LENR vs Solar/Wind, and emerging Green Technologies.

Quote from interested observer

But beyond that, conventional renewable energy technologies coupled with energy storage represents a completely viable path to energy sustainability from a technical standpoint.

That is very expensive, it takes a lot of infrastructure, and it creates a tremendous amount of solid waste when the devices wear out. Especially with PV electricity. Much of that waste cannot be recycled.

If it works, cold fusion will be 10 times cheaper than any other source of energy at first, and later thousands of times cheaper. It will be so abundant that at a consumption level far higher than today's it will last longer than the sun. (As would plasma fusion, but it is not cheap and it produces lots of radwaste.)

See my book for details:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJcoldfusiona.pdf

Quote from interested observer

Why would you assume that its commercial development would be quick compared with any other energy source you might name?

Because if it works it will be:

Much simpler to engineer, more compact, requires no infrastructure, and the power levels and energy density are ideal for a broad range of applications. Also, unlike solar or wind it works 24/7 or on demand. Again, see my book.

You are wrong about solar having in impact. It is less than 1% in the U.S., and not much else in most of the world. Wind is about 4% to 7% (depending on who you ask), which is significant.

Quote from interested observer

Jed, take a look at the growth rate of solar and ask how much longer it will be insignificant. The majority of all new electrical capacity being installed in the world is solar while coal plants and nuclear plants are gradually being decommissioned.

The majority of new capacity in the world until very recently was natural gas and coal, unfortunately. Renewables have not grown since 2014. They have diminished slightly in the third world (Africa and South America). World use of coal peaked 2012 and has barely declined. Most of the decline is in the U.S. and China. In the U.S. is only declining because natural gas is cheaper, because of fracking.

https://webstore.iea.org/key-world-energy-statistics-2017

https://www.eia.gov/beta/inter…-QBTU.A&vo=0&v=H&end=2015

In the U.S. most new capacity is natural gas. I do not have much info. on the world, but the EIA has tons of information on the U.S. and it shows that at present growth rates, assuming present trends continue, solar will not have a major impact for 50 to 100 years. Wind power will. Nearly all of the reduced coal consumption in the U.S. has been replaced with natural gas, because it is cheaper. Fortunately, it also reduces CO2 emissions. A much smaller fraction of coal was replaced with wind, not solar. See:

https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/browser/

Solar is 1.2% of electricity. It is, of course, a much smaller fraction of total energy, which includes fossil fuels for transportation and space heating. Natural gas barely edged out coal in 2017. See:

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3

Quote from interested observer

All that being said, is your book going to explain how cold funsion works, how it can be made reliable and predictable, and how it can be scaled up?

Since no one knows these things, no, the book does not explain them. I expect you and all other readers here realize that no one knows these things, so I consider your question annoying.

The book is predicated on the assumption that if the research were funded, we would discover these things. As you know, the research is not funded. Not only is it not funded, but for the last 25 years or so, people who try to study it are fired, their reputation is trashed in the mass media, and they are threatened with deportation, so very little progress has been made. Given these circumstances, I predict that no progress will be made, and cold fusion will be forgotten.

The book describes the physical charactoristics of cold fusion. It makes the technical case that if cold fusion can be controlled, it will be the ideal source of energy. See Table 2.1 on p. 23. It is a short book. You can read the first 20 or 30 pages easily enough. So rather than ask me what it says, I suggest you read it. You cannot expect me to explain it better than I did already. If I could explain this better than I did in the book, or if I could make a better case, I would rewrite the book.

Quote from interested observer

The statement “if it works it will be simple to engineer” essentially sweeps every unresolved question about cold fusion under the rug.

No, it doesn't. There are many technical reasons for thinking it should be simple to engineer. Some are covered in the book, and others in the literature. So I suggest you read the book. I have the impression you are making assertions about a subject you have not studied and you do not know much about. That is annoying. Don't dispute my conclusions until you have studied the subject, because I probably know more about it than you do. Perhaps not, but I have spent many years studying it and I have consulted with most of the world's leading experts on cold fusion and many others on energy in general. You can read my books and papers and see if I made a valid case. For example, I compared the likely cost of cold fusion to solar and natural gas, and I also discussed the mass of materials needed for solar, here:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJcoldfusionb.pdf

You should write a book yourself, or at least a paper, so we can tell how much you know. Do that before you try to teach grandma how to suck eggs.

Quote from interested observer

Now that you acknowledge the accuracy of my statement that it is not known how cold fusion works, how it can be made reliable and predictable, and how it can be scaled up, I will reiterate my contention: it is meaningless to assert anything about the application of the technology, particularly how long it might take to accomplish it or its economic or performance characteristics.

Reiterate it all you like, you are completely incorrect, for the reasons I gave in my book and elsewhere. You are wrong first of all for simple factual reasons. You assume we have no idea at all how to make cold fusion reliable, predicable or scaled up. You are making an absolute assumption, as if knowledge was binary; we know everything, or we know nothing.

That is wrong. A great about cold fusion is known, and much more can be safely predicted from our knowledge of similar catalytic effects. The outlines have been drawn. We know that it can achieve temperatures and power density equivalent to a fission reactor core in continuous operation for months, because that has been done. Any engineer will know why such temperatures and power density will work well with nearly all energy applications, except in aerospace. Methods of control have been tested and they produced similar results in different labs. It is reasonable to think they would be improved if research were allowed.

Most of what we know is empirical, rather than theory based. It was discovered by experiment. But knowledge is knowledge. Nearly all technology up to around 1650 was empirical and discovered by trial and error, and much of it still is. This is a powerful method. Expensive, slow, but it works. Tremendous progress in cold fusion has been made. When people say it has not, I usually say, "If you had any idea what has been done, and how difficult it is, you would agree there has been progress." If it were funded and academic freedom were reborn, it is likely that rapid progress would be made. Not certain, but likely.

You do not know the details and you are in no position to dispute that, or anything else I have written here.

Quote from interested observer

Also see:

http://tinyurl.com/solarforjed

Other sources such as the EIA dispute this. It is complicated. For one thing, they are probably counting nameplate rather than actual power, which is a lot lower with solar, because it does not work at night. Also for example, most of the wind and solar power in China is, in essence, fake. It is not connected to the network, and it is not likely to be in the future. The system is very corrupt. They are spending billions on useless wind turbines, while the coal industry prevents the construction of an infrastructure to deliver the electricity from those turbines. They have 120 GW of wind capacity unconnected, with the equipment rotting away. 120 GW may be the nameplate capacity, but it is still a tremendous waste, and it is not likely to be fixed. Nameplate capacity would be ~40 U.S. nuclear reactors sitting idle. Meanwhile, Beijing still has some of the worst air pollution in the world.

There are several sources for this, such as:

https://www.fticonsulting.com/…gy-world--fti-article.pdf

This resembles the Chinese real estate boom, where thousands of empty condos and shopping centers are rotting away. It resembles the bicycle rental boom, which has resulted in millions of discarded bicycles. See:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ph…d-broken-bicycles/556268/

The Chinese economic system combines the worst features of communism, capitalism and keptocracy to produce tremendous waste, pollution and inefficiency.

I am a big fan of solar and wind power, but there is a great deal of misinformation and hype associated with them.

Quote from interested observer

“You do not know the details and you are in no position to dispute that, or anything else I have written here” including, I would assume: “I predict that no progress will be made, and cold fusion will be forgotten.”

Apparently, all you actually care about is being perceived as the font of all knowledge. Fine, you are the Oracle of Delphi. But presumably even you yourself hope you are wrong about at least some things...

I certainly hope I am wrong about that. But the reasons I make that prediction are not obscure. This is not a Delphic Oracle style prediction. Storms and many others have also made this prediction. Anyone who looks at the age of participants at an ICCF conference, and who is familiar with actuarial tables, will see why we say this. Anyone who has first-hand experience with the opposition to cold fusion from academic and government institutions knows that it is very unlikely the research will be funded. There is terrific opposition. I cannot think of any way to overcome it. Can you? A demonstration of what you claim to have might do the job if it were deployed correctly.

It seems someone deleted a number of messages here, including some of mine. That's annoying. I put a lot of effort into writing such messages. Please do not delete them.

NOT deleted after all. Moved. Complaint retracted!