Of course, but I was responding to your, technically correct but, misleading statement "Even early into a cold fusion era there will be few uses for a megawatt generator."
Its true that the there will be few such uses even early on, but one of those few will be very big early into the cold fusion era. How rapidly even these cleaned up plants will be put out of business is mildly interesting to speculate on but not very important in the scheme of things, which is going to be fairly rapid disintermediation of of mass energy intensive processes. On Fri, Aug 16, 2013 at 2:15 PM, Jed Rothwell <[email protected]> wrote: > 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_Body No 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 > >
