Bruno Santos <besantos1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> And I do agree with almost everything you say about costs. The point is: > how long does it take? > That's easy to estimate. It takes 10 years for automobiles, and 20 years for heating and cooling equipment (HVAC -- "heating ventilation and air conditioning"). That is how long the equipment lasts. It wear out. You have to replace it anyway after that time. Cold fusion equipment will soon be cheaper than old-fashioned gas-fired equipment, so when it comes time to replace equipment, everyone will select cold fusion version. > Not every family, company nor country is wealth enough to just give it up > on old technology and adopt new ones . . . > As I said, every family company and country has to replace all equipment anyway, every 20 years. > , even if the new one is way much cheaper to mantain. There is a sunk cost > that needs to be recovered. > Consumers never recover "sunk costs." When your car wears out you buy a new one. That's all there is to it. The power company needs to recover its sunk costs if it is going to make a profit. But consumers do not care whether the power company makes a profit. We couldn't care less if it goes out of business. If the power company is left with $1 trillion worth of useless obsolete infrastructure and rusting equipment . . . Why would I care? I'm not a stockholder. I am not going to pay the power company and gas companies $150 a month for something I can get for free. That would be like paying for punchcard equipment when I can buy a 2 TB hard disk for $100. The people manufacturing vacuum tubes had sunk costs in their glassblowing and fabrication machinery. The customers went ahead and bought transistors instead of vacuum tubes, because customers did not care at all that vacuum tube manufacturers were losing money and going out of business. We don't care whether the power company goes bankrupt or not. As for OPEC, BP, Exxon and the other oil companies, I think many people would be pleased to see them go bankrupt. We would pay extra for cold fusion just to help make that happen. > Real cost of oil to Saudi Arabia is not US$ 100 per barrel. It's way, way > cheaper. It's just that they make more money selling it to USA, Europe or > China than burning it on their backyards. > Hydrogen in cold fusion produces millions times more energy than oil and it costs nothing. There will not even be a market for oil used as raw material in plastics. It will be cheaper and safer to manufacture hydrocarbons from hydrogen and carbon locally. That takes more energy than you get from burning the stuff, but no one will care because the energy will cost nothing. I discuss all of this in my book, by the way. - Jed
