Next Generation Nuclear Fission Plant

[Brian H]

Aeronaut wrote:

I like the web site. The headline grates on my grammatical sense of matched tenses. Can’t it be “What If Tomorrow Is Different?”

Edit:
I really didn’t emphasize how much I like the website. It is a great short essay for generating excitement.

Glad you like it, Jowabea. 🙂

My friends on a marketing forum said “Huh?”, so it looks like I need to make sure that anybody “gets it” in the first 5 seconds. There’s also a few new bullet points playing on the idea of a two ton, 7 by 7 by 10 foot 5MW power plant in a 53 foot semi trailer rated for 15 ton payloads, as well as shorting aluminum futures. ;-P

edit- just overhauled the headline and aimed it at savvy, aggressive investors and executives. Now its even shorter and sweeter.

17 words is shorter than 5?

Edit: his, hers, its;
he’s, she’s, it’s.
“unless its an electric utility.” –> “unless it’s an electric utility.”
“Its designed specifically” –> “It’s designed specifically”

I think your optimism is squeezing the dimensions quite a bit; the housing is going to be about small garage size, and I would presume that would be a part of most shipped units.

Your calculations mention the installed cost, but nothing about the FF cost/price of generated power per kwh. Therefore your savings calculations make no sense.

[Aeronaut]

Yeah, I’ve been guessing at the proper use of the apostrophe. :down:

The size of the actual housing will be determined by what each application requires. Mobile 5MW micro factories could spark a lot of investors’ imaginations. Imagine if FEMA had had a dozen of them in time for Katrina, making juice, clean water, restoring communications, and providing emergency medical facilities? If not FEMA, how about the National Guard and UN?

I remember when only Star Fleet had flip phones, lol.

Now imagine a disaster movie or TV series with a disaster relief convoy- kind of like a wagon train… FF would instantly be on the map.

[Brian H]

Aeronaut wrote: Yeah, I’ve been guessing at the proper use of the apostrophe. :down:

The size of the actual housing will be determined by what each application requires. Mobile 5MW micro factories could spark a lot of investors’ imaginations. Imagine if FEMA had had a dozen of them in time for Katrina, making juice, clean water, restoring communications, and providing emergency medical facilities? If not FEMA, how about the National Guard and UN?

I remember when only Star Fleet had flip phones, lol.

Now imagine a disaster movie or TV series with a disaster relief convoy- kind of like a wagon train… FF would instantly be on the map.

Each individual generator requires walk-around-space for servicing. I don’t know if the shells could be packed in closer together, but I doubt it would make much sense, for safety and operational reasons.

As for the wagon trains, hey, dramatic stuff will happen, but it’s not the road to acceptance and success. It’s the economics. Clean and quick helps, too.

Speaking of the money: your savings calculations require a base to compare the current costs to, as I mentioned. Even a line like, “Installed cost per Watt and output pricing will both be at most 1/20 of current normal market prices,” inserted before your numbers, would allow them to make sense.

[Aeronaut]

Brian H wrote:

Each individual generator requires walk-around-space for servicing. I don’t know if the shells could be packed in closer together, but I doubt it would make much sense, for safety and operational reasons.

As for the wagon trains, hey, dramatic stuff will happen, but it’s not the road to acceptance and success. It’s the economics. Clean and quick helps, too.

Speaking of the money: your savings calculations require a base to compare the current costs to, as I mentioned. Even a line like, “Installed cost per Watt and output pricing will both be at most 1/20 of current normal market prices,” inserted before your numbers, would allow them to make sense.

New edit beefed up the headline and broke up the 18 bullet points into several small groupings with intro lines.

I like that installed costs qualifier. Look for it in the next edit. Walk-around space and rain protection, as well as instant relief complexes would be easy using trailers with fold-out sides, at least around the generators. This would automatically place trailers around 16 feet apart.

Even though I made a compelling (I hope) case for the economics- including shorting energy futures, and implying shorting competitors’ stocks 😉 ,look for a series using C-130s for their wagon train as the probability of unity gains traction in the popular culture.

Edit- new edit’s up.

[Brian H]

Aeronaut wrote:

Each individual generator requires walk-around-space for servicing. I don’t know if the shells could be packed in closer together, but I doubt it would make much sense, for safety and operational reasons.

As for the wagon trains, hey, dramatic stuff will happen, but it’s not the road to acceptance and success. It’s the economics. Clean and quick helps, too.

Speaking of the money: your savings calculations require a base to compare the current costs to, as I mentioned. Even a line like, “Installed cost per Watt and output pricing will both be at most 1/20 of current normal market prices,” inserted before your numbers, would allow them to make sense.

New edit beefed up the headline and broke up the 18 bullet points into several small groupings with intro lines.

I like that installed costs qualifier. Look for it in the next edit. Walk-around space and rain protection, as well as instant relief complexes would be easy using trailers with fold-out sides, at least around the generators. This would automatically place trailers around 16 feet apart.

Even though I made a compelling (I hope) case for the economics- including shorting energy futures, and implying shorting competitors’ stocks 😉 ,look for a series using C-130s for their wagon train as the probability of unity gains traction in the popular culture.

Edit- new edit’s up.
Reality Check:
What a blissful, naive view of the media, industry and even academic response to promises and projections! I think it’s far more likely FF would be Palin-ized (smeared and sneered at in every way imaginable, and some not imaginable) until hard proof is in hand. Why, for the sake of a year or so’s (imaginary) public acceptance hurry-up, is it worth tempting that? It could poison the well for a long, long time.

With $Trillions on the table for existing special interests, from scientists to energy providers to utilities to commercial Greenness-obsession exploiters, counting on good will and even minimal “fairness” is dreaming in Technicolor. That all will be much better off on average after the “turnover” has little traction with vested interests. The only possible protection is a definitive “existence proof” that a generator is IN HAND which is putting out more usable energy than is put in.

Getting a sub-set of individuals, firms, and even pols onside early on is worthwhile, but a premature full-frontal assault on the common and elite consensus is taking a pea-shooter onto a heavy armor battleground.

[Aeronaut]

Almost all of today’s edits were for formatting purposes, so I’m curious why the sudden lack of faith. The reason for early public awareness is to survive the toxic battleground despite the link-building disadvantages.

I watched Palin tell NBC that she’s reacting, not leading, so she did that to herself, imho. She also got caught trying to bury the news on a Friday.

I reverted to my IM copywriting training yesterday and today. To me the site looks and reads like a toned-down (somewhat) IM cliche. Does it look and read that way to anybody else? I’ve seen some really slick-looking corporate sites with a lot less in graphics and words. At least I have a killer outline now. 🙂

[Brian H]

Aeronaut wrote: Almost all of today’s edits were for formatting purposes, so I’m curious why the sudden lack of faith. The reason for early public awareness is to survive the toxic battleground despite the link-building disadvantages.

I watched Palin tell NBC that she’s reacting, not leading, so she did that to herself, imho. She also got caught trying to bury the news on a Friday.

I reverted to my IM copywriting training yesterday and today. To me the site looks and reads like a toned-down (somewhat) IM cliche. Does it look and read that way to anybody else? I’ve seen some really slick-looking corporate sites with a lot less in graphics and words. At least I have a killer outline now. 🙂

I was summarizing the powerful caveats. The Palin analogy was to the entire track of media treatment, see http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2009/07/10/reporter-we-took-sides-straight-simple-against-palin .

IM? Instant Messaging?

[Aeronaut]

Powerful caveats being the “good ole boys? IM also means Internet Marketing in some contexts. The reason I ask is that I see a lot of world-class creatives and copy in magazines like Inc and Forbes. That’s what I really aspire to in terms of layout, copywriting, and presumably results. Can’t wait for 10Mb/s to become a slow speed connection.

I just did a preliminary keyword analysis- had Google tell me keywords seem to apply to subatomic, then ran the list through a script to see which ones look worth manually analyzing the competitiveness of for article marketing. The list currently has 47 words and over a dozen of them have monthly global searches in the six and 7 digit range. This is very encouraging.

[Brian H]

Aeronaut wrote: Powerful caveats being the “good ole boys? IM also means Internet Marketing in some contexts. The reason I ask is that I see a lot of world-class creatives and copy in magazines like Inc and Forbes. That’s what I really aspire to in terms of layout, copywriting, and presumably results. Can’t wait for 10Mb/s to become a slow speed connection.

I just did a preliminary keyword analysis- had Google tell me keywords seem to apply to subatomic, then ran the list through a script to see which ones look worth manually analyzing the competitiveness of for article marketing. The list currently has 47 words and over a dozen of them have monthly global searches in the six and 7 digit range. This is very encouraging.

Are they not mainly scientific papers? I can hardly imagine the business or political or technical types you seem to be interested in using such searches.

[Phil’s Dad]

If I understand what the thread has become (as opposed to the 4th Gen IFR fission that I think it started as) the question is, “Should the FF community try to attract an advanced commitment from politicians?”

Aeronaut said; “3) Phil’s Dad can help us with this point. I hate the word surprise, and I’ll bet all politicians do, too…”

True of course; although we tend to operate on fairly short timescales tactically, policy takes longer (as it should) and a reasonable lead time is appreciated. The instinctive reaction though is “How can I control this thing to solve the problems I am grappling with?”

So two questions arise. “How much control do you want politicians to have over it?” That will inform when and how you tell them (more later). Secondly “How does your product/service help them solve those problems?” Which of course leads to the oldest sales rule of all, sell the benefits, not the product.

I think the correct approach is to let as many members of the worlds public as possible know how they will benefit (which will influence the message you use) and let them pester their political community to catch up. If the message is handled properly the public will be saying to their elected representative, “I will get tremendous benefit from this so you should be using my taxes to make it happen!”. If it is done that way round there will be less opportunity for politicians to direct its development to their own ends by attaching strings to the investment.

One word of caution. Do not over sell it. If you break a promise (including a deadline) you will find it a huge challenge to be believed again.

Brian H says; …the technology is still speculative, …public awareness is still minute, and …the pressure to stick with the current paradigm is unceasing and intense.

All true. A lot of people will dismiss this as alchemy until sustained net positive output is a certainty. It will be derided, not least by those with a vested interest in its failure. However it is still worth raising awareness. The up side is so huge that people will suspend disbelief if there is the faintest chance. And politics, unlike engineering, is all about the management of public perception.
Why not play us at our own game? 😉

[Brian H]

Phil’s Dad wrote: If I understand what the thread has become (as opposed to the 4th Gen IFR fission that I think it started as) the question is, “Should the FF community try to attract an advanced commitment from politicians?”

Aeronaut said; “3) Phil’s Dad can help us with this point. I hate the word surprise, and I’ll bet all politicians do, too…”

True of course; although we tend to operate on fairly short timescales tactically, policy takes longer (as it should) and a reasonable lead time is appreciated. The instinctive reaction though is “How can I control this thing to solve the problems I am grappling with?”

So two questions arise. “How much control do you want politicians to have over it?” That will inform when and how you tell them (more later). Secondly “How does your product/service help them solve those problems?” Which of course leads to the oldest sales rule of all, sell the benefits, not the product.

I think the correct approach is to let as many members of the worlds public as possible know how they will benefit (which will influence the message you use) and let them pester their political community to catch up. If the message is handled properly the public will be saying to their elected representative, “I will get tremendous benefit from this so you should be using my taxes to make it happen!”. If it is done that way round there will be less opportunity for politicians to direct its development to their own ends by attaching strings to the investment.

One word of caution. Do not over sell it. If you break a promise (including a deadline) you will find it a huge challenge to be believed again.

Brian H says; …the technology is still speculative, …public awareness is still minute, and …the pressure to stick with the current paradigm is unceasing and intense.

All true. A lot of people will dismiss this as alchemy until sustained net positive output is a certainty. It will be derided, not least by those with a vested interest in its failure. However it is still worth raising awareness. The up side is so huge that people will suspend disbelief if there is the faintest chance. And politics, unlike engineering, is all about the management of public perception. Why not play us at our own game? 😉

Many ways to approach these observations, but let’s pick lead time.

From the time the experimental rig achieves unity, (end 2010, guesstimate) there will be 2-3 yrs. of engineering refinement before a product is available. That’s the time period that seems to me to be worth beginning to push. Aero seems to want to leverage earlier enthusiasm into investment/grants, but without unity, that will cost more in terms of control and LPP share % (I assume). After unity, Eric and LPP have the upper hand; it will be far easier to make confident and persuasive extrapolations. That will induce multiple competing sources of investment and backing to get interested. (As an aside, it will also likely kick off numerous attempts world-wide to reverse-engineer and duplicate the rig. Depending on how altruistic you are, that may or may not be a bad thing.)

Fending off attempts to highjack and manage FF from that point on (unity and later) will take considerable time and attention, I fear.

The “lead time” benefit for politicians and society as a whole seems to me to be overstated or over-assumed here. On the timescale of development and exploitation of energy sources, FF’s appearance and rapidity of availability will be blindingly fast regardless of that 2-3 yr period.

For the above reasons and others, my thinking has always been (and remains, notwithstanding Eric’s wish for public support) that the best and safest and most effective procedure is to stay under most of the radar until as late as possible, right up to being able to offer a final prototype and licenses. Not that that wouldn’t cause a fair amount of consternation and demands for verification, etc., but I think it would hamstring any attempt to derail or delay FF — because of the ‘competitive advantage’ issue. Since the license and design would essentially be open to the world, no individual jurisdiction could afford to drag its feet. The “stranded assets” won’t be significantly different because of that 2-3 yrs.; those are multi-decade products.

The investment issue is the one hurdle to being able to do it that way. Since Eric wants to begin engineering development co-incident with the second and final year of science testing, that means having about a $5million (?) commitment by early next year, or something in that range. That could also be government grants, though that is likely (IMO) to be a toxic option, given the nature of bureaucratic oversight. Not that the current Administration couldn’t handle it with petty cash from the bloated borrowed credit pool it’s waved into existence, but that cabal of czars and fixers is bad company!

So it would be nice to have Thor’s Hammer (a product ready-to-deploy for every market on the planet) in hand to tap, tap, tap gently on the other palm when chatting with them.

[Aeronaut]

Good to hear from you again, Phil’s Dad. You and Brian gave me enough food for thought that I rewrote the copy entirely. This may clear up most objections. http://subatomicprecision.com

[Brian H]

Aeronaut wrote: Good to hear from you again, Phil’s Dad. You and Brian gave me enough food for thought that I rewrote the copy entirely. This may clear up most objections. http://subatomicprecision.com

Wow! Gone heavily political, with a big section on Loving Barack thrown in.

Really bad idea. The insertion of party propaganda into a promo and appeal for money (remember, donations and grants only; SEC stomps even indirect appeals for investment over the Internet) is extremely contentious, and petty as hell to boot.

But since you can’t and don’t speak for LPP, or FFS, only for yourself, I guess you can say what you want. 8-/

[Aeronaut]

Where did I ask for money in any way, shape, or form? IF a link to FFS is taken, their solicitation is presented. Actually, I’d prefer to present FF using links to LPP, at least one link farther from the solicit button. What I asked for is help getting the word out using word of mouth advertising.

Reasonably content people have no driving reason to change anything, so the idea is to make the reader madder than hell- mad enough to make fusion power an issue and vote it en masse. If you’re broke and scared of the future, you’d be looking for a way out, too. I can’t help it, that’s just the demographic the Dems have always gone after. And times are bad enough there’s more of them in Congress at the moment. May be different after the next election or two.

I’ll admit I phrased it in the context of US politics, but the issues are wide enough that I’m wondering how well it plays beyond the US?

[Brian H]

Aeronaut wrote: Where did I ask for money in any way, shape, or form? IF a link to FFS is taken, their solicitation is presented. Actually, I’d prefer to present FF using links to LPP, at least one link farther from the solicit button. What I asked for is help getting the word out using word of mouth advertising.

Reasonably content people have no driving reason to change anything, so the idea is to make the reader madder than hell- mad enough to make fusion power an issue and vote it en masse. If you’re broke and scared of the future, you’d be looking for a way out, too. I can’t help it, that’s just the demographic the Dems have always gone after. And times are bad enough there’s more of them in Congress at the moment. May be different after the next election or two.

I’ll admit I phrased it in the context of US politics, but the issues are wide enough that I’m wondering how well it plays beyond the US?

Like a screed from a worshipper of the New Messiah demonizing previous incumbents, and suggesting that they would oppose and resent any efficient new technology. Which is a preposterous caricature.

Since the climate crisis which is terribly worsening the impact of energy costs and problems is a concoction of the left in the first place*, without scientific substance (just read some of the dithering and blathering which attempts to explain why, e.g., when industrial CO2 output first began to climb steeply in 1940, it was immediately followed by 4 decades of significant cooling — hilarious!), the opposition to hyper-expensive non-solutions (white paint or solar-cell roofs on every home, large solar farms that, however, must displace or interfere with zero local wildlife, using more energy to grow food for biofuels than the end-product yields, etc.) from the right is not opposition to new energy sources. Only to stupid wastes of time, money, and vital resources. If you want to discover this for yourself, try pitching them with appeals to vastly improved generation, production and agricultural efficiencies and the rendering moot of all AGW issues by use of zero-emission energy sourcing. You will get instant agreement that those are wonderful possibilities and projections, if only FF pans out.

Politics is a live, uninsulated, high-voltage wire. Keep to economics and quality-of-life-style and highly benign ecological spin-offs. Those are universal and cut through all the power games. People are not short of hostility, rather of realistic hope.

* Primarily publicly Al Gore, scientific ignoramus extraordinaire, but actually kicked off historically by Thatcher as an unfortunate attempt to undermine the power of Britain’s coal unions — she subsidized any academic research which suggested carbon would cause massive warming, and used it to help push nuclear fission, now a main component of Britain’s electric grid. The money drew and created thousands of biased proponents and created an academic industry in what was previously a small and difficult specialty. It gelled as a political and economic quasi-scientific pressure group, with almost no representation from major areas of vital concern, from oceanography to biology to cosmology, which are arguably dominant factors in regulating the climate. But are pretty much anathema or death to the CO2-climate-driver hypothesis.

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