Is the cold fusion egg about to hatch?

[Ron]

https://aeon.co/opinions/is-the-cold-fusion-egg-about-to-hatch

One of the key figures in this story is Andrea Rossi, a controversial Italian engineer who has claimed for more than five years to have an LENR reactor producing commercially useful amounts of heat. Skeptics are convinced that Rossi’s ‘E‑Cat’ is a scam. Reportedly, however, a 1MW test version has been working in a factory in Florida for most of 2015, under the gaze of an independent monitor.

Results of the "independent" monitor are soon to be released. Apparently the company that has teamed up with Rossi has been buying up a lot LENR related patents and has hired on a professional public relations company ahead of the announcement.

  

[RocketMan]

Unfortunately, we've been here before and it failed to pan out.  This is definitely one of those "believe it when I see it" deals.
More likely Rossi is in the final stages of milking all he can out of investors before pulling the plug with a "Whoops, my bad.  It doesn't really work like I expected" and rushing for the door.

[charby]

Unfortunately, we've been here before and it failed to pan out.  This is definitely one of those "believe it when I see it" deals.
More likely Rossi is in the final stages of milking all he can out of investors before pulling the plug with a "Whoops, my bad.  It doesn't really work like I expected" and rushing for the door.

What he said, seems like every time they think they have something, it just doesn't pan out. Wasn't the last great one to use hydrogen and palladium rods to create helium and use the excess energy from the fusion? Or was it the heavy water route?

[brimic]

Cold fusion looks like a distraction and a sideshow.
Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors are something we should  be looking at. Apparantly they are a cheap, safe energy source that make very little waste.

[dogmush]

Does it matter?

Do any of you see a situation where the people who feel their uneducated feelz are scientific fact would allow widescale nuclear power production in Europe or North America?  I mean short of when we actually do run out of fossil fuels and the lives of enough millions of people have been sacrificed on the altar of wind and solar that there is no other choice between nukes and extinction?  And I'd bet half of them would vote extinction.

This could pan out tomorrow, that company could announce that they are ready to produce self contained Fusion Reactors that can run for 100 years between refueling and need no maintenance.  Just plug them into a grid.  We still wouldn't allow ourselves to use them.  Maybe in space vehicles, if we could convince the idiot class they won't blow up during construction.


That said, I really hope this works.  Controllable Fusion would be awesome to see in my life.

[MechAg94]

Question:  Is any of my tax money being used for this?

If not, I don't care.  I will just keep my ears open for any news.

Maybe fusion reactors would mean hover tanks like Hammer's Slammers.  Just need powerguns next. 

[dogmush]

Question:  Is any of my tax money being used for this?

If not, I don't care.  I will just keep my ears open for any news.

Maybe fusion reactors would mean hover tanks like Hammer's Slammers.  Just need powerguns next. 

Psh on hover tanks.  Controllable fusion leads to Bolos and Hellbores.  I want a Hellbore.

[AJ Dual]

Short version of the story with ECAT was that birdman found flaws and holes in their methodology that one could drive a semi truck through.

And even if for the sake of argument one argues that LENER of various kinds did work, the ECAT was only a 3:1 net energy gain. And that's a result easily swallowed by their testing methodology flaws, which was basically pointing a thermal camera at it to record temperature and comparing that to the electricity they put into the ceramic tube with the powdered catalyst metals and hydrogen.

Tar sand oil is about 3:1 as it is, because of the hot water you have to pump in to melt out the oil. Currently traditional and fracking oil runs around 5:1 at it's worst, but depending on how you count all the inputs can run about as high as 15:1 today. Coal is about 80:1, current light water nuclear counting centrifuge enrichment of Uranium is about 75:1. But has the advantage that all the world's uranium that's easily accessible being thousands of times more energy than all the coal. And breeder reactors and reprocessing can drive that higher. And without the political bottlenecks, next-gen uranium or thorium molten salt or molten metal designs might go as high as 2000:1.

Well placed and constructed dams/hydro can deliver 100:1 vs. construction energy, but the locations one can place dams like that is limited.

[birdman]

Oh god.  Not this again.

For any of these things, this is what I want to see:
1. Run heat engine+generator off the heat "output"
2. Put that electric power back in to its required inputs
3. Sever all other connections
4. Ideally, mount it in an insulated, shielded box, but that really isn't even necessary, as 1-3 is more than sufficient to prove its a fraud
5. Turn it on.
If it's stil, on a week later, hell, a DAY later...ill start listening.

In -all- of these, it's always a "electrical power in, heat out" which makes it super easy to have "excess" energy due to measurement error or outright fraud.
Secondly, as AJ pointed out...at the temperatures its operating at, if it needs electrical in, and the heat output is 3x the electrical input, that would mean EVEN IF THAT WERE TRUE, it would basically be a null-production, as most heat engines at those temps are not much more than 33% efficient.

[AJ Dual]

Oh god.  Not this again.

For any of these things, this is what I want to see:
1. Run heat engine+generator off the heat "output"
2. Put that electric power back in to its required inputs
3. Sever all other connections
4. Ideally, mount it in an insulated, shielded box, but that really isn't even necessary, as 1-3 is more than sufficient to prove its a fraud
5. Turn it on.
If it's stil, on a week later, hell, a DAY later...ill start listening.

In -all- of these, it's always a "electrical power in, heat out" which makes it super easy to have "excess" energy due to measurement error or outright fraud.
Secondly, as AJ pointed out...at the temperatures its operating at, if it needs electrical in, and the heat output is 3x the electrical input, that would mean EVEN IF THAT WERE TRUE, it would basically be a null-production, as most heat engines at those temps are not much more than 33% efficient.

I have to remember that bit. My stepfather is/was all excited about ECAT and I was trying to remember why 1:3, if it even really produces that is not good enough.

[just Warren]

Can thorium or standard nukes beat oil these days? I mean it's proven that we've got lots of the black stuff so wouldn't it be cheaper just to keep driving down that road?

[Balog]

Does it matter?

Do any of you see a situation where the people who feel their uneducated feelz are scientific fact would allow widescale nuclear power production in Europe or North America?  I mean short of when we actually do run out of fossil fuels and the lives of enough millions of people have been sacrificed on the altar of wind and solar that there is no other choice between nukes and extinction?  And I'd bet half of them would vote extinction.

This could pan out tomorrow, that company could announce that they are ready to produce self contained Fusion Reactors that can run for 100 years between refueling and need no maintenance.  Just plug them into a grid.  We still wouldn't allow ourselves to use them.  Maybe in space vehicles, if we could convince the idiot class they won't blow up during construction.


That said, I really hope this works.  Controllable Fusion would be awesome to see in my life.

There are a few Euro countries with significant nuclear power sources as I recall.

[bedlamite]

Can thorium or standard nukes beat oil these days? I mean it's proven that we've got lots of the black stuff so wouldn't it be cheaper just to keep driving down that road?

[just Warren]

I meant in cost to develop and maintain. Oil might be just good enough and easy enough to get that the energy advantage of nukes isn't enough to compete.

Though I'm all for thorium and nukes, of course.

[AJ Dual]

birdman has done the math.

We have so much fission power potential, we could make hydrocarbons or methanol fuel from scratch from C02 in the air and seawater and meet the entire world's demand for anything that's inconvenient to power directly with electricity that way.

The disadvantages to fission are all political/regulatory IMO. There's several next-gen reactor designs just gathering dust that are "walk-away safe". Meaning the operators could turn every control, valve, pipe, pump, and knob to the worst possible setting and leave, and never come back, and the reactor won't have a meltdown or explode etc.

I suppose depending on the technology used, there's issues with weapons/proliferation for countries and ideologies we don't like, and don't like us very much, but I think that the ginormous rise in the standard of living worldwide would alleviate a lot of that. Yes, 9/11 hijackers and AQ leadership was all educated/wealthy already, as is much of the IS power structure too, but the rest of the world's incentives to cooperate and contain those types would go up too. And the oil money and the ways it flows would dry up, things I think that would compensate.

And we'd have so much energy to spare and economic wealth worldwide, digging really deep-ass holes into the continental crust in subduction zones for any waste that can't be recycled/reprocessed to get more fuel out of it and reducing it's radioactivity to a safe level, we can just toss it in those holes and forget about it.  And it would eventually cycle into the magma layer over geologic time.

[birdman]

birdman has done the math.

We have so much fission power potential, we could make hydrocarbons or methanol fuel from scratch from C02 in the air and seawater and meet the entire world's demand for anything that's inconvenient to power directly with electricity that way.

The disadvantages to fission are all political/regulatory IMO. There's several next-gen reactor designs just gathering dust that are "walk-away safe". Meaning the operators could turn every control, valve, pipe, pump, and knob to the worst possible setting and leave, and never come back, and the reactor won't have a meltdown or explode etc.

I suppose depending on the technology used, there's issues with weapons/proliferation for countries and ideologies we don't like, and don't like us very much, but I think that the ginormous rise in the standard of living worldwide would alleviate a lot of that. Yes, 9/11 hijackers and AQ leadership was all educated/wealthy already, as is much of the IS power structure too, but the rest of the world's incentives to cooperate and contain those types would go up too. And the oil money and the ways it flows would dry up, things I think that would compensate.

And we'd have so much energy to spare and economic wealth worldwide, digging really deep-ass holes into the continental crust in subduction zones for any waste that can't be recycled/reprocessed to get more fuel out of it and reducing it's radioactivity to a safe level, we can just toss it in those holes and forget about it.  And it would eventually cycle into the magma layer over geologic time.

Yeah.  What AJ said. 
<proud slow clap from the back of the room>

[KD5NRH]

There's several next-gen reactor designs just gathering dust that are "walk-away safe". Meaning the operators could turn every control, valve, pipe, pump, and knob to the worst possible setting and leave, and never come back, and the reactor won't have a meltdown or explode etc.

But leaving every audio device in the place looping Justin Beiber's entire discography would be worse than a meltdown.

[AJ Dual]

But leaving every audio device in the place looping Justin Beiber's entire discography would be worse than a meltdown.

No, that's perfect. It would keep people away.

[RocketMan]

But leaving every audio device in the place looping Justin Beiber's entire discography would be worse than a meltdown.

No, that's perfect. It would keep people away.

No, it's likely the only thing that could cause a major malfunction of those types of reactor technology.

[cordex]

No, it's likely the only thing that could cause a major malfunction of those types of reactor technology.

Do you consider suicide a malfunction?

[MechAg94]

No, that's perfect. It would keep people away.

Keeping people away is nice, but if you don't want to be there either it defeats the purpose.

[RevDisk]

birdman has done the math.

We have so much fission power potential, we could make hydrocarbons or methanol fuel from scratch from C02 in the air and seawater and meet the entire world's demand for anything that's inconvenient to power directly with electricity that way.

The disadvantages to fission are all political/regulatory IMO. There's several next-gen reactor designs just gathering dust that are "walk-away safe". Meaning the operators could turn every control, valve, pipe, pump, and knob to the worst possible setting and leave, and never come back, and the reactor won't have a meltdown or explode etc.

I suppose depending on the technology used, there's issues with weapons/proliferation for countries and ideologies we don't like, and don't like us very much, but I think that the ginormous rise in the standard of living worldwide would alleviate a lot of that. Yes, 9/11 hijackers and AQ leadership was all educated/wealthy already, as is much of the IS power structure too, but the rest of the world's incentives to cooperate and contain those types would go up too. And the oil money and the ways it flows would dry up, things I think that would compensate.

And we'd have so much energy to spare and economic wealth worldwide, digging really deep-ass holes into the continental crust in subduction zones for any waste that can't be recycled/reprocessed to get more fuel out of it and reducing it's radioactivity to a safe level, we can just toss it in those holes and forget about it.  And it would eventually cycle into the magma layer over geologic time.

What AJ said. It's perfectly on point.

I'd also like to point out, any time anyone says something about inventing a new "cold fusion" or "warp drive" or "refreshing diet soda that tastes great", start with the assumption that they are lying. Because they are and they're scamming someone.

[AJ Dual]

What AJ said. It's perfectly on point.

I'd also like to point out, any time anyone says something about inventing a new "cold fusion" or "warp drive" or "refreshing diet soda that tastes great", start with the assumption that they are lying. Because they are and they're scamming someone.

Or... more positively, that engineers and scientists have the same potential for the human failings of "confirmation bias" and self-deception everyone else does. 

[Balog]

Or... more positively, that engineers and scientists have the same potential for the human failings of "confirmation bias" and self-deception everyone else does. 

Or... more cynically, they know they can publish utter bullsht in "prestigious peer reviewed journals" to get funding and never be called on it.

http://www.jove.com/blog/2012/05/03/studies-show-only-10-of-published-science-articles-are-reproducible-what-is-happening

[RevDisk]

Or... more positively, that engineers and scientists have the same potential for the human failings of "confirmation bias" and self-deception everyone else does. 

Or... more cynically, they know they can publish utter bullsht in "prestigious peer reviewed journals" to get funding and never be called on it.

http://www.jove.com/blog/2012/05/03/studies-show-only-10-of-published-science-articles-are-reproducible-what-is-happening

AJ is correct, but Balrog stated it more correctly. 

I suspect (coughknowcough) that a lot scientists are deceiving themselves about the quality of their work, and rationalize themselves out of it as much as they can.

"Our controls are crap, our findings aren't reproducible, but the results support the greater good!"
"Er, things are turning out bad, but I have a mortgage to pay and kids to feed so maybe if I 'optimize' my datasets.. Just a bit, of course."
"Ok, THIS experiment is crap because I don't have the funding or time I need, but if I word it just right I can get funding for a proper study..."