
Mass-scale Cold Fusion either becomes reality or proved a scam today - ck2
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-10/28/cold-fusion
======
mechanical_fish
I don't buy this either-or headline. Either the magic trick is going to
impress the audience, or there will be claims of some sort of tragic last-
minute technical difficulty that could be worked around with a bit more
research. Either way, the game is likely to continue. Maybe one mark or
another will drop out of the con, having endured one too many cycles of
investment followed by disappointment, but there are new marks being born
every day.

Perpetual motion machines are a really old dream. The dream outlived Clausius,
Kelvin, and Carnot and it will outlive us. Dreams are durable.

~~~
lukev
While I don't disagree with you, I do have a nit: they're not claiming this is
a perpetual motion machine, which is categorically impossible and an
incontrovertible indicator of a scam.

They're claiming it can derive energy from nuclear fusion of hydrogen atoms.
This has not been proven to be impossible. In fact, we know it's possible
(albiet at much higher temperatures.)

Therefore, there is at least a logical possibility that it's legit, even if
their behavior doesn't indicate that so far.

~~~
Retric
They are claiming that they can both fuse hydrogen atoms at low temperatures,
produce useful amounts of energy, AND not produce significant amounts of
radiation which seems ridiculously unlikely. To the point where a perpetual
motion machine could be created without violating as many past observations.
IMO, the radiation bit is the most ridiculous, If 2 atoms are going to release
that much energy there is really no way to get it without either an high
energy photon or high energy particles.

PS: 1MW worth of power from fusion would generate enough radiation to kill a
stadium full of people in a fraction of a second without a lot of shielding,
but cold fusion people never seem to have an fear of radiation...

~~~
maaku
That's simply not true. How much radiation is produced depends entirely on
which reaction they are using. Some release bad radiation, others do not.

Obligatory wiki link: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion>

~~~
ars
Except all those have side reactions, and are not truly aneutronic. Plus the
fuel in every cold fusion cell I've ever heard of has been deuterium or
tritium and those are not aneutronic.

------
russell
Here is an article from a 2009 60 Minutes show about the work of Michael
McKubre at SRI. He has been able to get excess energy. but not large enough or
reliably enough to claim complete success. He thinks it's some kind of
catalytic surface effect.

I've known McKubre for a long time. We were neighbors in the 90's. He's a good
honest man. He may be mistaken, but he's not a fraud.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_McKubre>

I'm inclined to accept that some kind of low energy nuclear process is going
on, although it is not fusion as we know it.

~~~
ars
There are two main causes for "not large or reliable enough".

The reason for "not large enough" is calorimetry. When you hydrolyze water
some reforms back into steam and escapes. So you subtract that energy as lost
in your calculations of output - input. The error is in not correctly
calculating how much energy is actually lost vs left in the experiment.

Good experiments don't allow any steam to be lost, they are perfectly
insulated and keep everything inside the cell. Unfortunately it's extremely
hard to do this accurately. (Or you can generate so much energy it's more than
the input without subtracting the losses, but no one has ever been able to do
that.)

The reason for not reliably, is that experiments look for signs of radiation.
Palladium is sometimes sourced from refined nuclear waste. It's refined
extremely well, it's perfectly safe. But it has just enough residual radiation
to cause very strange data for the experimenters: One batch of palladium works
great, the next batch doesn't work at all, and they can't figure out what's
different.

~~~
russell
Exactly. One of the reasons that Pons and Fleischman got into such trouble is
that their calorimic measurements were very inaccurate. They also tried to
measure neutron radiation but their equipment wasnt up to the task. McKumbe
mentions that the quality of the palladium varies greatly from source to
source. Since one theory is that the fine structure of the palladium forces
the deuterium atoms so close that they fuse, I infer that the nature of the
fine structure is important and could vary greatly from source to source.
Impurities could be the key or the poison.

------
ck2
update: "customer satisfied" [http://www.ecatnews.net/2011/10/28/e-cat-plant-
shutting-down...](http://www.ecatnews.net/2011/10/28/e-cat-plant-shutting-
down-customer-satisfied-peswiki-via-twitter/)

<http://twitter.com/#!/PESNetwork>

wiki updates
[http://peswiki.com/index.php/News:October_28%2C_2011_Test_of...](http://peswiki.com/index.php/News:October_28%2C_2011_Test_of_the_One_Megawatt_E-
Cat#Updates_and_News_Regarding_October_28_Test)

photos from earlier this month
[http://peswiki.com/index.php/News:October_28%2C_2011_Test_of...](http://peswiki.com/index.php/News:October_28%2C_2011_Test_of_the_One_Megawatt_E-
Cat#Photos)

maillist discussion <http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l@eskimo.com/>

~~~
flog
Why would the customer be satisfied if the 1mW plant is only outputting 470kW?

I'll believe it when I see it.

~~~
mrb
"1MW" is the proper case.

"1mw" would at least convey you are consistently irreverent of the proper
case, or using an impractical onscreen keyboard, or in a rush to type this
post. (We would understand.)

"1mW" on the other hand makes you look uneducated. Inconsistently
inconsistent. You care about the case sometimes, but not always. You have no
excuse to write it this way.

~~~
sukuriant
Maybe they're measuring milliWatts :D

------
VikingCoder
I'm sorry, but how is it at all difficult to figure out if a black box has
more or less total electrical output than input?

You put in electricity, but output steam? Fine, use a steam turbine to make
out electricity, or whatever technology you want. If the _delivered_ output is
not greater than the delivered input, you fail.

If you suspect batteries, run the test longer.

If you suspect that there is another process going on, then you have to open
the black box, and look for unintentional wear and tear - are you accidentally
performing another chemical reaction that is providing energy? If so, over a
long enough period, it'll be obvious.

Debates about exit velocity of _steam_ seem like a giant waste of time.

~~~
mechanical_fish
I'm not reading the details of this particular experiment, because I'm wasting
enough time talking about it as it is. ;)

But you have to understand the nature of _real_ prototype devices. Take it
from someone who has built many semiconductor lasers that worked so badly that
it took hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of specialized equipment to
learn that they worked at all: The first transistor probably didn't work very
well. The first laser didn't produce a lot of power or have a very long
lifetime. Famously, the first several thousand Edison light bulbs didn't work
well enough to be viable products. The difference between success and failure
in an early-stage experiment is often small, and often statistical, and is
often so ephemeral that _you yourself_ have crises of faith in the results.
And that's for the kind of phenomenon that eventually turns out to be
tremendously important!

And this is the problem. On the frontier, the difference between a promising
sign and a statistical fluke is small. It's a territory ripe for self-delusion
and fraud.

You ask me to run a steam engine. Well, okay, suppose I can do that for five
minutes. But then a piece of duct tape comes unstuck. You say: Replace that
duct tape with something more durable. I reply, okay, sure, can you lend me
the necessary $1500? (I was trying to save money with the duct tape. Half the
parts are duct tape. Prototype device, remember?)

You ask me to run the test longer. Well, okay, I can run it until my special
catalyst runs out. You say: Get more catalyst. I reply, okay, sure, can you
lend me the necessary $10,000? (The catalyst is expensive in small quantities,
you see, but in the future we'll have economies of scale.)

You ask me to open up my black box and submit every part to detailed analysis.
We'll hire an independent laboratory and they'll handle all of it. I reply,
okay, sure, can you pony up the necessary $10 million?

And then the independent laboratory finds a suspicious anomaly. Oh dear, I
say, I didn't realize that was happening. Maybe I made a mistake. I'll have to
go back to the drawing board. Can I have a $1m grant to go back to the drawing
board?

~~~
VikingCoder
You make excellent points. Here's my problem:

"The exact design has changed repeatedly; originally the one-megawatt
generator was to be composed of three hundred small E-Cats, then it was 52
larger "fat cats", now the number seems to be 43."

Why do we have to build 43 of something, to find out if it produces more
electricity than it consumes? Either it does, or it doesn't. The third
possibility is that there's some cross-talk or multiplicative effect of having
more than 1, but I doubt it.

~~~
mechanical_fish
I could make up a very plausible reason. Handwaving is a key job skill for
physicists and con men alike.

Example: It's about the surface area of the catalyst. You can't just use one
big cylinder of catalyst because that doesn't have enough surface. You need 40
or 50 little cylinders. And then you can't put all of those in one tank
because then the flow of reactant past the surfaces of the cylinders isn't
properly laminar, so you put each one in its individual cell. Then you build
each cell with a separate housing and so forth, to contain the damage from the
occasional explosions.

As for why the magic number "43": We built 52, but 9 of them have, um, failed,
so now we have 43. Soon there will only be 42. By the way, I hope you are
wearing your safety goggles? ;)

[REITERATION OF DISCLAIMER: _I am not describing a real experiment. I am
describing a figment of my imagination. Please do not send money._ ]

------
cbr
It looks like the most recent test did not convince people, so I doubt this
will be proved either way today.

In the past, they've not been very careful with measurements:

[http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-08-controversial-energy-
gen...](http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-08-controversial-energy-generating-
lacking-credibility-video.html)

~~~
ck2
Is this "motorola solutions" actually part of the real Motorola?

[http://www.mail-
archive.com/vortex-l@eskimo.com/msg52921.htm...](http://www.mail-
archive.com/vortex-l@eskimo.com/msg52921.html)

~~~
mindcrime
Looks like "Motorola Solutions" is the other half - besides "Motorola
Mobility" (the bit that Google is buying) - of the old Motorola, Inc.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Solutions>

Not so sure about this "Bob Higgins" though. I didn't find a Bob Higgins at
Motorola on LinkedIn (granted, it was a quick and fairly superficial search).

Edit: Ok, upon further review, I did find a Bob Higgins @ Motorola, so he's
real at least. Hard to say much beyond that...

What I do find suspicious though, is this: Take a look at the results from
this search:

[http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=bob+higgins+motorol...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=bob+higgins+motorola&oq=bob+higgins+motorola)

and look at all the domain names on the first page.

    
    
      ecatinfo.com
      ecatreviews.com
      ecatfusion.com
      buyecat.com
      ecathome.com
      ecatexport.com
      energycatalyzernews.com
      rossireactor.com
      rossigenerator.com
      ecatnews.com
    

I mean, somebody has really poured a lot of energy into promoting this thing,
and it hasn't even been properly verified yet? This comes off as a bit scammy
to me.

~~~
cbr
Or they're optimistic, and want to be in a good position to capitalize on it
if it works?

~~~
mindcrime
The cynic in me finds that hard to swallow, but I guess it's possible.
Something about this just feels "off" somehow.

------
brudgers
I remember Fleishmann and Pons announcement back in the late 80's -
personally, the gross theory of bringing together Deuterium atoms close enough
to create fusion using a catalytic surface still seems plausible to me,even if
their experimental results were never supported at "a university without a
division I football team."

Of course, I am probably biased because back in '89 I did my first
presentation using computer generated materials on the subject for a Science
Education course - overheads printed with my StarMicronix NX1000 from images
generated with EA Deluxe Paint on the Amiga 500.

~~~
ajross
The difference though is that F&P were _real_ scientists who simply happened
to be wrong. They published their work in a way that could be replicated, and
those experiments found their results were in error. They were shamed and
embarassed, but they played by the rules and were doing real science.

This nonsense is pure charlatanry and fraud. An "inventor" working alone and
discovering new fundamental physics without published results or peer review
needs to be viewed _far_ more suspiciously.

~~~
brudgers
Actually, Pons and Flesciemann announced their results at a press conference
prior to publication, which was extremely detrimental to their credibility
without regard to the validity of their science.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion#Announcement>

~~~
tensor
I remember seeing an interview with one of them and he claimed that he never
wanted to do that announcement. Rather, he was pushed into it by the
University and was probably more responsible for ruining his career than the
experiment not working.

As for the experiment, as I recall it _did_ produce neutrons, an expected
byproduct of fusion. There was certainly an interesting reaction going on but
it turned out that it wasn't fusion.

------
ErrantX
I've been following this for a little while; just of idle interest.

Unfortunately everything about the way Rossi acts in relation to the project
screams scam.

I bet nothing conclusive comes from this test..

~~~
alexhaefner
I was speaking to a nuclear physicist about Fusion, and he stated that really
was being used to verify nuclear models for making bombs and such, and that it
would never be practical for power generation.

~~~
alexhaefner
I'm not really sure why I am getting downvoted. I was talking to a friend
about this and a nuclear engineering ph.d. candidate at the University of
Michigan working on plasma physics started talking with me about it and
essentially echoed the same sentiment. I'm paraphrasing, "One of the jokes of
Fusion is that it's always 50 years off... It's sexy, but in reality it gets
funding because it happens to be what we build nuclear bombs with, and because
we can't do live simulations anymore, we build supercomputers and fusion
experiments to verify our bomb making."

~~~
carbocation
I don't know why you're getting downvoted, either. Your comment contributed
positively to the discussion. No need for downvotes here.

------
brc
I've been following this story for 12 months or more. I've read a lot of
criticism and deep discussions that go way beyond my capability to understand.

But we should know, soon enough, if it's a fraud or not.

Either the thing works as advertised, or it doesn't.

Even if this particular test has 'teething problems' I would assume that,
within a week or two, all will be known.

To me, it's a case of sit back, remain patient and open minded, and watch to
see what happens.

It's not like he's asking for taxpayer money or subsidies. If he ends up
fleecing a rich company or individual, well, that sort of things goes on every
day. It would be a drop in the ocean compared to, say, pets.com or any number
of mega-flop movie releases.

I just don't get the invective directed at this guy and his project. If he's
wrong, there will be plenty of time for gloating and schadenfreude. If he's
right, a lot of people are going to look very silly with their big statements.

~~~
wpietri
The invective comes because he flouts the way scientists normally go about
announcing and proving major scientific discoveries. And that matters because
the scientific approach is evolved to be very different than what scam artists
and loons gets up to.

One reason many people are unwilling to be patient and open-minded is that
they've already done that in the past, and had their patience worn thin by
said scam artists and loons. Another is that they respect (or have worked hard
to become) actual scientists who put forth the extra time and effort to
properly demonstrate and document novel findings.

------
brador
Who writes an article like this and doesn't give a TIME for the presentation?
Are we in the 1990's here?

------
djloche
A few things to update this story: Peter Svensson from the AP was there (as
rumored).

his report has not been published (yet?)

two other journalists were there, and have published:
[http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter/energi_miljo/energi/article33...](http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter/energi_miljo/energi/article3303682.ece)

[http://pesn.com/2011/10/28/9501940_1_MW_E-
Cat_Test_Successfu...](http://pesn.com/2011/10/28/9501940_1_MW_E-
Cat_Test_Successful/)

You can evaluate these sources as you would like. I however, am waiting to
hear what Peter Svensson has to say. AP has reporters all over the world, yet
they flew in Mr. Svensson from new york to cover the private event.

Now, this may be because he has been successful in gaining access and an
invite, or it may be because the company purchasing picked him, I am not sure
- it is unusual from an outsider view.

------
drtse4
Always thought that this is a scam considering his past. How many of you know
of the Petroldragon thing he did in the seventies? Interesting story (still
not clear if it was a scam or not)
[http://translate.google.com/translate?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF...](http://translate.google.com/translate?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF&u=http%3A%2F%2Fit.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FPetroldragon&sl=it&tl=en)

~~~
pdx
Plastic pyrolysis and then subsequent cracking to diesel is not a scam. In
fact, I know the guy behind <http://www.agilyx.com/> which is doing the same
thing.

That Rossi attempted this in the mid 70's is interesting to me, and gives him
more credibility, not less.

------
mrb
My bet: either the experiment will fail with a "strange" technical issue, or
the "anonymous customer" will report a success but will choose to remain
anonymous and not provide any more information (because he is nothing more
than one of Rossi's lies).

------
ajays
"If it fails to perform, Rossi will not get paid" ...

This is the key part.

~~~
cshesse
The key part is when the anonymous buyer remains anonymous. If his invention
works, why not patent it and let everyone see the internals?

EDIT: Looks like there supposedly is a patent: "a method and apparatus for
carrying out nickel and hydrogen exothermal reactions," with production of
copper, though I haven't found the patent itself.

[http://www.nyteknik.se/incoming/article3080659.ece/BINARY/Ro...](http://www.nyteknik.se/incoming/article3080659.ece/BINARY/Rossi-
Focardi_paper.pdf)

Seems like someone would independently make one though.

------
davorak
The article was a disappointment. It was full of hype and no substance. The
article pulled people in with a head line claiming a potential science and
energy break through but whose contents focused on vague details of the human
story around it. Bait and switch I say.

That is what I expected though from the head line. Just like I would expect it
from the below headlines: "Homeopathy either becomes reality or proved a scam
today" "Perpetual motion either becomes reality or proved a scam today"

------
BrotherSand
An added wrinkle here, reported by Wired:
(<http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-10/29/rossi-success> ) "The
customer's controller, one Domenico Fioravanti, apparently reports to a man
whose title is "Colonel". This suggests that the mystery customer might be
DARPA, the Pentagon's extreme science wing which, as Wired.co.uk has
previously noted, has expressed interestin Rossi's work -- but which might not
be quite ready to explain to its political masters why it spent millions on a
cold fusion device."

I think that goes a long way to explain a lot of the secrecy that the customer
engaged in. Rather than being a scam it may actually be the visible tip of a
military project. Remember, you can run cars on electricity and trucks on
natural gas, but when you run out of oil your army comes to a stop. They have
a lot of motivation to find an alternative.

As I understand it the process did not achieve 1MW because it got too hot and
they had to cool it down. Per Rossi, if it gets over the melting temperature
of nickle the reaction stops. But it ran in self-sustaining mode putting out
enough power to satisfy the men in uniforms that it works so now they take it
back to the USA and tinker with it themselves.

------
greggles
Journalist uses accurate headline or false dichotomies presented as fact
today.

------
jakeonthemove
Well, Rossi seems to believe in it, and I really hope it works. If it does,
it'll not only be useful for generating power, but could conceivably be
adapted for jet engines, ships and other vehicles, making _everything_
cheaper. I guess we'll see in a few days...

------
Pent
A better source of info than what I linked previously: Live updates from the
test @ [http://freeenergytruth.blogspot.com/2011/10/ecat-1mw-test-
up...](http://freeenergytruth.blogspot.com/2011/10/ecat-1mw-test-update-
thread.html)

~~~
rbanffy
It depends on your definition of "better"

------
chalimacos
There is a (unfounded) rumor that Google is the client behind the test:

[http://ecatinfo.com/e-cat/e-cat-info-hints-sat-google-
being-...](http://ecatinfo.com/e-cat/e-cat-info-hints-sat-google-being-
rossi%e2%80%99s-customer)

------
thret
I guess it is a little OT, but I was interested to read elswhere that room-
temperature fusion is already possible, demonstrated and understood using
negative muons to produce proton-deuteron fusion reaction. It just isn't
possible to generate additional energy with the process.

<http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/9901037> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-
catalyzed_fusion>

------
spullara
If you could actually achieve essentially unlimited energy at very little cost
you wouldn't tell anyone and would just connect it to the grid and collect
your money. There is no reason to "prove" cheap cold fusion.

~~~
fragsworth
I'm not going to make any claims as to whether or not this is a scam, but your
logic is completely wrong. Most people would probably need investors to
finance any mass production. To get investors, you (normally) have to prove
that it works...

~~~
spullara
With cold fusion the claim as always been that it would be small scale, cheap
and would easily scale up. You don't need mass production when you can
generate unlimited energy for free. The only reason you would need investment
would be for the original device (which is required to prove it works anyway),
it would then pay for the next set of devices, etc until you owned the earth.
If you can't break even quickly on a 1MW generator that doesn't cost anything
to run, your device is too expensive to be practical since you are generating
about $1m of electricity a year.

------
bdonlan
I'm not going to believe it until they show a closed system, with only a
hydrogen (or water) input, producing enough energy to sustain its own reaction
for an extended period of time.

------
cshesse
Relevant Richard Feynman story: <http://www.indian-skeptic.org/html/fey1.htm>

------
carbocation
Why is this business's website displaying AdSense ads?

------
th0ma5
Here's a video that was just posted <http://youtu.be/7sZHOQ6P-Rw>

------
merraksh
Event tweeted at

<https://twitter.com/#!/22passi>

In Italian only :-(

~~~
riffraff
not much beef apart from the interesting fact that AP has the exclusive of the
event <https://twitter.com/#!/22passi/status/129811500599746560>

~~~
merraksh
Indeed. The eCat website was pointing at that tweet feed and I thought it
would be updated more often.

------
squozzer
If it works, we'll just figure out a way to make nickel (or whatever material
eventually becomes the catalyst) scarcer. For that matter, it might trigger a
Water Rush because the assholes who run the world's govts don't like to share.

If it doesn't work, then it's BAU...

------
slevcom
I'm happy to go on record here and the unerasable archives of internet
history, risking my own reputation and that of my entire line of descendants,
in saying that I am convinced this particular dog and pony show is a hoax.

------
anothermachine
Ok, now it's tomorrow. It was a scam, right?

------
mhb
It is for real and it's delicious:

<http://www.coldfusiongelato.com/>

------
thedangler
Will it be live streamed?

~~~
dhughes
I read that as "live steamed"?

------
46Bit
I give it 12 hours before everyone realises this is a pile of bull.

------
jQueryIsAwesome
"Someday this is gonna work and it will be awesome! In the mean time please
invest huge amounts of money in us!"

This guy have the same business model as Groupon.

------
wavephorm
Whew, and here I thought some startup was launching a Coldfusion PaaS.

------
Devilboy
This is so obviously a scam. 100% scam in my view. The 'customer' is
anonymous, clearly just a figment of Rossi's imagination.

------
catnip
10 bucks on the Italian.

~~~
davedx
I see your 10 bucks and raise you 100 magic beans.

------
corford
Time to short BP, Exxon et al? :)

------
yaix
I hope he has some bodyguards. If this would be true, there are a couple of
countries with lots of oil that would not really like this idea to become
reality.

But then, as the article says, chances of it being true are small,
unfortunately.

~~~
shin_lao
Not really.

1/You still need oil to make plastic 2/You're not going to go "all electric"
any time soon

~~~
yaix
Let's say the oil price would dive vertically. And with free electricity, you
could make synthetics and synthetic oil cheaper than digging for it. For some
countries this would mean ruin. (Not to mention the US, having just spend so
much money to take over Iraq.) But it would also relax many international
conflicts. Suddenly, nobody would be interested in the Spratley and Parcell-
Islands anymore, for instance.

~~~
shin_lao
You're writing a science fiction story.

Of course technology from the XXIInd century would likely disrupt the economy
of the early XXIst century...

Even if electricity were free (and cold fusion wouldn't make it free, you need
to build a factory, have people operate it, build power lines, convert the
electricity...), how do you make synthetic oil? Which property would that
synthetic oil have? Could it work to make gasoline? Could we build plastic
with it?

~~~
yaix
Currently usually from biomass or coal, see almighty wp
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_fuel>

The factories would not being build in the few countries that currently supply
the vast majority of the oil the world consumes. A number of countries
(Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, to name a few) would lose 99% of their
income overnight.

Maybe its the wrong place to discuss the political implications of technical
inventions here on hn, though.

(I am a little annoyed that some people seem to just down vote anything they
lack knowledge about. What do you mean by "science fiction story"??)

~~~
burgerbrain
_"What do you mean by "science fiction story"??"_

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less
plausible (or at least non-supernatural) content such as future settings,
futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal
abilities.

\--<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fiction>

~~~
jerf
Yaix is correct. There's nothing magical about oil such that it can only be
produced underground in the Earth. All the petrochemicals can be made via
other processes. We know this because people have done it, some even at
industrial scales. If you have enough cheap electricity, the oil problem goes
away... but there's a lot of terawatts lying in wait behind that innocuous
word "enough". But in the end, all significant resource considerations across
the next couple of centuries come down to matters of energy, not atoms.

~~~
jholman
Hmn. All _chemical_ resource considerations, sure. I agree that the
oil/plastic thing is a no-brainer, with "enough free energy". What're you
going to do about rare elements? Just apply nuclear reactors?

Helium is easy, I guess, since we have no shortage of plans for fusion
reactors that run at a loss.

What about "rare earths", though?

~~~
jerf
Get them from outer space, _or_ use less efficient alternatives and not care
about the reduced efficiency because it's so darned cheap.

