Justin Gillis, an environmental reporter at The New York Times has begun a monthly column dealing with climate change-related problems. His first piece is entitled “In Search of Energy Miracles”, which takes its title from a TED talk by Bill Gates in 2010 where he was calling for breakthroughs in energy technology and specifically promoted a new generation of nuclear plants.
Gillis acknowledges that traditional alternatives of solar and wind are not able to provide all the energy we need, and mentions three possible candidates that could make a big difference: The Lockheed Martin fusion project; TerraPower, a ‘travelling wave reactor’ that is supposedly able to run on nuclear waste (Bill Gates is a partner in this company); and thorium based nuclear power –a plant is being built in China.
Unsurprisingly, cold fusion/LENR is not on the list, but perhaps this could be a topic for future discussions in one of his pieces. It seems like it will take something significant to happen in the LENR world for reporters in major media outlets to mention cold fusion as a possible energy solution — which is something many people are hoping to see in 2013. Of course Andrea Rossi is on the watch list, but there are other researchers and companies that are in the mix too. Perhaps Mr. Gillis should be invited to the ICCF-18 conference in at the University of Missouri this summer to hear some of what is going on in the LENR field. Registration opens on March 15th, and details of the conference can be found here.
