Justin, take it just for only those applications claimed for it right now -- wet steam production and dry radiant or convection heating at a COP level of 4 to ~ 20 COP ~ level (four-five times better than natural gas).
Yes,
LENR will be significant and yes it is obviously becoming very very real.
All the tester boys have radiation detectors going all the time and
very occasionally a low energy emission is seen, something that could be stopped by a sheet of aluminum foil. One could argue that random cosmic rays going through the ceiling would kick up enough secondary radiation to give the same sort of occasional rare weak reading on the detectors, but caution is the name of the game right now, so let's all say it came from the dogbone itself.
So shield it -- easy enough to do.
The sheet metal shields that are over the dogbones lately in case of an overpressure event or a melt down event will also do double duty as radiation shields for such emissions. I would think commercial units would stay behind layers of sheet metal all the time being inside a heating plant, so that would work out well too.
Will some country have LENR heaters within a year or so -- certainly. But with red tape and UL test requirements here in America it will take longer than that just to come up with the "certification test program". What will happen in all reality is Russia, India and China will all move quicker than the USA will, as will Norway and Sweden and Indonesia and Africa.
But we can watch the fun unfold -- and it is obvious that Rossi and Industrial Heat are now letting select people see the 1 megawatt plant, but by non-disclosure agreements only.
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Will the oil and natural gas lobby work against it? Yes, certainly -- it is already suspected that some "debunk Rossi" troll type internet posters are being paid by someone to cast as much doubt over the process as possible, and we are reminded that one of the early USA pioneers was SHOT DEAD at the end of his parents driveway while picking up the morning paper.
(yeah, shot dead -- that put a halt to people publicizing their research for over 10 years as shooting people is really a sorta extreme form of discouragement, don't you think?)
You will notice Rossi was not at the show, his boss was. Rossi tends to strongly polarize any debate and he has a long history of casting forth red herring tidbits of information instead of really helping "the imitators". So, Rossi is somewhat of a PR liability, eh, so keep him busy in his container and let the head dog handle it.
People trust and like folks like Tom Darden and like Parkhomov -- he is a nice open polite old man with a very cute granddaughter. So let him be the grandfatherly face of LENR, so who cares really just so it rolls forward smoothly from now on.
Trillions and Trillions of spent oil infrastructure money are are at stake right now though, and if you don't think that BIG OIL and BIG GAS is going to try to fight back some to protect their investment, you are kidding yourself. The futures market is showing down spike volatility as these LENR shows and development milestones come up and go by.
Politicians will "want to go slowly" as they get pressured by their campaign contributors, universities will be encouraged not to play at all by these same people.
Climactically cold or hungry nations, especially those lacking natural resources will not drag their feet though. LENR knowledge will progress fairly quickly driven by the net coordinated research that is going on now.
Can't stop it really, it is just too easy to do ....Personally, I am amazed at the amount of DARPA program developed knowledge, the NASA propulsion lab knowledge and the Japanese Industrial Conglomerate based knowledge that is slowly seeping out now. A lot of this early development stuff is ALREADY KNOWN in detail already.
And please remember, our entire ECONOMIC CULTURE is oil based -- so perhaps going slowly is a smart thing.