Terry Blanton <[email protected]> wrote:
> You cannot sell
> > commercial products in the United States, the EU or Japan without telling
> > people how they work and without first submitting them to safety
> regulatory
> > agencies for testing and licensing.
>
> In the US, approval will be required from the Underwriter's
> Laboratory, a private firm.
Them too. I had in mind government regulatory agencies, but UL approval is
also required de facto.
Strictly speaking, I believe it is legal to sell a product without UL
approval, but no wholesale or retail supplier would think of stocking it.
You could not install an unapproved appliance in a house or building and
have it pass code. The building inspectors would see it is not on their
approved list and would not let anyone occupy the building.
UL is private organization because its original purpose (still ongoing) is
to provide standards and information to the insurance companies
("underwriters"). They want to know if it is safe to write a policy on your
house, or whether Wall-mart can sell an electric fan and not get sued
because it electrocutes a customer or causes a fire. They will have to test
many commercial prototype Rossi devices, extensively, before they can make
that determination.
Also, as I have pointed out here, I have seen the UL application forms.
Another cold fusion researcher once got them, and consulted with Gene
Mallove about it. You have to tell them exactly what every single component
and material in the device is, and where you purchased the raw materials.
You cannot say "there is a powder made of nickel and two other mystery
elements which is a trade secret." They will want to know to the nearest
0.01% what the other two elements are. They will want test samples of the
powder for toxicity and fire hazard. So will a dozen federal agencies. Maybe
50 state agencies would too; I do not know know how that works. In the 21st
century, trade secrets based on keeping the physical content secret are
simply not allowed.
Getting UL approval on a Rossi eCat will be a multi-year effort.
Yup.
> I assume his "client" in the US is someone who does not require such
> approval. You can count those on the fingers of half a hand.
>
All friends of Uncle Sam. However, you could probably sell a few thousand
machines in the U.S. to various laboratories that will not use them for
commercial purposes. I mean national labs, university and corporate labs.
They are allowed to install and use experimental equipment that has not
passed UL or other safety inspections. They have many cold fusion reactors
now, none of which has passed inspection. Some of them are dangerous, in my
opinion.
Plus as I said, you would have to prepare dozens of devices for UL and
various agencies, and 50 more if individual states got involved. The UL and
the agencies do not pay you for the prototypes. On the contrary, they charge
you a ton of money to do the tests and issue the UL Approval. As they
should, of course.
Some people here have said it is a shame that regulators and safety
inspections may delay the introduction of cold fusion. I think it is certain
they will delay this, and getting these inspections will surely costs
hundreds of millions of dollars to the companies the manufacture the
devices. I think it is a shame that it will be delayed. But I have read the
history of commerce, and I know what it was like in the bad old days before
we had strict standards, inspections, the UL and the rest. You wouldn't want
to go back to that world.
People have romantic notions about how great things were before the modern
red tape and millions of pages of regulations about every product in sight
were issued. Especially nowadays Republican politicians wax nostalgic about
it. There are people, for example, who complain that we are not free to
drink un-pasteurized milk. Two things:
1. They are wrong. You can buy it at some health food stores, including one
near my house.
2. That's a good way to get severe food poisoning, which is sometimes bad
enough to permanently destroy your health, or even kill you. My
great-grandmother's memoirs describe one of her babies who died from
un-pasteurized milk around 1906. Milk was not pasteurized in New York City
until 1917, thanks to opposition by the dairy industry. From the 1860s
pasteurization to that time, hundreds of thousands of babies, small children
and some adults perished from this.
There have always been loads of red tape and regulations, albeit not as
effective as modern ones. In the 18th and 19th centuries an inn could stack
2 or 3 people to a bed, but the amount of money they charged per night and
the content and weight of the meals they served were strictly regulated.
Uniform, dull, bad tasting, bad-for-you, regulated American road food was
invented 250 years before MacDonald's was founded.
In Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, carpenters and builders had to meet strict
standards when constructing houses and barns or they would be "run out of
town on a rail" according to someone who builds and repairs barns there
today, and who knows as much about 18th century barns as the people who
built them did.
Our ancestors were wise to impose all these rules and regulations. A truly
conservative person (me) knows how and why these things came about. We know
that it is foolish to overthrow careful decisions, laws and customs long
established.
- Jed
