Cold Fusion and the Future
Part 1 - Revolutionary Technology
by Jed Rothwell
(Originally Published January-February, 1997 In Infinite Energy Magazine Issue #12)

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At the time of the First World War, capital ships were converted from coal to oil. A ship can be retrofitted with a new type of engine, an airplane cannot, because aircraft design is too closely tied to engine performance. The billions of dollars now being spent to build a new generation of kerosene powered fighter airplanes will be wasted. The machines will be scrapped soon after they are manufactured. Small cold fusion cruise missiles will have unlimited range and endurance. With Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) navigation, they will take off from any spot on earth and fly anywhere else. They can search for a target for days, or months. They will weave up and down the landscape, loitering, waiting for a truck, train or convoy to pass, or above the sea waiting for a ship. They might circle around a target indefinitely, waiting to attack on command, or keeping tabs on it, reporting its position back to headquarters. Pilotless propeller aircraft could also carry cameras for mapping, reconnaissance, and spying. An autonomous cold fusion torpedo will be similar to a cruise missile. You could launch it anywhere. It could cross an ocean and cruise around an enemy coast waiting for a ship to come along, and then attack it.

Another potential use for long range torpedoes is based upon an idea that has been proposed by many scientists including Freeman Dyson.²⁵ They have suggested that a kind of "mechanical limpet mine" or "suckerfish" could be used to keep track of nuclear submarines. These small, robot devices clamp onto the bottoms of passing submarines and continually report their position back to headquarters. The sailors in the submarine or surface ship might realize the limpet was attached. According to the late Admiral Sir Anthony Griffin, experts in the Royal Navy are trained to dive under ships stopped in mid-ocean and remove such mines.²⁶ In wartime this would be a hazardous undertaking for both the diver and the ship, which would be vulnerable to attack. Cold fusion makes the limpet idea easier to implement, and more effective. It would be difficult to remove one or two such mines; imagine trying to remove a hundred of them with cold fusion power supplies and computers programmed to detect divers and scuttle away from them to a new spot on the hull. The limpet might not need to attach itself. It might swim along next to the hull.

A torpedo-like cold fusion drone submarine might be equipped with spy gear and radios instead of a warhead. In peacetime, it might be programmed to loiter around in international waters outside an enemy submarine port. When a submarine passes by to take up patrol, the drone would tag along after it, getting as close as possible. It would keep tabs on the submarine throughout the entire mission. It would record sounds and signals emanating from the submarine. A school of drones might follow a submarine, reporting its position, speed, and bearing every ten minutes back to headquarters. One of the problems with the limpet scheme is that you cannot easily broadcast a radio message from underwater. However, if you had a school of a hundred tag along torpedoes, several of them could be assigned to stack up in a column above the submarine, each staying in contact with the one below it. The top one would dart to the surface every ten minutes to broadcast a report via satellite, and then return to join the school. A hundred drones would cost a lot of money, but nowhere near as much as the manned submarine they are assigned to follow. They would be programmed to cross the ocean and return home for maintenance at regular intervals, in relays. This constant surveillance would render the submarine useless. A submarine's only advantage is its ability to hide. Surrounded by drones, it would be as "visible" as any surface ship is to radar and satellite. If the enemy knows precisely where a submarine is, where it is headed, and what the captain said to the first mate a half-hour ago, it might as well be a surface ship or a shore installation under satellite reconnaissance. A nuclear missile submarine is a deterrent only because its location is secret.

If a war seemed imminent, a dozen members of the tag along school might be armed with warheads. When war is declared, they could be ordered to attack the submarine. Armed tag along torpedoes could be assigned to follow every aircraft carrier, cruiser, and other ship in an enemy fleet. Even if a dozen were assigned to follow one ship, they would still be cheaper to build and maintain than the smallest seagoing manned vessel.

Nuclear Weapons
Most experts say it is unlikely that a cold fusion powered nuclear bomb can be built. Let us hope they are right. Cold fusion devices are cheap. If a cold fusion bomb is possible, someone might be able to mass produce thousands of devices the size of shoe boxes, each with the power of the Hiroshima bomb, costing a thousand dollars apiece. They would be undetectable. They might become as common as Stinger Missiles, which are reportedly available in the third world weapons bazaars. It is cold comfort, but terrorists have never used a Stinger Missile against defenseless civilian aircraft. They have, however, put a powerful bomb in the World Trade Center. If they had acquired a small thermonuclear fusion bomb from the arsenal of the former Soviet Union, the result would have been unthinkable.

Cold fusion appears to be limited to slow, relatively low power reactions, which require an intact metal lattice. Cold fusion is not a chain reaction, like fission. When one hydrogen atom undergoes a cold fusion reaction, it does not directly trigger another atom. It will raise the temperature unless you remove the heat, which can spur the reaction. There are some indications that if you let a cell overheat, the reaction can quickly increase to high levels until the metal melts. This would destroy the lattice and instantly quench the reaction. It does not seem to be a practical way to make a bomb.

Pons and Fleischmann reported that a meltdown might have occurred. This is not alarming. A practical cold fusion motor or engine could be designed to prevent this from happening. It would have safety devices, radiators, and emergency valves to prevent overheating, just like any other heat engine. Conventional engines can overheat or go out of control. Automobile engines catch on fire; overheat. Helicopter engines can lose lubricant and explode. Perhaps on rare occasions cold fusion engines will go out of control and perhaps even melt down. Before these engines come into widespread use, it will be necessary to test them by deliberately disabling safety features to find out what happens during a catastrophe.

Although a bomb is not a likely threat, cold fusion can be used to generate tritium, which is dangerous. Furthermore, it is an essential ingredient for a thermonuclear hydrogen bomb. You cannot make a bomb without tritium, and you cannot make tritium without a massive, expensive reactor. The only U.S. facility capable of making it is the Savannah River Plant, which has been shut down indefinitely. The half-life of tritium is 12.3 years. If the Savannah River plant is shut down permanently, the U.S. supply of tritium will fall by half every 12.3 years. For a while, old tritium can be scavenged out of decommissioned warheads, which are in oversupply thanks to the arms reductions treaties. Eventually, the natural decline will begin automatically squeezing down the number of warheads, unless a replacement for the Savannah River plant is built. Some policy makers have welcomed this as a mechanism for automatic scheduled arms reductions. It is difficult to hide a massive tritium reactor facility from satellite reconnaissance. If the Russians, Chinese and others agree to shut down their tritium production, we can be certain they will have to throw away half of their remaining warheads every 12.3 years. Cold fusion may disrupt this automatic arms reduction scheme. Occasionally, cold fusion reactions generate copious amounts of tritium. Most create no measurable amounts of tritium at all. Nobody knows why yet. We will have to find out before cold fusion generators and automobiles can be built. Some set of physical laws govern tritium production. Once we understand those laws, or, at least, once we establish reliable empirical means of prediction, it should be possible to ensure tritium-free heat production. Unfortunately, this means it will also be possible to enhance tritium production, although nobody can predict to what extent. A third world country might be able to construct a small, hidden, cut-rate version of the Savannah River plant.

Food Factories
The main reason people grow food in fields outside is that solar energy is free. If we can get as much light and heat indoors, at zero cost, we can do much better growing things indoors. Outdoor farms suffer from a long list of problems like drought, floods, erosion, insects, storms, and so on. "Outside" is a terrible place for a production line ­ which is what a row of corn really is. You would not think of producing shoes, potato chips, or computer chips in an open field. It is not a good place to produce food either. Farmers sometimes lose half of their crops to frost, drought, or insects. In any other industry this would be considered disastrous performance. An auto plant, a computer chip or a potato chip factory that lost half of its annual output because of a late frost would face bankruptcy. Farms are subject to the whims of nature, so we are forced to accept large losses, unpredictability, and overall low efficiency. Sunlight is the only pollution-free, zero cost source of energy abundant enough to grow food for everyone on earth.

A food factory is a large scale indoor farm. It is like a greenhouse. Experimental food factories already exist. The Yomiuri newspaper reports that hydroponically grown produce is popular in Japan.²⁷ People like it because it is "totally pesticide free." There are no insects in the factory, so no need for pesticides. Factory grown food is "more natural;" it ought to appeal to people who want organic, pesticide-free diets, once they get over the shock of that idea. During the spring and summer factory grown vegetables are about 50% more expensive than field grown ones, but in winter they are 30 to 40% cheaper. Food factories make economic sense in Japan, where land prices and strawberries are expensive. They would be even more economically attractive if the electricity was free. In Iceland, food factories are warmed by volcanic hot springs, another zero-cost source of energy, like the sun, or cold fusion. In the Netherlands, flowers worth $1.8 billion per year are grown hydroponically in greenhouses. Flowers are grown, cut, packaged, auctioned, and air shipped to cities all over the world from a gigantic indoor complex the size of 100 football fields. Rose bushes grow "for four years without touching soil" in water filled with an ideal mixture of fertilizer and plant food. Computers control levels of light and nutrients to meet peak demand on Mother's Day and at other times of the year.²⁸ A company in Massachusetts grows 900,000 striped bass in an aquiculture factory on an acre of land.²⁹ The fish are healthier and better tasting than fish grown in the wild, or in aquiculture ponds. The machines produce a rapid current, forcing the fish to swim vigorously twenty miles per day, which improves the flavor of the meat. The fish grow to market size in nine months, half the time it usually takes. The water discharged by the factory "exceeds numerous drinking water standards," according to state environmental officials.

The factories double as storage warehouses. The robots in a tomato factory will plant a thousand bushels every week, and vary light and temperature to create artificial growing seasons on each floor. The tomatoes will ripen in stages throughout the year. They will be shipped to stores a few miles from the building. They would not require elaborate packaging or preservation. They will arrive at the stores within hours of peak ripeness.

Food factories can be located near population centers, or possibly beneath large cities. In the distant future, a fully automated food farm might be located directly under a grocery store. Produce would never be shipped more than a few hundred meters, straight up, and no fruit or vegetable would be less than perfectly vine ripe. Alternatively, it might be more economical to build the factories in out-of-the way locations where land is cheap: deserts, inaccessible mountain ranges, or the moon. Perhaps robot driven VTOL aircraft and spacecraft will ship garbage from cities to the food factories, and bring back produce.

Food factories are not biotechnological factories. They are not the factories depicted in science fiction, which take in garbage and synthesize food hours later. In a food factory, food is grown from seeds and livestock, like a conventional farm. The production line throughput is one to six months. Factories producing automobiles and consumer goods generally move products from start to finish in days or weeks, so they require less floor space than food factories. Food factories have large inventories and slow production lines. We have always had some kinds of food factories, including breweries and cheese factories. Some take months to produce a batch of goods. Some take years.

Food Factories and Famine
A few thousand large food factories in the third world would stabilize supplies and banish the threat of famine. The factories would not need enough capacity to feed the entire population. They would stop incipient famines by stabilizing supplies. Most famines are not caused by the weather or by natural disasters, because these are limited in geographic scope. In an organized society, relief supplies can always be shipped in. Famine is caused by economics, politics, war, or poor government planning. Famines are triggered when a bad harvest or a war disrupts the food supply. People panic, and hoard food. Prices shoot up, and the famine begins. Sometimes, as people starve, unsold food rots in warehouses. It is too expensive for poor people. Chaos disrupts transportion. If the people can be assured that adequate emergency supplies exist in food factories, panic will not set in, prices will remain stable, and famine will be averted.

A million large food factories in the third world would bankrupt the third-world farmers, causing widespread social disruption. It would reduce U.S. exports of food, hurting our balance of payments. Once the factories are developed, I cannot imagine why they would not become increasingly cheap, gradually supplanting outdoor farms and disrupting agricultural employment worldwide. No human can work as cheaply as a robot.

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