Cheap Cold Fusion to Save World Billions

The massive ITER reactor is an international boondoggle.  Image source: ZDNet

by Hank Mills 
Pure Energy Systems News


Hot fusion has been considered the "Holy Grail" of future energy technology by mainstream scientists and academics, who have spent their careers working on it. However, development of hot fusion has been slow and progress has been minimal. In fact, not a single experimental reactor has produced more energy than it consumed. The hope has been that if enough money is thrown at hot fusion, practical reactors could be built that would provide the world with abundant, cheap energy. The truth is that despite the billions of dollars that have been spent and the huge reactors that have been built, a practical power generating hot fusion reactor is at best decades away. Thankfully, cold fusion technology has emerged as economically viable, and is about to bring the need for "hot fusion" research to an end. 

The world record for the efficiency of a hot fusion reactor is held by the Joint European Torus (JET), located in the United Kingdom. It is the largest Tokamak style reactor in the world. The reactor alone weighs thousands of tons, stands twelve meters high, and has a diameter of fifteen meters. It is a complex monstrosity that requires countless support systems, massive amounts of energy to operate, and cost billions of dollars to build. In 1997 the reactor broke the record for the efficiency of a hot fusion reactor, producing 70% of the energy that it consumed. The efficiency goes even lower if the energy needed for magnetic containment and support systems are factored in. To be blunt, the reactor is very far from a true break-even point where it produces as much energy as it consumes.

An even larger and more expensive tokamak hot fusion reactor is being constructed. It is named the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), and is being constructed in France. The reactor is being financed by countries around the world including the United States, the European Union, and China. This extremely expensive reactor is expected to cost over 15 billion Euro to build, and will require even more funding to operate. It is hoped that construction will be finished by 2018, and the reactor can be tested by 2019. After many years of testing, the ITER reactor might meet the goal of producing ten times more power than it consumes. By doing so, it could provide key information needed to build an industrial hot fusion reactor. Such a reactor would take many years to build, and cost billions of dollars. 

Simply put, hot fusion (at least as envisioned by mainstream science) is a pipe dream. It is decades away from powering a single home, and the financial investment required to get to that stage will be enormous. The simple fact is that the world needs a robust, affordable, clean, and safe alternative energy source -- immediately! 

Our civilization cannot wait twenty, thirty, or forty years for "hot fusion" reactors to start producing electricity for the power grid. There is a global energy crisis, economic recession, and ecological disaster taking place. Without a "breakthrough" energy technology in the near future, our civilization may not exist (as we know it) much longer. 

The good news is that we do not need to wait decades for hot fusion research to usher in an energy utopia. We do not need to wait for the ITER to be built, or other experimental reactors. In fact, there is no reason to spend one more penny on hot fusion research, because *cold fusion* technology has arrived! 

Cold fusion is a technology that allows nuclear fusion reactions to take place at relatively low temperatures -- hundreds or thousands of degrees instead of millions of degrees. Unlike hot fusion, it does not require billion dollar reactors the size of large houses. A cold fusion reactor can fit on a table top, and cost only hundreds of dollars to build. Most importantly, cold fusion technology is commercial ready NOW (not in decades), and is scheduled to hit the market place in October.

Andrea Rossi is an Italian engineer who has developed a cold fusion technology named the E-Cat (Energy Catalyzer). The technology is very simple, completely safe, and produces large amounts of energy. An E-Cat setup is simple to describe. Nickel powder, hydrogen gas, and an undisclosed (for proprietary reasons) catalyst is placed in a stainless steel reactor vessel as small as fifty cubic centimeters in volume. To visualize this, imagine a container the size of a "D" cell battery. Heat is applied to the reactor with electric resistors (although any heat source would work), and the hydrogen is pressurized. When a temperature of around 400C is achieved, nuclear fusion reactions start occurring, and energy is released in the form of heat. The output can be used to heat water, or create steam to power a turbine to generate electricity. 

Although a nuclear reaction is taking place, little radiation is produced (it can all be shielded by two centimeters of lead) and no nuclear waste is created. The benefit of the reaction being nuclear fusion (rather than a chemical process) is that a tremendous amount of energy is produced. A fifty cubic centimeter reactor can produce several kilowatts of heat for several months at a time, consuming less than one sixth of that power (or consuming zero power in self sustain mode). The cost of re-fueling the reactor will be very low, due to the fact that nickel is one of the most common elements on the planet, and hydrogen can easily be obtained from water. 

Cold fusion holds the capability of being a game changing energy source that makes all other conventional sources of energy obsolete. It eliminates the need for hot fusion research, and this is certainly one of the reasons mainstream science has waged a war against it for two decades. Many scientists who have made careers in hot fusion research don't want their livelihood threatened! When the advantages of cold fusion and the disadvantages of hot fusion are considered, it becomes obvious hot fusion research is about to go the way of the dodo bird. 

Lets compare and contrast the these two types of fusion technologies. It will become clear that cold fusion technology makes hot fusion research a total waste of money.

Current State of Development - Cold fusion is commercial ready, but hot fusion still needs decades of development. By the end of this year cold fusion reactors will be hitting the market place. Hot fusion reactors will not be powering a single home for a minimum of twenty years or more.

Research Costs - Cold fusion research can be performed cheaply, while hot fusion research is tremendously expensive. One or two people can perform testing on a cold fusion reactor, but it requires a large number of employees to test a hot fusion reactor. This means more salaries and benefits to pay when hot fusion is being researched.

Reactor Costs - Cold fusion reactors can be built for hundreds of dollars, but hot fusion reactors can cost millions to billions of dollars. 

Reactor Size - Cold fusion reactors can be built small enough to fit in an enclosure the size of an air conditioner. Hot fusion reactors are very large, very heavy, and require additional buildings or rooms for their support and control systems.

Build Time - Cold fusion reactors can be mass manufactured by the millions and sold just like any appliance that can be purchased at Home Depot, Lowes, Walmart, etc. Hot fusion reactors take years to build, and right now the only hot fusion reactors being built are for testing. No one knows how to build a hot fusion reactor that can produce practical amounts of power. 

Efficiency - Cold fusion reactors consume only a fraction of the power they produce, or do not consume any power at all when running in a self sustaining mode. Hot fusion reactors have never produced more power than they consumed; and would consider 10x sufficient.

Distributed Power - Cold fusion reactors could be connected to individual homes, and could eventually be used to power individual automobiles. Hot fusion reactors are so large and complex they would not be suitable for distributed power systems -- only utility-scale systems.

Safety - Cold fusion reactors do not produce nuclear waste and any radiation produced can be easily shielded. Some hot fusion reactors (depending on the fuel they use) may have these benefits as well. However, hot fusion reactors are large, consume huge amounts of energy, utilize many more systems, and may be more likely to have accidents. 

As you can see, cold fusion technology is a commercially viable technology, ready to hit the market place. Hot fusion technology is decades away at best, and is still in the experimental stages. 

The many advantages and huge potential of cold fusion, may be one reason some individuals try to deny "fusion" is taking place in "cold fusion" reactors. They insist the processes taking place in "cold fusion" reactors are only "low energy nuclear reactions", and have *nothing* to do with fusion. Ridiculously, some scientists have proposed theories (such as Widom-Larsen theory) that if proven would explain a fusion process, but deny the logical conclusion of their theory -- that a nuclear fusion reaction has taken place! 

The reasons for these illogical games, denying "fusion" reactions are taking place, are probably several. First, when cold fusion emerges into the marketplace they want it to go by another name. This could potentially (at least to some limited degree) hide the truth about the two decade long war against cold fusion that includes suppression by many closed minded, arrogant so-called "scientists." They don't want the masses getting wind of the history of cold fusion! Secondly, it could allow them to try and make the case that "hot fusion" still deserves research funding, because "cold fusion" is not *really* fusion, but something else. This could allow them to keep squandering taxpayer dollars on multi-billion dollar test reactors (that will never produce a single watt of usable energy), instead of opening their minds so they can find other technologies to research. Finally, utilizing a different name for cold fusion allows some researchers to try and differentiate their research from that done previously by others, even though it's still nuclear fusion taking place! 

An obvious consequence of hot fusion research coming to an end is that the money can be saved or spent on other things. If the money is spent elsewhere, the billions of dollars could go towards proliferating cold fusion technology. This would make logical sense, because cold fusion is capable of being used for the benefit of mankind immediately. Hot fusion is not capable of powering a single home, and will not be for decades.

It's time for the world to realize cold fusion is the future, and hot fusion is a boondoggle only attempted in the past but never coming even close to being practical.