Reply To: T-shirt designers unite and take over

[Lerner]

Let’s not call them reactors Rematog, let’s call them “engines”–we can take a page from MRI’s history.

FF engines will be a mass-produced product–all identical–rolling down and assembly line. They will cost, uninstalled, about $300,000–a bit more than a car, but that may come down as production ramps up. That’s a big difference from the way electric generation is done in the US anyway, which is each generator is a unique construction.

No one is against regulation per se. But there is a qualitative difference between regulating FF engines the way fission reactors are regulated and the way auto engines are regulated, and there will be a huge impact on how rapidly the technology is implemented. If each FF engine is treated as a “unique nuclear reactor” with all the paperwork that goes with that, you can expect –maybe 10 installation per year in the whole US, tops. Even if they were all GW farms, we would still be pumping oil and the price would still be sky high 30 years from now.

If they are treated as they deserve to be, which is as non-radioactive fusion engines, then there will be intensive testing by government regulators on the initial run of generators. After that, there should be no more licensing of individual engines than is required for internal combustion engines. And then 10 years after mass production starts, oil consumption will be way down and the price will be close to the cost of production–that is about $5 a barrel or so.

Again this is independent of the question of whether they will be concentrated or dispersed. This is only dependent on the idea that they will function as we think they will. If they don’t (but do produce economical energy) then we have to look at the regulation question again.