LENR & Cold Fusion News
Cold Fusion Energy & LENR News
A Few Energy News Stories You Probably Missed
There’s a lot of energy news going on out there much of which is not being covered by the mainstream media. Low energy nuclear reaction or LENR is simply the tip of the iceberg when it comes to big energy news going on these days.
Some huge energy stories you have probably missed include:
- Bill Gates the world’s richest guy and the man behind Microsoft is interested in LENR or cold fusion. Press releases and news stories indicate that Mr. Gates visited the Italian Agency for New Technologies or ENEA in Frascati, Italy, examine LENR experiments being conducted there.
The Toyota Mirai, fuel cell cars are almost in your driveway.
- Both Toyota and Honda are playing to market fuel cell powered cars in the United States and Japan. Honda’s FCX clarity fuel cell car will reportedly generate enough electricity to power your house for a week. Toyota’s Mirai will reportedly have similar capabilities. The Honda version will even be marketed with a power exporter device designed to power homes or businesses. Both vehicles are powered by electricity created with a hydrogen powered fuel cell and the emissions they put out is a thin cloud of water vapor.
Industrial Heat Plans Commercial Ecat Test Natural Gas Fired Ecat Explained
Industrial Heat LLC is conducting a one year test of Andrea Rossi’s ecat low energy nuclear reaction (LENR) technology. The test is apparently designed to test ecat’s utility as a commercially viable energy source.
Natural Gas could be the energy source for Ecat
North Carolina based Industrial Heat is the Cherokee Partners Funded venture that paid $11 million for the rights to ecat in January 2014. If successful the test could be the most important demonstration of LENR yet. Unfortunately Rossi gave no verification of these claims. Rossi announced the test on his blog in the following post:
Andrea Rossi
November 16th, 2014 at 11:54 AM
Dr Joseph Fine:
We will publish a report of the 1 MW plant used by the Customer of IH for his industrial purposes after 1 year of regular operation, when we will be able to give evidence ( if so) of the real profitability of the technology, Beyond the laboratory tests: this is the obvious next step of our evolution.
Climate Change: LENR could be our Last Best Hope
A major technological innovation such as low energy nuclear reaction (LENR) or cold fusion might be the world’s only chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change caused by global warming. That’s the unwritten conclusion of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest disturbing report.
“Science has spoken” UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said of the report. “There is no ambiguity in their message. Leaders must act. Time is not on our side.”
Some of the disturbing details contained in that report include:
- Emissions of greenhouse gases created by burning fossil fuels rose to an all-time high in 2013. The amount of gases increased by 2.3% to set a new record.
- 95% of scientists surveyed agreed that human beings were behind the warming. I cannot think of anything else that 95% scientists would agree upon.
- 2014 could be the hottest year on record according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Lockheed-Martin’s Compact Fusion and E-cat Not Rivals or Competitors
Andrea Rossi’s E-cat is not the only experimental fusion technology making news. The giant American defense contractor and aerospace company Lockheed-Martin (NYSE: LMT) has come out of the closet and admitted that it is working on a compact hot fusion device.
Skunk Works engineers working on compact hot fusion courtesy Lockheed-Martin.
The interesting thing is that Rossi’s e-cat low energy nuclear reaction (LENR) or cold fusion device and Lockheed-Martin’s technology could easily coexist. The two technologies seem to have very different purposes and potentials.
Lockheed-Martin’s website indicates that a team at its Skunk Works the secret research and development facility that created such iconic aircraft as the Stealth Bomber and the SR-Blackbird spy plane is trying to develop a large scale power source. It mentions a reactor about the size of a cargo container that would generate around 100 megawatts of electricity or enough to power a city of 100,000 people.
“Independent Report” Verifies Ecat as Nuclear Device, confirms it Generates Excess Heat
The long related Independent Third Party report on Andrea Rossi’s E-cat low energy nuclear reaction (LENR) technology has finally appeared. The report makes two conclusions that seem to verify Rossi’s claims.
This is supposed to be the newest version of Andrea Rossi's Ecat which was recently tested by a group of scientists.
The first is that a nuclear reaction of some sort that is generating energy in the form of heat. The second is that the energy released is greater than that from any known chemical reaction. Unfortunately the researchers did not say what the nuclear reaction is or how it is occurring.
The paper entitled: Observation of abundant heat production from a reactor device and of isotopic changes in the fuel was posted on a Swedish website called Sifferkoll.se. Don’t worry folks it’s in English so we Americans, British, Australians, Canadians and others can read it.
Guiseppe Levi
Strange Wind Storage Project Proves What’s Wrong with Renewable Energy
A proposal for a gigantic energy project in Utah shows what’s wrong with renewable energy and why we need to invest in next generation technologies such as low energy nuclear reaction (LENR). Four companies want to spend $8 billion to build a facility they claim can store wind.
The “Hoover Dam of Wind Energy” or the Pathfinder project would include a $4 billion wind farm near Chugwater, Wyoming and an underground storage facility in which pressurized air would be stored. The $1.5 billion underground facility would store 41 million cubic feet of air in caverns near Delta, Utah. The air would be released to turn the turbines and make electricity. There would also be a $2.6 billion transmission line to connect the project to Los Angeles.
Renewable energy boosters like to call LENR crazy and far-fetched. Well compared to LENR this project is positively insane. There’s no guarantee it will work but $8 billion would be spent on it. Just imagine if that $8 billion could be spent on energy research.
Where will the Electricity Come From?
The big energy news this week is Tesla’s decision to locate its massive Giga Factory in Nevada. On Sept. 11, the Nevada State legislature approved a package of legislation giving Tesla Motors (TSLA) $1.25 billion in tax breaks and low cost electricity to build the batter manufacturing facility.
Tesla Supercharger electric car filling station
The Giga Factory could be a real game changer because it is designed to produce enough lithium ion batteries to store one billion watts or a gigawatt of electricity a year. That is enough to power 500,000 electric cars or provide backup electricity for 500,000 homes or business.
Now for the big question that nobody including Tesla Chairman Elon Musk has been asking. Where will the electricity to power those batteries come from? Solar panels probably wouldn’t do it and neither will wind mills. Musk also heads SolarCity (SCTY) the Solar panel company that uses Tesla battery packs for back up.
E-Cat Owner’s Connections to GE/North Carolina Company Revealed
The North Carolina company that purchased Andrea Rossi’s e-cat Low Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR) technology Industrial Heat LLC could have some connections to General Electric (GE) and a North Carolina company called Power Generation Services, Inc. or PoGens.
Power Generation which claims provide a complete energy management infrastructure could be the mysterious company where Rossi claims the one megawatt Ecat unit was shipped to for testing. Power Generation apparently provides a variety of services to utility companies. General Electric is not listed as a partner on Power Generation’s site.
One of PCX's Uninteruptable Power Systems
Interestingly enough a company called PCX Corporation LLC according to its website PCX provides large scale generators or electrical distribution centers for data centers and industry. These include uninterruptable power systems which keep the lights on and the equipment working when the grid goes down. Pictures of some of the centers on PCX’s website show generation units that look a lot like some of the pictures we’ve seen of Rossi’s one megawatt ecat.
All forms of Energy Investment Increasing
Investment and interest in all forms of energy technology and research is increasing at a breathtaking rate these days. Energy companies and products of all sorts are attracting a vast amount of capital which is good news for those interested in alternative power sources such as low energy nuclear reaction (LENR or cold fusion).
Elon Musk promoting his SpaceX rocket company
Some recent energy investments that have attracted a lot of attention include:
- Tesla Motors (TSLA)’s plans to spend $5 billion to build a gigafactory a plant capable of manufacturing enough batteries to provide a gigawatt (one billion watts) worth of energy for electric cars. News reports indicate that five US states providing up to $500 million in tax credits to attract the factory which could provide up to 6,500 jobs. The gigafactory plans prove that Tesla is actually an energy company not a car company’s. The real motive of Tesla boss Elon Musk is to promote electricity as an energy source not to build cars. Tesla hasn’t turned a profit yet but it’s stock was trading at $248.13 a share on August 8, 2014.
Green Power Lacks the Energy Density to run our Civilization, LENR might provide it
To understand the incredible potential of low energy nuclear reaction (LENR) and nuclear energy in general, you must grasp the concept of energy density. Put simply energy density means the amount of potential power contained in an energy source or the more density, the more power.
The best explanation I’ve seen of this concept so far is in Robert Bryce’s fascinating new book Smaller, Faster, Lighter Denser, Cheaper. In the book, Bryce shows that density is the key to energy success and demonstrates that most green power sources simply lack the density needed to power our modern technological civilization.
Among other things, Bryce notes that wind turbines provide an energy density of .9 watts a meter. In contrast a cubic foot of natural gas provides 1,031 British Thermal Units (BTUs) of power or heat. He estimates that a barrel of oil contains the equivalent of 529 watts of electricity and 1,000 cubic feet of natural gas provide the equivalent of 3,819 watts of electricity or 36.79 kilowatt hours of electricity. A standard lithium-ion battery like those used in electric cars or laptops has an energy density of around .25 and .73 kilowatt hours of electricity.