reasonable. Establishing safety may cost $1 billion up front. It might even cost $1 billion a year after that, although I doubt it. So what if it does? I have predicted the market will be at least ~170 million device per year. If safety testing adds $6 to the cost of each unit, that will not make any difference. It is a trivial cost. Would you pay an extra $6 to ensure safety, or would you prefer to risk the possibility that the machine might irradiate you, go out of control and cause a fire, or -- conceivably, for all anyone knows today -- explode with the force of a small nuclear bomb?
I am sure that society, public opinion, and governments will never give you that choice!
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2. There are two ways to make money with cold fusion: IP, or actually manufacturing and selling machines. Brillouin cannot manufacture machines in competition with GE. GE has millions of times more equipment, expertise, and capabilities than Brillouin. The core cold fusion technology is only a small part of what is needed to make a product. It is like the CPU chip in a computer. It may be the most important part, but there are many other parts. Along these lines, Rossi's claim that he will manufacture things is ridiculous.
The chip model is a perfect example, as Brillouin envisions to imitate Intel rather than building machines. We are in agreement on that, and I absolutely believe that big conglomerates will integrate the technology in their machines. I don't see Brillouin making LENR planes and cars!
The companies will know they must introduce this. Many people will have the opposite reaction. They will go into a tizzy. Because it is nuclear. They will demand that no reactor be allowed within a hundred miles of any city or town. Heck, they will say this must be banned worldwide, immediately, forever. I will be very surprised if there are not full page ads and editorials demanding that, surreptitiously paid for by the oil companies. Whether it is actually dangerous or not, many people will go ape shit and assume it is something like a portable thermonuclear bomb that might wipe out a city at any moment. They are bound to think that. And . . . the fact is, at this stage, no expert can be sure it cannot explode. Fleischmann and Teller worried that it might. Can you be sure they were wrong? We better find out!
Funny but I don't see it that way. Maybe because I am French and nuclear power has always been a part of my life. Also I think the fear of global warming will facilitate adoption of LENR that will appear as a miracle that needs to be implemented as soon as possible.
But you may absolutely be right on that.
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All this discussion about needing to read Jed's book to fully appreciate the value of LENR reminds me of my ignorant days as a child, where I could not truly appreciate the benefits of greater than light space travel. I had simply thought it would allow exploring other planets in our solar system, and perhaps some of the closest stars. But then the well researched documentary series Star Trek (original series) was a great illumination. Warp Drive enabled Captain Kirk to spread his DNA over the entire galaxy, regardless of species, skin color (green), or network censorship.
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If BEC comes up with a market product, they, and their investors will make a fortune no matter the regulatory hurdles...it will just take a little longer than expected.
Yes. I have often discussed these hurdles. Some people here have responded with ire, thinking I am in favor of delaying the introduction for 10 years. I doubt it will take more than a year or two, because there will be tremendous pressure from industry and the public to find out if this is safe, and to get the show on the road. A year or two is nothing! It will take longer than that to set up production lines. Safety testing, planning for production, and designing products can be done in parallel, so little time will be lost. No matter how urgent it is, it will take years to start production. The most urgent and most rapid industrial development in history was U.S. conversion of the civilian industrial plant to weapons manufacturing during WWII. Despite the urgency, that took about 4 years, from 1939 to 1943. Every single automobile plant was closed down in December 1941, and all car sales stopped. Thousands of factories were constructed from scratch with the utmost speed. Still, it took years.
I have said that safety testing might cost ~$1 billion, because that is approximately what similar testing has cost in recent decades. Some people think that would be an impossible burden. They think it might price cold fusion out of the market. As I said above, these people need to THINK BIG. Think long term. Think of the scale that cold fusion is bound to reach. Even if testing costs $1 billion per year indefinitely, that works out to approximately $6 per unit, which is about the cost of the cardboard box, plastic packaging, and the instruction manual the gadget comes with. Actually, I expect after the first few years, the initial cost of R&D and testing will amortize to a few pennies per unit. As I said, the R&D cost of the Prius has amortized to about $76 per car, which is less than Toyota they charged me for a Prius dome light and replacement cabin air filter yesterday. They made all their money back in that one sale.
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All this discussion about needing to read Jed's book to fully appreciate the value of LENR reminds me of my ignorant days as a child, where I could not truly appreciate the benefits of greater than light space travel.
With one critical difference. That was science fiction and fantasy. This is real.
Perhaps you should remember your ignorant days in 1990, when you could not appreciate that cell phones and the internet would soon change countless aspects of your life, not to mention the lives of people living in rural India and Africa, vastly reducing third world poverty and illiteracy. Did you imagine they would do that? Did you know even now they have done that? That 80% of third-world adults can now read, and most have access to all of the news you can read, and to just about every book ever written? When Star Trek came out in 1966, a world in which rural farmers in the middle of nowhere in Africa could take courses at MIT, read just about any book ever printed, or watch TV, would have been science fiction nearly as improbable as interstellar space flight. As far as I know, only one person predicted this would actually happen by the 21st century: Arthur C. Clarke, in 1972. Even he did not guess all the ramifications.
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Funny but I don't see it that way.
You don't think a cold fusion device can explode like at nuclear bomb? Neither do I. But I am not going to say I know for sure that Martin Fleischmann and Edward Teller were wrong. They knew a lot more physics than I do. So I suppose it might conceivably be possible, and we should find out. Also, I think we should do this to reassure members of the public who will be justifiably nervous. Heck, I would be nervous to have an untested gadget in my house. I have spent weeks sitting next to laboratory scale cold fusion devices, and they make me nervous. Especially ones constructed by Ohmori.
Also I think the fear of global warming will facilitate adoption of LENR that will appear as a miracle that needs to be implemented as soon as possible.
As soon as possible, but no sooner. As I said above, a year or two of safety testing will not delay things much, because so many other tasks must be completed, and many of these tasks can be done in parallel with safety testing. When car manufacturers prepare radically new models such as the Prius, they do not wait to set up factory production lines until all of the safety testing and crash testing is complete. It is done in parallel.
