I wrote: This is a crude estimate but I believe it does show that there is not > enough palladium to produce all the energy we need. If it turns out > palladium is the only suitable metal, we would have large centralized > generators producing most of our energy, supplying it as electricity for > use in electric cars and so on. We would not actually put the palladium in > automobiles, and probably not in houses either. >
I forgot to mention the key factor. Automobiles sit unused most of the day. If you had palladium in automobile engines, it would sit not producing energy 23 out of 24 hours. If you put the palladium in large central generators then it is active during the day, and perhaps 25% of it is used at night during off-peak hours. With that scheme we might have enough palladium to produce all of the energy we need but it would be in the form of electricity delivered from central generators. We would not have enough palladium to put into standalone machines that are seldom used. We might end up putting it in locomotives, long-haul trucks and other heavy equipment that is used many hours a day, and that cannot be conveniently powered by electricity. If you convert every automobile to cold fusion, and then turn on every automobile in the world, they would probably produce as much energy as we now use. But we cannot use it conveniently. There are schemes to attach automobiles to generating networks but I do not think that is a practical idea. With nickel, on the other hand, we could afford to put the metal and hydrogen into every machine on earth, including machines that are used only a few minutes per year, or machines that we never expect to use, such as emergency lighting systems. - Jed
