Chemical Engineer <[email protected]> wrote: You are right, the government should have given them 5 times as much money > to prove that something 5 times more expensive . . .
Luz did not use much government money, and their 300 MW plant has been operating continuously at a profit since the 1980s, so I suppose they have paid back in taxes by now. The government and the power company should have licensed them to build a plant 5 times bigger. It would not have cost 5 times more. That's the whole point! See: economies of scale. The market for CSP(none) drove them out of business not the government. > That is not the story I read, in a book, which I cannot find. It was a ploy to destroy the industry. A squeeze play, not unlike GM's successful method of destroying electric cars. > LENR has the potential to up-end the current market and I am all for > that. Let capital markets decide. > Capital markets have never been able to introduce radically new technology. As I have often pointed out here, in the last 300 years, just about every large-scale technology has been brought to fruition with government help. In many cases these technologies have been invented and implemented by governments, such as nuclear power, computers, lasers, the GPS and human genome reading technology. Even technology that seems to be brought about by industry was not. Ford invented the mass produced automobile, but that is only a small part of the transportation system. It is an adjunct to the paved roads and highways, which are all built by the government. Ford was taking advantage of a government-provided technology. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were also johnny-come-latelys who took advantage of microcomputer technology after Uncle Sam paid something like ~80% of the money to develop it. Industry gets the profits, but the taxpayers foot the bills. If cold fusion succeeds it will be the same way. - Jed
