FUSION BRIEFINGS: PLAYING THE LOSE-LOSE GAME
By Associated Press Staff
Associated Press Staff, "Federal budget cuts pull the plug on N.J. fusion reactor," Deseret News, 5 April 1997, page A12.
Many (or maybe only some) scientists being funded by tax money for over the last four decades decided that cold fusion was not to be tolerated nor allowed to have any of the over $500 million per year allocated to hot fusion. Now, it seems the hot fusion program is being closed down, for example the recent orders to shut down the Princeton Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor after 15 years of operation. The Princeton laboratory had been funded at $111 million in 1992 and the next fiscal year the amount declined to $52 million.
In 1994, the mammoth reactor set the world record for fusion power by generating 10.7 million watts for about one second according to the article. That figures out to be 10,700 kilowatts for one second or about 3 kilowatt hours or 30 cents worth of electricity. It is estimated that the thousands of successful cold fusion cells have generated at least 1,000 times as much in excess electrical power. The Princeton Tokamak never did generate more power out than was being used for power input and power support for the unit. If, in 1989, the hot fusion scientists had suggested to the DOE that three percent of the hot fusion budget should be diverted to cold fusion, there would have been $15 million per year spent on cold fusion by DOE. If the hot fusion scientists had not arranged for a trumped-up denial of cold fusion by the ERAB subcommittee, and had reported the truth, there would have been corporate funds being spent. If the hot fusioners had not arranged for the patent office to decline all cold fusion patents so that no patents could be issued, the U.S. would have had a welcome lead in the world of cold fusion and its more rapid developments. However, the hot fusioneers (or their leaders) played a game of selfishness, greed, and denial a classical lose-lose game.
Meanwhile, Randall Mills and the Blacklight Power, Inc. [see page 8], began [as Hydrocatalysis Power Co.] by showing that nickel and light water could produce excess heat. Mills then moved to nickel and hydrogen gas, demonstrated higher-temperature excess heat, obtained financial backing, and is now being supported by utility companies. Their stock has gone from $0.75 per share to over $1,000 per share! Blacklight Power will be one of the leaders in new energy. The Princeton Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor will be a footnote in history where science took a dead-end approach to the development of energy.
For all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: 'It might have Been!'
John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)
www.padrak.com/ine/NEN_5_1_3.html
May 11, 1997.