“A revolution in energy generation is happening.”

Why you could soon have a Nuclear Power Plant in your Kitchen!

I wrote a post with the above title 6 months ago. Following are some extracts from it, but the point about writing today is to show that if the news item that follows these extracts are successful, then the energy revolution revealed six months ago could be out of date before launch. Though it seems we will still get our energy virtually free from a fridge like cabinet in the kitchen!

I’ve been interested in energy news for a few years and subscribe to a newsletter. I agree with Wired Magazine and think a big breakthrough is imminent in solving the problem in parts of the world where there is still energy poverty.

The United Nations estimates that one and a half billion people live without electricity and three and a half billion still rely on primitive fuels such as wood or charcoal for cooking and heating.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, the numbers are even higher with more than 70% of the population living without access to electricity.

Energy was the catalyst for accelerating the improvement in our living standards.

Without the discovery of electricity, the advanced nations would still be comparatively primitive as well

No Computers, Internet,Television.Telephone.

The list of 'Adjacent Possibilities' brought into being by this energy source just goes on and on.

An 'Adjacent Possible' is something that is out there undiscovered until a major invention or discovery is made and makes other inventions and opportunities possible.

It’s like discovering a room (Electricity) with 4 doors. Each door leads to an 'Adjacent Possible'. Again with 4 doors……..

I read that the Blockchain is like Electricity, in that it is the door that will open pathways to many 'Adjacent Possible' inventions, that will rapidly improve living standards and transform lives just as electricity did.

Bitcoin on The Blockchain was just the start

As the Wired Magazine says The Blockchain will be the vehicle for bigger developments than the new electronic coin. I can’t get my old head round it yet, but it’s to do with Data.

Just as the big financial institutions had exclusive control of money until the arrival of Cryptocurrency, which challenges their monopoly, so all our data is in the control of big business –

A quote from the newsletter –

"As billions more sensors and other devices come online in the emerging internet of things to monitor, not only people’s personal location and health information,but also the status of the buses and trains they ride,the cars they drive,and the_household appliances they use, the stakes around data control get a lot higher." _

Blockchain technology will also enable solutions that will overcome the barriers that keep so many of the worlds people in energy poverty.

It’s not a question of producing energy. Enough energy from the sun hits the Sahara Desert in a day to power the world for a year. The barrier is storage and distribution.

Coal and oil may be polluting and non-renewable, but they are relatively easy to store. One in a heap, the other in a drum.

Advanced thinking at present favours local grid level storage

MIT Professor Donald Sadoway, one of the world’s leading authorities on solid-state chemistry, is also optimistic about the future of Local Grid Level Storage. Backed by funds from the Advanced Projects Research Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) and Bill Gates.

He’s developed and demonstrated a Liquid Metal Battery (LMB). The result is a battery with current ten times higher than present day high end batteries.

And the design scales. Today’s working LMB prototypes are the size of a hockey puck capable of storing twenty watt-hours.

Imagine a device the size of a Domestic Deep Freezer, enough to run the home for a day. They are designed to install and forget – that can operate for fifteen to twenty hours without human intervention.

It’s cheap, quiet, requires no maintenance, produces no greenhouse gases, and is made of earth abundant elements.
Whatever the future source of energy for the home – It will be

** In The Fridge!**

And scaling up further. An LMB the size of a shipping container could power a neighbourhood. One the size of a Walmart Supercentre a small city.

When the storage problem is solved it will give solar and wind a major boost.

The point is there are many clever brains working on a solution backed by monied people who share their optimism and confidence

And the oil industry is not giving up its virtual monopoly without a fight. It’s present fossil source is unpopular with environmentalists, and running out.

But they are working on replacing it with Biofuel from Algae. This source overcomes the problem with oil from Rape Seed, which takes scarce agricultural land needed for food production.

Nuclear Energy will be in there pitching for a share of the energy supply market as well. Yes, there is excitement in that industry with what they call Backyard Nukes.

These self-contained small scale modular generation IV nuclear reactors (SMRs) are the size of a Domestic Deep Freezer, built in factories, sealed completely, and designed to run for decades without maintenance.

Toshiba and Westinghouse among others have gone into this because of SMRs potential for providing THE WORLD with carbon free energy.

TerraPower is another. It was founded when Bill Gates and a group of like-minded visionaries decided that the private sector needed to act in developing advanced nuclear answers for pressing global needs.

The energy supply source doesn’t matter to most consumers. Only the price. And from solar and nuclear there will be what an energy industry observer describes as, Squanderable amounts of Energy.

And whether solar or nuclear, The answer will be, It’s in the Fridge.

But it seems you can forget all that ! Update to the Above.

The following is a digest from an energy newsletter received this week 4th June 2018

How is it it possible that this weird floating magnet could create
INFINITE ENERGY FOREVER
REVEALED: A 9th March announcement from MIT sounded the start gun on a global race to commercialise a NEW, CLEAN and INFINITE source of energy.
And – strange as it sounds – the magnet holds the secret to generating infinite energy forever.
It's been under development for nearly 60 years.
The most powerful nations on the planet – including Japan, Britain, America, Germany and China – have spent billions of dollars researching it.
Why?
Because in the words of Stephen Hawking, it would:
“…provide an inexhaustible supply of energy, without pollution or global warming.”
In short, for the last 60 years the world’s best and brightest have been trying to perfect the most valuable tech in history.
The Breakthrough Announcement
When first using this secret, leading MIT professor Dennis Whyte, astounded, went on record saying:
“[it] just ripples through the whole design. It changes the whole thing.”
Head MIT professor Maria Zuber, stating on the projects success, concluded it was:
“…a credible, viable plan to achieve net positive energy.”
On the 9th of March 2018, they succeeded.
Physicists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced a breakthrough…
Researchers were able to create the world’s first burst of FREE ENERGY.
The secret? It all goes back to that weird floating magnet.
And this is real.
Scientists have discovered the secret to creating infinite energy…
Without using any energy supply that exists on planet earth today.
It emits no pollution and is practically inexhaustible.
And by harnessing it, it can power an entire city… in a one 10 second pulse.
But here’s the best bit.
One tiny company is at the very heart of this breakthrough.
Right now, this microscopically small firm possess a key piece of the puzzle to making infinite energy a reality.
It was just days after this announcement, Eni, one of the biggest suppliers of gas and oil in the world, invested $50 million directly into furthering MITs development.
CEO Claudio Descalzi said:
“[This] is the true energy source of the future, as it is completely sustainable, does not release emissions or long-term waste, and is potentially inexhaustible. It is a goal that we are increasingly determined to reach quickly.”
As reported by The New Yorker:
“The technology could solve the world’s energy problems for the next 30 million years, and help save the planet from environmental catastrophe.”
CNN says it:
“…has the potential to save the planet”
And Forbes said it could:
“...solve our energy and environmental needs in one single blow”
One company owns the patent vital to the entire endeavour.
It’s a tiny firm.
And it’s highly unlikely you’ve ever heard of it.
But this little-known outfit have been shipping a patented material directly to physicists in Massachusetts and the top brass at the Department of Energy.
This magnetic material holds the secret to creating enormous energy.
And on the 9th of March, it proved to be invaluable.
Stanford say this magnetic material produces “enormous potential”.
And the Department of Energy call it the one thing behind “lighting up the world”.
It is VITAL to making what 35 nations around the world have been relentlessly trying to achieve for years...
The Sun’s energy comes from its huge gravitational force smashing hydrogen atoms together.
The great pressure and heat fuses the atoms together…
Creating enormous energy.
Strange as it sounds, it’s now possible to do this HERE ON EARTH…
Not only that, it’s possible to harness this energy.
To do it you need to heat the same two heavy hydrogen atoms found on the Sun - deuterium and tritium.
When they’re heated up together (up to 150 million degrees to be exact) - the atoms end up colliding.
As they smash together, they FUSE into one big atom – what we know as Helium.
That’s why it is Nuclear‘fusion’ energy, as opposed to Nuclear Fission energy
It’s the collision that creates an enormous amount of power.
We’re talking a million times more energy than blowing up TNT.
And the same amount of energy as burning 100 tonnes of coal…
But, this process is safe and emits zero carbon emissions.
We’ve known it is possible for decades.
However, the problem scientists face is keeping this incredible power stable enough harness it.
You see, once you’ve heated the atoms, you end up creating a high temperature plasma.
Think of this as a very hot, brightly coloured soup-like substance. It’s gaseous in nature but it’s almost lava like. And it’s so hot it could incinerate anything it touches.
To capture the energy, you need this plasma to ‘float’ without touching anything.
And to do that requires
one special substance
To isolate the plasma enough to extract energy, you need a very high powered magnetic material.
Just like the base of that floating magnet
It’s something called a ‘High Temperature Superconductor’.
These are made from rare earth elements: yttrium, barium, and copper oxide.
They’re the only things able to withstand the heat and keep the plasma contained.
This mimics the large gravitational force of the Sun.
Whilst its been known that fusion is possible for decades... we’ve never had superconductors powerful enough to make it work properly.
Meaning scientists have struggled with generating MORE power than it takes to make the reaction in the first place.
So achieving ‘net gain’ in energy has been the end goal of all the experimental reactors in action today.
9th March: the day fusion became a reality
On this day, MIT were able to achieve a net gain energy with their small reactor.
As reported by the Guardian,
“The team intend to use a new class of high-temperature superconductors they predict will allow them to create the world’s first fusion reactor that produces more energy than needs to be put in to get the fusion reaction going.”

Read the article in full - http://bit.ly/2kZif9S

Other Source Material – Energy News. The book -Abundance by Peter Diamandis & Steven Kotler.