Reply To: Iconography

[Breakable]

vansig wrote: Here’s that marketing black-magic: if $250K for a 5MW reactor piques peoples’ “too good to be true” filter, then tell them $1M for 1..15 MW. People have come to expect incremental improvements, not revolutionary ones. We know it’s revolutionary. Let’s downplay that. Later, when the technology triples their expectations, we all win.

For a quite long time I was suggesting to go for the fusion-fission hybrid approach. Its essentially the same as going the high price road, but does not involve lying about the price. Not only would it increase experiment believability, but if other projects are of any measure funding would skyrocket:
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/WR_Approval_for_Myhhra_0503101.html
And after this has been implemented funds earned can buy time to learn more and finish the engineering of the DPF.
The current route seems much more risky:
After the current goals are achieved LLP will still have to prove (using peer-review or otherwise) that the results are real (while on minimal or no funding)
or they will have to secure the funds and work on the prototype without having the results validated at all.
This does not seem easy at all, especially that the energy crunch is about to start (peek oil 2011=50%, 2016=90% probability) – everything will get more expensive and less funds will be available for investment.
Still I hope that the current funds will be enough for this experiment to prove that PB Fuel can be burned and it wont end on that.