Is "cold fusion" coming back?

[derakonsdad]

A fascinating drama will be playing out over the next few months as the latest claims of a new inexpensive energy source are tested in the marketplace.

You may recall that the original claims of "cold-fusion" by Pons and Fleishman in 1989 were roundly discounted and condemned to the same trash heap as perpetual motion machines. Condemnation was

Comments

[weisacre]

Interesting post -- I would have thought that I'd have heard something about this already were it this far along (commercialized by the end of the year?), but then again this isn't an area that I follow much. The events in Japan provide a great example of how people do a poor job of assessing relative risks: I'd be curious how many days of driving in the San Francisco area (or days of breathing Beijing's smog) it would take to equal the total number of premature deaths that will be caused by the radiation from the Japanese nuclear plants -- my guess is that it wouldn't be high.

Side question: on wind power, how many birds do these things actually kill, relative to (say) domestic housecats and glass windows? I understand the aesthetic objections, but I suspect that people will come to like how windmills look once they're used to them (sound might be more of an issue), so overall it seems a reasonable option.

Alternative energy sources

[derakonsdad]

how many birds do these things actually kill, relative to (say) domestic housecats and glass windows?

I think the number of birds killed is less important than the types (which include raptors large enough to eat cats). Hawks, falcons and eagles favor windy hilltops where they can find lift, which is also where windmills work best. This is an important issue because it has already slowed the adoption of wind power, which is otherwise mature enough to survive without subsidies.

The mainstream media were burned by the original cold-fusion debacle and will be very slow to embrace any resurgence of similar technology. Nobody likes to look gullible (me included). There is so much hype and emotion surrounding this field that it is hard to know what to believe.