Clean Planet Ltd (Japan) updates

Quote from Shane D.

Now, like always with anything LENR, comes the long waiting game to see if they can deliver.

Not a chance. The whole annoucement is a travesty. It destroys their credibility. As I wrote in the other thread where Ruby posted this --

You don't go from 350 W to 600 kW, a factor of 1,700 larger. You go to 1000 W at most, and you make and distribute thousands of prototypes. Unless the reaction is fully under control, 600 kW would be very dangerous. We will not know it is fully under control until it is tested in hundreds of labs run by regulators and safety testing companies.

600 kW is more than enough to kill someone from a steam explosion. If the reactor goes even a little out of control, it will destroy a building. No one is going to introduce a commercial product in 2025 that produces that much power from an unknown nuclear reaction which has no theoretical explanation. That is completely out of the question. . . .

Any government regulator or local official who allowed a 600 kW nuclear reactor to operate, when no one has any idea how or why it works, would end up in prison. Rightfully so, in my opinion.

Iwamura himself expressed some disbelief about these announcements. I agree with him.

From the Clean Planet website:

October 2022: "We have reorganized our team to strengthen the R&D structure, with the appointment of three new executive officers: Chief Science Officer, Chief Engineer Officer, and Chief Thermal Engineering Officer."

Quote from JedRothwell

That's ridiculous. You don't go from 350 W to 600 kW, a factor of 1,700 larger. You go to 1000 W at most, and you make and distribute thousands of prototypes. Unless the reaction is fully under control, 600 kW would be very dangerous. We will not know it is fully under control until it is tested in hundreds of labs run by regulators and safety testing companies.

600 kW is more than enough to kill someone from a steam explosion. If the reactor goes even a little out of control, it will destroy a building. No one is going to introduce a commercial product in 2025 that produces that much power from an unknown nuclear reaction which has no theoretical explanation. That is completely out of the question. When they say they are going to do that, it destroys their credibility.

Frankly, I find their claims difficult to believe for those reasons and many others. I would have a lot more confidence if they would release an independent evaluation or replication.

That's an update from Clean Planet. I will check for a typo, but that is what we are getting from Clean Planet. Also, given that value correct, I believe they are not jumping straight to that, but doing a 10 kW first.

I will post the reply from CP here to discuss further: RE: Clean Planet Ltd (Japan) updates

Quote from JedRothwell

That's ridiculous. You don't go from 350 W to 600 kW, a factor of 1,700 larger. You go to 1000 W at most

My reading of the (green) tea leaves is that they are aiming for a 2.8kW modEL and then a 10kW modULE, and that bigger plants would be an assembly of modules. eg 60 x 10kW for a 600kW system.

Quote from rubycarat

That's an update from Clean Planet. I will check for a typo, but that is what we are getting from Clean Planet.

That is probably an accurate quote from them. In my opinion, they have often issued questionable statements. As I said, they should release some independent corroboration.

Quote from rubycarat

Also, given that value correct, I believe they are not jumping straight to that, but doing a 10 kW first.

10 kW is also ridiculous. Frankly, I do not think anyone should experiment with any cold fusion reactor larger than 10 W. Not until thousands of experts have tested them to a fair-thee-well, and we know exactly how they work, and how to control them. Scaling up to even 1 kW is asking for trouble. There is nothing to be learned from 1 kW that you could not more easily and more accurately learn from a 10 W reactor.

There has to be a theory that explains the reaction, that experts worldwide agree upon. It does not necessarily have to be right, but it has to be approved by places like the DoE and Underwriter's Laboratory. The public will not allow a nuclear reactor that no one can explain. I wouldn't allow such a thing, and no one is more in favor of cold fusion than me.

If you distributed 100 reactors of 10 W each to some major labs, within weeks every person on earth would know that cold fusion is real. Hundreds of millions of dollars per day would flood into the field. Every technical problem would be quickly solved. Whoever holds the patents would soon be making billions of dollars a year. There is absolutely no need to scale up to 1 kW, or 10 kW, or 600 kW in the early stages. It serves no purpose in business or technology. It would violate countless safety regulations. It would be an insane thing to do.

It reminds me of the "scaled up" 1898 Maxim airplane:

This machine could not possibly fly. It did leave the track, and crash. It was uncontrolled. The only thing it could have done in free flight would be to kill the pilot and crash. It was wrong-headed in every way, and it contributed nothing to the progress of aviation. A 10 kW cold fusion reactor would probably be as bad as this. Possibly worse. If it explodes or irradiates someone, it could bring about the end of all cold fusion research.

i think JedRothwell is right...However what apparently was written inside this website isn't correlated with what Iwamura said when Alan Smith interviewed him recently.

i invite you to review this video.

Quote from JedRothwell

Not a chance. The whole annoucement is a travesty. It destroys their credibility. As I wrote in the other thread where Ruby posted this --

You don't go from 350 W to 600 kW, a factor of 1,700 larger. You go to 1000 W at most, and you make and distribute thousands of prototypes. Unless the reaction is fully under control, 600 kW would be very dangerous. We will not know it is fully under control until it is tested in hundreds of labs run by regulators and safety testing companies.

600 kW is more than enough to kill someone from a steam explosion. If the reactor goes even a little out of control, it will destroy a building. No one is going to introduce a commercial product in 2025 that produces that much power from an unknown nuclear reaction which has no theoretical explanation. That is completely out of the question. . . .

Any government regulator or local official who allowed a 600 kW nuclear reactor to operate, when no one has any idea how or why it works, would end up in prison. Rightfully so, in my opinion.

Iwamura himself expressed some disbelief about these announcements. I agree with him.

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Hi JedRothwell

Iwamura is deadly serious about his 10kW system ambition. And he is not a salesman, he's a scientist of the highest calibre. And it's not as if this is a back-street operation, CP, Miura, Mitsubishi, Toyota are all collaborating on this project. And you know the culture, would they collectively want to lose kigyō no shinrai-sei?

Quote from Alan Smith

Iwamura is deadly serious about his 10kW system ambition.

No doubt he is, but I think it is a very stupid, very dangerous plan. I do not see how it can help the science, the technology, or the business prospects for cold fusion.

Quote from Alan Smith

And he is not a salesman, he's a scientist of the highest calibre.

I have spoken with him. In common with many scientists, he has little knowledge of the history of technology, or how businesses succeed, what is needed to convince the world that cold fusion is real, or why convincing people is important. Many scientists and others in this field think that scaling up is important. They think it has some scientific significance. (I don't see any significance.) They think it is the key to success, or that it will convince people. I think they are wrong. I have described the reasons why I think so, many times. They have not responded, and I see no evidence they understand what I am saying. A few scientists agree with me, including Storms, Bockris and Fleischmann. The latter two because they had a lot of experience developing products for corporations for use in real-world applications. They knew that you have to understand and control a process in the lab, with a lab-bench scale small device, before you scale up. They understood the role of regulatory agencies and safety regulations. They understood that it will take billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of people to make cold fusion into a practical source of energy. That is the first thing Fleischmann told me when the subject came up. I knew exactly what he meant.

You say Iwamura is not a salesman. He sure isn't, and that is the problem. A good technical salesman would design a wise R&D program, that is likely to succeed, and that will convince corporate clients. Somehow they have convinced people at Miura. I suppose they must have impressive results. But scaling up at this stage is no way to commercialize them. Perhaps the people at Miura are also misguided or do not understand history. I have seen many corporate R&D projects fail for reasons that seemed amateur to me.

Look at that Maxim 1898 scaled up airplane. It was an utter failure. It accomplished nothing. Do you know what solved the problem? Samples of metal a few inches long, mounted in a lab bench scale balance in a small wind tunnel, here:

1901 Wright Wind Tunnel

Without the wind tunnel data and the equations derived from it, any attempt to build and fly an airplane would have killed the pilot and accomplished nothing. The same goes for scaling up a nuclear reaction you know nothing about. Understanding must come first. It is far easier to test and understand a small, 10 W reaction than a 1 kW reaction. Trying to measure and control a 10 kW reaction you do not understand, or a 600 kW one, would be a nightmare. Large scale calorimetry is crude and approximate. Factory engineers tell me they seldom know within 10% how much energy they are using.

This seems to be one of the latest Clean Planet patents.

US20220034599A1 - Heat utilization system, and heat generating device - Google Patents

There are 77 pages, and a lot of diagrams (I even notice they are showing the use of a Stirling engine, amongst other devices, for electrical power generation). However, at a quick read-through, they still seem to be vague over the exact mechanism that enables heat to be released when hydrogen diffuses through the "heat generating element" (as they call it).

A patent, of course, is not required to be a treatise on detailed background scientific theory. It is meant to be a "how to" guide, with sufficient information for anyone "skilled in the art" to be able to follow and build a device that accomplishes the same end effect.

So, are there separate scientific publications, from the company or any of its researchers, detailing the theories that they are relying upon when designing these devices?

Quote from Frogfall

A patent, of course, is not required to be a treatise on detailed background scientific theory. It is meant to be a "how to" guide, with sufficient information for anyone "skilled in the art" to be able to follow and build a device that accomplishes the same end effect.

The late David French, a patent expert, often said that you should not include any theory in a patent. The theory might be wrong, which will invalidate the patent. Including the theory will not strengthen the patent. It will not make it more likely people will pay royalties.

Quote from Frogfall

So, are there separate scientific publications, from the company or any of its researchers, detailing the theories that they are relying upon when designing these devices?

I hope they have such a theory. It would make sense for a corporation to keep such a theory under wraps at this stage. They would have to reveal it to Miura. You cannot develop a safe, 10 kW reactor without a theory. Or at least, a detailed, very reliable model that has been extensively tested. Many aspects of nuclear reactors in the 1950s depended on such models, according to old-school physicists I used to know. (A model is a kind of mathematical black box. You input various measurements, run the equation, and answer appears. You cannot explain it according to first principle physics. The Wright's wind tunnel data was like that, and so were all steam engines until modern thermodynamics began in 1850 with Clausius. McKubre's equation is a model for Pd-D electrochemical cold fusion.)

Perhaps Miura can make a prototype 10 kW reactor with such a theory or model. Perhaps it would be safe. I wouldn't know. But you could not begin selling, installing, and operating 10 kW or 600 kW reactors until that theory or model is tested by thousands of experts, and they all agreed it is robust and it works.

. . . It may be that some new technology is no longer amenable to theory or models. That could spell trouble. Self-driving automobiles work with deep learning multi-layer neural networks. These things are inherently impossible to understand, because they are so complex. They have billions of parameters. Data goes in and an answer comes out. I guess you could trace down the steps that one small sample of that data goes through. But there is a torrent of data. I suppose it would take a person thousands of man years to sort through what happens in one minute. The whole thing is so opaque I worry it might never become practical or proven safe. When a self-driving car makes a mistake, the engineers can work out why, and they can fix it, but there are an unlimited number of mistakes in the complexity of driving in the real world.

Quote from JedRothwell

Perhaps Miura can make a prototype 10 kW reactor with such a theory or model. Perhaps it would be safe. I wouldn't know. But you could not begin selling, installing, and operating 10 kW or 600 kW reactors until that theory or model is tested by thousands of experts, and they all agreed it is robust and it works.

Iwamura has said that meeting regulatory requirements is the biggest obstacle they face. And btw, I don't think the business plan is his, I think it is CP's.

RobertBryant grabbed a frame from Iwamura's ICCF24 presentation that looked as if they were still scratching around for a decent hypothesis - suggesting no real working theory. See:

Post

RE: IWAHLM Conference September 25th 2022

Iwamura..
lenr-forum.com/attachment/21981/Heatbursts..trapped hydrogen hypothesis TM46.55

RobertBryant

Sep 28th 2022

Below is the summary slide from the same presentation:

It also implies that background theory is somewhat lacking.

The "spontaneous heat burst" (i.e. uncontrolled) is also slightly worrying, especially from an up-scaling perspective.

This is why a classic industrial strategy won't work about LENRs, you will have to be more smarter, provocative.

Rossi and the Doral's case were sadly the proof of this.

Quote from Alan Smith

Iwamura has said that meeting regulatory requirements is the biggest obstacle they face. And btw, I don't think the business plan is his, I think it is CP's.

Quote from Cydonia

i think JedRothwell is right...However what apparently was written inside this website isn't correlated with what Iwamura said when Alan Smith interviewed him recently.

i invite you to review this video.

I went back and watched the Iwamura interview again. At the beginning Iwamura says "they (CP) are developing the larger scale products using our experiment method". Throughout the remainder of the interview he continues to refer to CP working on the higher power systems...not him. Before the interview I thought he was directly involved with all aspects of CP's R/D, but now, IMO, it looks as if he works only on the research side to improve the "method", while a separate CP team is working on the power levels they feel is needed to put a product on the market.

So that may be why his tone and timeline for commercialization are more cautious than CP. I would imagine if you went to any company doing R/D, and asked the Research Department their opinion on when the public can expect a product, it would be different from what the Development Dept. would say. Maybe the lesson here is only let your marketing people be interviewed!

Anyway, Iwamura does not seem to have the least doubt about the tech, or it's potential, and does seem genuinely excited by the prospects of getting to market within 10 years. He makes it clear that the reason for taking so long is "regulations", so I think he understands the realities.

Quote from Frogfall

It also implies that background theory is somewhat lacking.

That is putting it diplomatically.

Quote from Frogfall

The "spontaneous heat burst" (i.e. uncontrolled) is also slightly worrying, especially from an up-scaling perspective.

Amen! A spontaneous heat burst at 350 W is no big deal. I suppose. Depending on the magnitude of it. I guess if it is never more than ~10% it would be okay. With a 600 kW reactor, 60 kW coming out of nowhere could lead to a disaster. A fatal explosion. You cannot make practical technology with "spontaneous heat bursts."

That is not to say this research is a waste of time. Or that there is no prospect of practical technology. The Clean Planet work could be the key to cold fusion. If it can be widely replicated, and intense research is conducted in many labs, researchers might quickly get to the bottom of it. They might learn how to control it. The Clean Planet patents might then be worth billions of dollars. But as things now stand I think this is unlikely. I have the impression this is a small group of mostly elderly people pottering around in isolation with obsolete instruments, given to them by Mitsubishi. Maybe the Miura people are better equipped. I hope so. Modern scientific research demands much more capital intensive, manpower intensive efforts. Hundreds of millions in the first stage and billions more later on. It is worth every penny! The price is trivial compared to the benefits.

You are never going to motivate big corporations, big banks and government agencies to throw hundreds of millions at the problem until you first distribute small cells to convince everyone the effect is real. The cells do not have to work every time. If one out of four works, that would be fine.

They should try accomplish something with what they have now, even if it cannot be made practical or scaled up. They can use it to trigger interest and generate much more funding -- which I think is essential. They should do this instead of reaching for an unrealistic goal of a 600 kW practical device in the near term. They need to follow Theodore Roosevelt's dictum: "Do what you can, with what you've got, where you are."

Quote from Alan Smith

Iwamura has said that meeting regulatory requirements is the biggest obstacle they face.

Yes! Obviously!!! That is what I have been saying for years. Experiments are one thing. Deploying machines that might explode, irradiate or kill thousands of people is quite another. It would be insane for regulators to allow this technology to be freely used at this stage. Setting "practical technology" as your immediate goal at this stage is bound to fail. There are many paths to success. Many step-by-step approaches might succeed. But you have to do everything from A to Z. You cannot skip over the part where experts in every country put a stamp of approval on the product. This is an unknown nuclear reaction, for crying out loud! Not a new recipe for chocolate chip cookies. Nuclear reactions are the most dangerous things ever discovered. Everyone knows they could destroy civilization in 30 minutes. We must get a handle on this before we deploy it.

Quote from Alan Smith

And btw, I don't think the business plan is his, I think it is CP's.

Whoever wrote it needs to read some books about the history of technology and business.

At the risk of derailing the thread a little, I think this conversation gets into a deeper question about the unique sociological context of LENR, and the most likely path out of the perdition that the field finds itself in.

More than one person has made the point that the path to scientific acceptance doesn't necessarily run through a single team getting over the line to a commercial product.

Instead, one could advance the proposition that what's necessary isn't commercially useful heat, but rather, a relatively simple, straight forward, replicable and very unambiguous reference experiment.

Said differently, the path to a commercial product might ultimately run through a commercially useless experiment.

Such a reference experiment, asserted by a multi-team group with suitable imprimatur (a NASA / Navy / Google co-publication for example), in a suitably respectable journal (like Nature), could be enough to prompt the reassessment of the field.

The purpose of such an experiment wouldn't be to do anything commercially useful, but simply to be completely unambiguous and to 'travel' well, for the lack of a better term. An interested scientist could have a reasonably good chance of picking it up and replicating it from a standing start. They could see it with their own eyes.

This then precipitating a robust funding of academic and industry involvement in the field.

The characterisation of the 'ideal' reference experiment seems to be an open question, but Righes et al.'s work (if it pans out) and co-deposition both seem like decent candidates.

Such an attempt at characterisation could consider experiments on their complexity, their experimental design, their need for specialised equipment, the products that the experiment produces (heat, particles, transmutation, tritium, etc), the quantities of those products, the difficulty of measuring those products, how those products are likely to be interpreted, which types of products are likely to be 'more believable', experiment specific pain points or unique features (eg. the difficulty of loading in bulk electrolysis; the high loading of codep), etc.

For example, one could suggest that tritium measurements from codeposition cells would be preferable to excess heat in gas phase experiments measured using Google's calorimeter, according to this schema.

Maybe another way of saying this is that the characterisation of an 'ideal' reference experiment requires working outwards from a kind of, for the lack of a better term, 'strategic empathy' for those who are not currently au fait with, or reject, the field.

Such a reference experiment wouldn't simply be an exercise in science, but also an exercise in strategy, designed to traverse the uniquely challenging sociological context of the field.

Quote from Cydonia

However what apparently was written inside this website isn't correlated with what Iwamura said...

....and this of course raises some doubts.

However a life demo with independent verification could be an eye opener.

Quote from orsova

Instead, one could advance the proposition that what's necessary isn't commercially useful heat, but rather, a relatively simple, straight forward, replicable and very unambiguous reference experiment.

Said differently, the path to a commercial product might ultimately run through a commercially useless experiment.

Yes! I have been saying this for years. That was how other discoveries advanced. Well known examples include the airplane, the laser and the transistor. The first implementations were useless, but they spurred widespread research and rapid progress. The airplane and the laser (maser in the first implementation) also faced opposition from academic politics, the way cold fusion does.

Quote from orsova

The characterisation of the 'ideal' reference experiment seems to be an open question, but Righes et al.'s work (if it pans out) and co-deposition both seem like decent candidates.

The LEC might be a good candidate.

Quote from orsova

For example, one could suggest that tritium measurements

Parchi reported tritium from a LEC. If that can be replicated it might be a good way to convince people. The beauty of tritium is that it stays around, unlike heat. Heat is transient. Tritium can be measured weeks later at another lab. Or at many other labs.

Very interesting thread which is flying beyond this CP business.

Well, from the Iwamura video, he considered the 10 years duration as a still far target to reach for business.

As we can see on picture, CP is a company of youngers ( than Iwamura ) more positive, ambitious, they are still highly hungry when Iwamura is rather more experimented by the life as formers generally

I remember some discussions i have had at Renault car company around the new battery field.

So many companies with new battery technologies proposed to deal with them.

Finally Renault as the others remained currently sticked with the lithium/ion way.

To marketed a new technology, it must be good on so many different themes both. Even if a new chemistry battery have proposed an higher power, in the same time, the duration, the loading cycles, price, etc have to be considered both.

In the case of CP current technology, this is the same, the ON/OFF delay, the tuning ability, the security, the ability to well drive, to be fitted inside another equipment must be considered.

Even if all these points could be reached in several years, the people don't have to forget that even the current nuclear way which reached these market needs since a while, for example in EU, has been discredited by flower lobbying.

These lobbys enhanced finally the use of coal and gases..

Considering that, how Lenr could take credibility ?

By a mainstream strategy as done Rossi or plan CP, definitively no.

Only a "disruptive strategy " could be the key.

Quote from Shane D.

I went back and watched the Iwamura interview again. At the beginning Iwamura says "they (CP) are developing the larger scale products using our experiment method". Throughout the remainder of the interview he continues to refer to CP working on the higher power systems...not him. Before the interview I thought he was directly involved with all aspects of CP's R/D, but now, IMO, it looks as if he works only on the research side to improve the "method", while a separate CP team is working on the power levels they feel is needed to put a product on the market.

So that may be why his tone and timeline for commercialization are more cautious than CP. I would imagine if you went to any company doing R/D, and asked the Research Department their opinion on when the public can expect a product, it would be different from what the Development Dept. would say. Maybe the lesson here is only let your marketing people be interviewed!

Anyway, Iwamura does not seem to have the least doubt about the tech, or it's potential, and does seem genuinely excited by the prospects of getting to market within 10 years. He makes it clear that the reason for taking so long is "regulations", so I think he understands the realities.

In fact we have to fit a Lenr module to a large "megaphone"