Someone told me those are Troy ounces, which are heavier than garden variety ounce-ounces. Perhaps they also launch a thousand ships. See also the millihelen:
"A unit of measure of pulchritude, corresponding to the amount of beauty required to launch one ship." Note: this is not included in the Système International d'unités, even though that is French. Okay, let me add there are several conservative assumptions in my estimate which I did not enumerate. I am assuming there is practically no improvement in related technology, which is silly. For example: Even with cold fusion central generators, we could have small ones, in 1 MW range. They could be close to population centers, or in population centers where there are now transformers. This would greatly reduce transmission and distribution losses (T&D). It is unreasonable to assume that thermal conversion efficiency will not improve. The 60% duty cycle may be too conservative. I estimated that from the demand for electricity, which falls at night. You cannot turn off a fission nuclear plant, but you can turn off natural gas or -- probably -- cold fusion, so you probably would. So it would only run 16 hours a day (60% duty cycle). However, Elon Musk is now trying to make tremendous numbers of batteries very cheaply. If he succeeds, we can leave the cold fusion generator on 24-hours a day and store up the electricity. The duty cycle is close to 100% and the spreadsheet tells me that's . . . 15% of today's electricity in Scenario 1, and 150% in Scenario 2. Musk is trying to do this so that we can use solar power, or wind power. It works out better and cheaper for Pd-D cold fusion power. With Ni or Ti, you would not need batteries at all, except for a transient increases in demand. - Jed
