Posted on 11/16/2011 10:23:18 PM PST by Kevmo
The Peak Oil Crisis: Transitioning to Cold Fusion By Tom Whipple
Wednesday, November 16 2011 02:45:44 PM
Events move quickly these days. Two weeks ago we were watching Bologna, Italy where an entrepreneur and a retired physics professor claimed to have discovered the Holy Grail of energy - cold fusion or as it is now known: Low Energy Nuclear Reactions. At the time, there was (and still is) widespread concern that the various demonstrations of an energy-producing devices were a scam as the developers, for commercial reasons, refused to give outsiders access to their inner workings .
If you are coming late to this story, the Italians' "energy catalyzer" is a table-top-sized device containing powdered nickel known as the "reactor." When hydrogen is introduced into the container and heat is applied, the device gets hotter and hotter so that the output of heat exceeds the input by so much that no known chemical reaction can be responsible for generating the heart. This leads to the conclusion that the hydrogen is fusing with the nickel producing energy similar to that coming from the sun or from the detonation of a hydrogen bomb .
Now so much energy coming from such a small and inexpensive device, in violation of what are thought to be the principles of physics, seems too good to be true. As this phenomenon had not been independently repeated and verified by other laboratories, many pronounced it a fraud, a few the greatest breakthrough of the age, and the rest of us remained agnostic while awaiting further developments .
They were not long in coming. Last week it was learned that George Miley, a Professor Emeritus of nuclear engineering at the University of Illinois who has been conducting experiments similar to those in Italy for many years, has been observing anomalous amounts of heat emanating from test equipment similar to that being used in Bologna. Miley has been experimenting with palladium-zirconium alloys, but says his experiments are producing so much heat that could only be coming from fusion of atomic nuclei. Unlike the Italian experiments which are aimed at developing a proprietary commercial product, the Illinois experiments are being conducting under the auspices of a state university with details of the experiments being made known as soon as possible. At a university the aim of scientific research is to win a Nobel Prize, or at least academic prestige, not to make money .
While a second report does not adequately confirm that heat-producing, low-energy nuclear reactions are a real phenomenon, it is does seem to reduce the likelihood of fraud on the part of a single man or organization. Furthermore it increases the possibility that we could be witnessing the early stages of what could be one of the greatest scientific discoveries in human history - production of unlimited amounts of cheap, pollution-free energy .
We could be witnessing the early stages of one of the greatest scientific discoveries in human history .
Let's suspend our disbelief for a few moments that anything too-good-to-be-true ever happens anymore, and pretend that these reports really do portend the age of low energy nuclear fusion; that within decades energy shortages will be a thing of the past; and every person on earth could, and I say could advisedly, be blessed with unlimited amounts of cheap energy .
The problem for now, of course, is getting from here to there. Most of you likely have noticed that the world is beset with an abnormal amount of trouble at the minute - the EU financial system is coming unstuck; many think that the fabled "double-dip" recession (depression?) is only weeks away; governance of the US is in near gridlock; global warming's droughts and floods have many hungry, dying of thirst, or standing in water up to their armpits; world oil production is on course to starting dropping within the next few years; and there are now seven billion of us running around with the UN projecting we could number 15 billion by the end of the century .
For now all we have are some promising laboratory experiments and a handful of prototypes. It is starting to look as if there could be many ways of making heat by getting hydrogen to fuse with metal at low temperatures. Sorting out which method would be best, even one to get started with, is likely to take some time. Then somebody needs to tell the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that we would like to install some 100 million or so nuclear reactors, albeit small ones, in our buildings .
Then there are the rice bowls that would have to be broken. Somebody will have to tell OPEC, Exxon, the power companies, coal mines, and gas well frackers that we won't be needing their services anymore and that they should get into some other line of work. This, of course, raises the possibility that the Congress, under pressure from lobbyists, chambers, and unemployed constituents, outlaws fusion reactors under one pretext or another - no matter how well and cheaply they might work. The point of all this is to say that there could be considerable resistance to the advent of cheap, clean energy that will inevitably upset many apple carts even if it promises to save mankind from extinction by an ever-warming climate .
There is another side of this story however. Much of the world is desperate (or soon will be) for affordable energy. Japan and the EU have little or no indigenous supplies of fossil fuels remaining and are backing away from conventional nuclear power as too dangerous. Even the Chinese are catching on that too much carbon in the air can be hazardous to your economic well-being. Europe, Japan, Korea, India, and China are not incompetent in technological matters. Nor are they as susceptible to pressures from the old order seeking to preserve its ways of making money .
If the current experiments are repeatable and the technology is viable, cold fusion is likely to go viral very quickly with thousands of laboratories and corporations around the world rushing for a piece of the next Internet. The next year or so could tell us a lot about the course of civilization in coming decades .
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Tom Whipple is a retired government analyst and has been following the peak oil issue for several years.
I would assume that the home units will have city or well water running through them. What are they going to look like after six months? And how do you know it's just water scale, and something else isn't involved? That's a lot of scale for a few hours operation.
It's a picture from the October 6th demo, and it looks just like the units that went into the cargo container that the mystery "customer" "bought."
They already have a "perpetual motion" power generator that sounds far more impressive than Rossi's tea kettle. It generates electricity and heat without any fuel, which is far better than having to rely on Rossi to provide recharges of his magic pixie dust every six months.
Rossi seems to be consistently picking partners with histories of gullibility and/or fraud.
Powder..patch..ball FIRE!
Have you EVER in your life cleaned out a hot water heater? EH? They work perfectly fine for YEARS or DECADES processing hot water with electric heating elements while precipitating scale all the time..
What on earth makes you think this technology would be any different? (OH yeah - gotta maintain the argument).
If I cleaned one after a few hours operation I'd expect it to be like new.
Have you EVER in your life cleaned out a hot water heater? If I cleaned one after a few hours operation I'd expect it to be like new.
DOH.. Production water heater built on assembly line runs at 170 Fahrenheit. DOH.. prototype E-cat (you keep forgetting the prototype part) runs at significantly greater temps. and have you EVER seen any of Thomas Edison's prototype light bulbs? They don't look anything like what we have off of production lines today..
Then it should be built accordingly. If those are deposits, that thing isn't going to last six months. I'd expect that a prototype so close to production would be similar to a unit being sold, especially with the availability of today's materials.
It’s either the greatest technological advancement since prehistoric man learned to make fire, or a scam.
IMHO, in the short term we’d be better off working on COAL fusion (turning solid fossil fuels into liquids and gasses) than cold fusion.
BTW, Rossi can barely make water boil, so the temperatures wouldn’t be much great than a water heater.
I'd expect that a prototype so close to production would be similar to a unit being sold, especially with the availability of today's materials.
Doh.. Maybe they are, the picture you showed was of a prototype - prototype - prototype (say it with me, you can do it).
You expect too much for somebody who has nothing more invested in a technology other than hot air. Your arguments get sadder and easier to refute every time.
9) and convinced a bunch of Greek crooks to set up a dummy company called DefkalionDefkalion was set up to hype Rossi's E-Cat. Their internet domain was created the day before Rossi's first public dog & pony show.
The very first sentence of THIS document states:
Defkalion Green Technologies s.a. was established to manufacture and market products based on the E-Cat, which was invented by Andrea Rossi.So, this part of your argument actually supports the opposite of what you're trying to prove.
How do you know the unit used for the October 6th test was any different than the ones that were “sold” on October 28th?
:)
Powder..patch..ball FIRE!
Doh... that doesn’t even deserve a response.
But I cant resist.
I wasn’t there and neither were you.
I don’t work in his laboratory (although I wish I could), and neither do you.
I didn’t set up the equipment - oh yeah neither did you.
Are you trying to convince anybody or do you just talk to hear yourself argue?
If I were a customer or an investor, I’d want the issue addressed.
Powder..patch..ball FIRE!
But he can’t help it.
It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt . — George Eliot
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.— Abraham Lincoln (also attr. Confucius)
It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.— Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding. — Bible, ‘Proverbs’ 17:28.
Powder..patch..ball FIRE!
I’m sure Lennox will offer a substantial warranty once they start mass producing units for the home and office.
You can check with your dealer then on the materials and other concerns...
Doh!
Are you thinking of stellar nucleosythesis? That involves a different isotope of nickel.
Here is an explanation of what the author thinks is going on in Rossi's device:
http://www.nyteknik.se/incoming/article3080659.ece/BINARY/Rossi-Focardi_paper.pdf
Uh, wrong. There is very little correspondence between what Rossi purports to be doing and uranium isotope enrichment. Uranium enrichment is not done through transmutation; it is essentially a chemical and/or physical separation process. Rossi is claiming proton and/or electron capture to transmute nickel to copper or the reverse, and those reactions release energy in the form of antiparticles and/or gamma rays.
http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?p=473
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