Regarding this issue of overhead or COP, see my book, chapter 14, Diagram 14.1. This is from the annual energy review 2002 edition, EIA. The title is "Electricity flow, 2002." It is probably online somewhere. . . Here is a recent version:
http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/diagram5.cfm Anyway, it shows wasted energy. Or what you might call overhead. This is for electric power generation so most of the energy is lost in conversion. Let me use the 2002 numbers. Total inputs of from coal, natural gas, nuclear power and a few other sources are 39.56 quads. Conversion losses are 25.77 quads (65%). What is called "plant use" is 0.89 quads (2.2%). That is, electricity used by electric power generator plants themselves. Transmission and distribution losses (T&D) are 1.24 quads (3%). Let us compare this to the Hyperion brochure, p. 18. The ratio varies from 1:25 at the low end for the small reactor, up to 1:145. In percent terms, that is 4% to 0.7%. in other words, it is comparable to T&D or plant use conventional electric power generation. From an engineering point of view it is unimportant. Converting heat from the Hyperion into electricity would probably be roughly as efficient as the overall efficiency of the current US power generation system; i.e., roughly 25% to 35%. The US system is least efficient for conventional nuclear power plants, because they use relatively low temperatures, to trade-off efficiency for long service life. They do this because nuclear heat is very cheap. Since the heat will cost nothing with the Hyperion it will make sense to use low efficiency in return for cheap equipment and a long service life. As I say in the book, eventually all generators will be small, and they will all be thermoelectric. It would take a long time to reduce the cost of thermoelectric chips to the point where they are cheaper than turbines and other moving parts, but I'm sure it will happen eventually. Overall, cold fusion will you use less raw heat than today's overall energy production because all cold fusion home generators will also be cogenerators (combined heat and power units). It makes no sense to build anything else. There is no point to throwing away the waste heat, especially in winter. - Jed
