James Bowery <[email protected]> wrote:
> Drop-in replacements for coal-burners in electrical power plants looks > like a quick win if the ECat-HT can be made self-sustaining via acting > cooling control. > For a few decades perhaps, but after that the power companies will be going out of business. They will not buy new equipment. They will use up the old equipment and when it stops working, they will declare bankruptcy. This is what happened with other businesses that were obsoleted, such as sailing ships and passenger railroads in the U.S. A discussion of how cold fusion might help the power companies resembles a discussion in 1910 about how the new vehicle body manufacturing techniques developed by Ford might help the horse buggy industry. Those techniques did, in fact, help buggy industry. They lowered cost and improved quality, with better bearings, tires, chassis and so on. If you look at a buggy made in the 1920s you will see that it resembles and automobile, rather than a 19th century buggy. However, that industry was in rapid decline. No amount of new technology could help it. By the late 1930s, 20 years after the Model T was introduced, the horse and buggy industry had vanished. NOTE: Yes, there are a few buggies still being manufactured even today. And yes, the initial vehicle body manufacturing techniques were developed by buggy manufacturers such as Fisher: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher_BodyNo doubt much of the starting technology for cold fusion will come from the electric power industry. But in the long term cold fusion will not augment or help this industry, or the coal or oil industries. It will crush them. - Jed
