Tag: Tom Whipple

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Tom Whipple of Falls Church News-Press on Great Transition

Former senior analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Tom Whipple is a writer/editor on energy, Peak Oil, and LENR.

This is a re-post of Tom Whipple’s The Great Transition: Progress on New Sources of Energy published in Falls Church News-Press at https://fcnp.com/2018/12/20/great-transition-progress-new-sources-energy/.

The Great Transition: Progress on New Sources of Energy

by Tom Whipple

Unless humanity replaces fossil fuels in the next couple of decades, it is almost certain that the latter part of the 21st century and beyond is going to be a very unpleasant era in which to live. For the past 200 years, much of the world has prospered greatly from fossil fuels. Most of us have become so accustomed to the benefits of fossil fuels that few are anxious to give up the lifestyles that this energy has provided despite the dire implications for future generations.

After three decades of grappling with climate change, it is becoming apparent that the only solution to slowing and reversing its effects is to develop new sources of energy that are so much cheaper than our fossil fuels and our current alternatives that a rapid transition to non-polluting energy will happen quickly and without too much economic damage. Although considerable progress has been made in improving and reducing the cost of our current, non-carbon emitting energy sources, for a variety of reasons not enough progress is being made in substituting these alternative energy sources to stop catastrophic changes in our climate.

At present, there seem to be only two radically new sources of energy under development that offer hope of replacing fossil fuels soon. As I have discussed several times before in this paper, there are two technologies — Low Energy Nuclear Reactions LENR and hydrogen/hydrino reaction — under development that appear to be nearing commercialization. Both of these technologies have been scientifically controversial for many years, but as their developers make progress, skepticism among those who have insight into the progress to these technologies is starting to wane.

The most prominent developer of the LENR technology, Andrea Rossi, said recently that he is installing a LENR heating system in a factory and that the first phase of this system has been in operation since mid-November. Rossi, however, releases information about his technology in such small bits and pieces that it is difficult to evaluate his technology or its prospects.

In contrast to the secretive Rossi, Randell Mills of Brilliant Light Power is an open book. For years, Mills has posted on his website periodic briefings outlining his progress and plans for the future. In recent years he has been issuing quarterly progress reports which are supplemented by the release of annotated video clips showing steadily improving prototypes of his devices being tested. In contrast to Rossi, some 95 percent of Mills’ technology and progress is available to anyone interested on the Brilliant Light Power website.

Mills has been working on his technology for over 25 years, and his laboratory is adequately financed by investors who believe he is developing a revolutionary technology. Mills produces energy by converting hydrogen atoms into a hitherto unknown form of hydrogen, which he calls hydrinos, which results in the release of unprecedented amounts of energy. His reaction has been working for several years and seems to be well verified by outside scientists. However, a reaction on a laboratory bench is not the same as a device that can replace all types of fossil fuels worldwide. There is still a lot of engineering to do before a plasma glowing on a laboratory bench is ready for mass production.

It has been two years since Mills last demonstrated his hydrogen-to-hydrino reaction and laid out a plan to build and market an energy producing device he calls a SunCell. During this period there have been important changes in Mills’ concept of how a commercial device that will reliably produce heat and electricity will work. Plans to release a device that would convert the energy being produced by a high-temperature plasma into electricity by using photoelectric cells has been put aside in favor of more promising techniques. Mills is now planning to develop two devices, one to produce heat and the other to produce electricity, using a highly efficient technique known as magnetohydrodynamics (MHD).

Before a commercial energy producing device can be built, Mills first has had to develop what he calls an “automated cell” or subsystem in which the energy-producing reaction can take place under computer control. In the early prototypes, Mills’ reaction was started and maintained manually, making it unsuitable for a commercial product. Judging from the videos showing various configurations of the SunCell that have been tested and the quarterly reports that have been released, he seems to be making progress. Successful development of several subsystems for the automated cell has been announced, and the videos show the reaction can now take place inside various types of enclosed spheres.

The two commercial products under development that will incorporate the automated cell are the “Thermal SunCell” which is to deliver 500kW for boilers, hot air or hot water thermal systems. As this device is far less complex than the “Electric SunCell,” it should reach the market first and demonstrate the potential of the technology. Brilliant Light Power plans to market this device initially to industrial firms which use heat in their processes. Although Mills says the SunCell theoretically can be scaled to produce anywhere from 10 kilowatts to 10 megawatts, the first device which incorporates an MHD subsystem is being designed to produce 150kW. By using MHD rather than photovoltaics to produce the electricity, Brilliant Light has lengthened the development time but, in the end, may have a better and far cheaper device.

With the changes taking place in plans for a commercial system, the path to non-polluting cheap energy from the SunCell technology has been lengthened, and BLP is no longer making forecasts of how long it will be before even a commercial-ready prototype can be developed. There was one clue in a recent BLP video of “Shakedown testing of our inverted-pedestal-electrode reactor before our planned demonstration for DOD scientists.” This could be a very significant development for if BLP can convince DOD scientists that they are looking at the energy source of the future, the technology could be in production a lot faster. It was scientists from DoD’s Advanced Research Projects Agency that was instrumental in developing the Internet — and look how that turned out! There may be some hope for the 22nd century yet if Rossi’s or Mills’ devices get into production in time.

From The Great Transition: Progress on New Sources of Energy by Tom Whipple

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The Peak Oil Crisis: The Mother of All Black Swans

Title graphic: M. King Hubbert’s graph of the fossil fuel age and it’s successor nuclear power in geologic time.

This is a re-post of an article written by Tom Whipple of the Falls Church News Press.
The original article is here.

Even Saudi Arabia’s oil minister is starting to talk about the advent of a “black swan.” These are defined as completely unexpected developments which cause lots of unexpected change. I believe we are going to be seeing a major black swan event in the not too distant future.

It should be clear to everyone that the earth’s climate is becoming so laden with carbon emissions that civilization as we know it on this planet is unlikely to make it through the next few centuries. Fortunately, however, the combustion of carbon-based fuels will be slowly on its way down as most of the oil that is left is becoming too costly to extract, and in the case of coal, is killing too many people from unhealthy air. Even the Chinese seem to have gotten the message and are cutting back on coal burning as fast as they can without collapsing their economy and getting the government overthrown. However, running out of cheap oil, killing ourselves off from dirty air, or devastating climate change induced weather events are not black swans as these developments are already well anticipated. What is desperately needed is a way for the world to stop burning carbon as quickly as possible without creating economic turmoil. There just may be an answer.

Coming down the road are a pair of technologies that will produce nearly unlimited amounts of cheap, pollution-free energy, and have the potential to change life-as-we-know-it.

I am talking about the twin technologies of cold fusion and hydrinos, each of which, when widely deployed, will constitute a revolution in the history of mankind fully equivalent to the discovery of fire, the wheel, the agricultural revolution, or the industrial revolution. Both of these technologies are based on turning the hydrogen found in water into virtually unlimited amounts of energy at very low cost and without any harmful pollution. Recent developments suggest that either or both of these technologies could become available for commercial applications in the next few years. In recent years, new technologies such as cell phones have spread across the globe in a few decades.

So where are these technologies and when can we expect to hear and read about them in the mainstream media, especially if they are getting close to becoming commercial products? The answer to this is simple. Both these technologies are based on science that is beyond that generally accepted by scientific community, especially those who have never looked into the results of the experiments. While those few scientists who have tested and are familiar with the details of these technologies tell us that they are for real, the bulk are waiting for irrefutable proof that they actually produce large amounts of cheap energy before they are willing to accept that our knowledge of nature may not be as complete as we like to think and that some scientific theories may be wrong.

The hydrino theory holds that there exists in nature a stable, compact form of hydrogen which does not absorb or emit light, making it very hard to detect. Under the proper conditions, normal hydrogen atoms such as those found in water can be transformed into hydrinos accompanied by a massive release of energy. This theory is the brainchild of one man, Randall Mills of BlackLight Power in New Jersey, who has been working on the development of the theory and a practical way to release energy for nearly 30 years. The reason the theory has received little attention is that it appears to violate fundamental principles of atomic science which would have to be rethought if it fact there is such a thing as a hydrino.

Last summer Mills reported in a fascinating video on his website, blacklightpower.com, that he has recently made significant breakthroughs in developing the technology. Last month he reported that all of the subsystems of his prototype “SunCell” now are working and that the first prototype of a commercial device is now being integrated. He also says that a business relationship for distribution of commercial products is being established. If the prototype devices work as advertised and can be tested by independent laboratories, the arguments over the existence of a hydrino should end fairly quickly unless some other explanation can be found. If the subsystems work as claimed, I would be surprised if we did not see the first prototype in operation before the end of the year.

The second of our black swan technologies is our old friend “cold fusion,” which now goes by several other names, largely to assuage the feelings of those scientists who claim there can be no such thing as cold fusion. There now is no question that the nuclear reactions are for real and that commercial quantities of heat can be produced under proper conditions by heating hydrogen in the presence of nickel and other elements. As far as we know, the Italian entrepreneur Andrea Rossi still seems to be the furthest ahead in the race to build and market commercial-scale devices although numerous people around the world are producing heat from laboratory scale devices.

Unlike Mill’s hydrino device, cold fusion is far more difficult to control and many experiments are producing so much heat that they melt down their test apparatuses. Only Rossi, who is now working from a US company, Industrial Heat, down in North Carolina, says he has developed the techniques to keep a commercially viable heat generating device under control. For several months now he has had a commercial sized 1-megawatt prototype device, which has been installed in a factory at an unrevealed location in the U.S., undergoing a year’s acceptance test. If this test is successful, and we won’t know until early next year, Industrial Heat will at some point likely begin publicizing and marketing commercial cold fusion devices.

If either of these endeavors meets their developers’ expectations, we should be seeing the biggest black swan in centuries land in our midst fairly soon.

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