Reply To: Fantastic news.

[Brian H]

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Now, the economics.
A complete prefab generator and maintenance housing, about the size of a home garage, is expected to cost around $250,000, or possibly much less, in mass production. This is about 1/20 the cost of best current plant capital costs for generating installations (normally given as $/W; $1/W is an excellent number, typically; FF is $0.05/W!). Generators can be trucked and set up virtually anywhere, the only constraint being that there must be provision for real-time monitoring and control, and access a half-dozen days or so a year for refueling and component replacement/maintenance by engineers/technicians. Generators can either plug directly into existing grids, or be used as local power sources — e.g., by factories or buildings. Or ships. Or spacecraft.

Power pricing (with all amortization, fuel, maintenance etc. rolled in) for its output is estimated at ¼¢/KWH. That’s $0.0025. Again, about 1/20 of best current sourcing.

It is estimated that 10X current planetary power requirements could be sustained using local (on-planet) boron resources until approximately when the sun goes red giant in a gigayear or few.

This is “disruptive technology” with bells on.

Imagine yourself as a government or investor with $XXX,000,000 to put down on new power generation capacity OR operation/upgrade of existing plant. Which are you going to put your money into: (1) Technology which has suddenly been rendered obsolete by a 20+:1 cost disadvantage? Or (2) Scrapping the old and replacing it with the new ultra-economical alternative? Hint: if you choose (1), those who choose (2) will eat your lunch. And breakfast and dinner, too.

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Extrapolations.
It can plausibly be argued that the prices of all human goods and services reflect roughly the amount of energy put into finding or building or growing and then bringing them from source to purchaser, whether that be gold or internet-delivered bits and bytes or arugula or beer or cars or …. Fuel, heat, movement, and so on are major components of those energy inputs. Reducing those costs by 95-98% will have a dramatic impact on human wealth, across the board. It will suddenly be readily possible to provide resources and life basics to billions who cannot now afford them. And the wealthier world will experience an explosion of benefits and choices which were impossible just yesterday.

Desalination, irrigating deserts (even southern California)? Trivial. Powering a nation/world of electric vehicles? Easy and essential. Huge expansion of space exploration, perhaps helped by building a Space Elevator or two? No problem. Elimination of pollution and contaminated soils and air? Cheap and straightforward.

Energy independence? Every town and neighborhood can have it if they want, for a song. Everywhere.

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Political.
Nations and regimes battening on the Devil’s Excrement will be cut off above the knees. They will continue to have some markets for their oil, from a declining transportation/power requirement to continuing feedstock/lubricant needs, but may be lucky to get $10-15/bbl for their best product after a few years. Coal providers will experience an even steeper and more permanent decline, unless some innovative new clean uses for coal (raw material for immensely expanded nanotech?) are invented. Perhaps powdered and spread on top of the advancing Ice Caps for albedo reduction to slow or reverse their overdue advance?

And so on.

The crisis-concocting AGW-panic exploiters, AKA “climate alarmists”, will be homeless. Perhaps a special welfare fund will be established for them, including huge dedicated residential complexes [‘Terminal Confinement Homes For Disgraced Climatologists’] where frequent unannounced fire and Carbon Monoxide evacuations will be called to keep them excited and interested (not all drills; a certain minimum fatality rate to be ensured to sustain realism.)
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Timing:
Investment and resources were finally obtained (Nov. ’08) to immediately embark on a 2-yr scientific validation and proof-of-theory project (now under way), which would set up a 3-yr engineering and production-design phase, overlapping with the last year of research. Licensing for mass pre-fab generator production facilities will be made affordably available to all comers, everywhere. Probable time-to-market is thus 5-6 years, 2015 or before.

Hold onto your hat (and hopes for a sane and prosperous future).

Links:
Company: http://lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com
Society: https://focusfusion.org
Patent: http://tinyurl.com/FocusFusionPatent
Recent update: See October ’09 press release: http://tinyurl.com/FFPressRelease2009-Oct .

P.S. As mentioned on the sites, the major funding push was provided by the Abell Foundation, Inc., a rather interesting group originally set up to benefit Baltimore and environs. Their connection here is very far-sighted, of course, since FF would upgrade everyone’s living conditions, not just Baltimorians’.
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