Jones Beene <[email protected]> wrote:
> First, palladium is rare and the price is extremely sensitive to demand. It > could double overnight and has done so, historically. There is no chance of > it going down. On the other hand, half of it is used in catalytic converters, which will not be needed in the long run, so supplies will be freed up. Still, there probably is not enough to produce all the energy we need. To make optimum use of the metal 24 hours a day, most would be in central generators. In this scenario we would use conventional electric cars, and heat pumps or resistance heating for space heating. With Ni or Ti, you can put the metal into the automobile and leave it unused 23 hours a day. We could not afford to do that with Pd. > Then there is deuterium, which is also costly. > No, it is cheap per megajoule of energy it produces, assuming it produces about as much as plasma fusion. It is likely to get much cheaper because the biggest cost component is energy. You can bootstrap to lower costs. Also, cheaper methods have been discovered but not implemented, because there is not much demand. If high purity (99.999%) is needed it might be expensive. 99.7% pure heavy water is much cheaper. - Jed
