Terry Blanton wrote:
> That's true, but we don't have cold fusion, do we?
Even if we did, I suspect ramp up time to multi-Gigawatt plants will
render the new plants cost effective.
I am not sure what this means. I think you mean: The time it takes to
ramp cold fusion up to multi-gigawatt plant scale will be long enough
to make a fission reactor installed now cost effective.
To which I say: Naaaa. Never happen. Cold fusion will never be ramped
up to a multi-gigawatt scale, except perhaps for something like a
very large spaceship. Even a large steel mill does not require
gigawatt levels of power. I predict that all generators will be
co-gens sited at the houses, shopping malls or factories where they
are needed. This will take decades to implement this, of course, but
the existing stock of gigawatt power generators will last long enough
to supply our needs during the transition. In fact, I predict that
most of the existing stock of large power generators will not wear
out; they will be scrapped before they reach the end of their useful
lives, because no one will want the electricity they generate.
This is what happened to WWII-era steel mills. They were scrapped
starting in the 1960s because more cost-effective mills were
developed that required fewer workers, so even though the old mill
would have lasted another 30 to 50 years with maintenance and
upgrades, they were scrapped.
The last large-scale generators to be scrapped will be hydroelectric
power at places like Niagara Falls. These were the first modern
generators to be installed and they will be the last to be abandoned.
Perhaps a few will remain in use for something like a high-energy
physics cyclotron, but I expect such gigantic instruments will be
moved to the moon or earth-sun Lagrangian points. The latter is where
you want to put something like a 100,000-km long linear accelerator
used to make miniature black holes for space propulsion applications.
(See A. C. Clarke, "Imperial Earth.")
- Jed
