The main problem in implementing small output conventional power plants comes from the difficulty of altering power output swiftly enough to follow rapid changes in load. The traditional steam generator method, regardless of the source of heat, has a large amount of inertia which makes its response sluggish. Making them small to get a more nimble response sacrifices efficiency. The conventional method of dealing with this difficulty is to have a huge grid with a quantity of large baseline generators, supplemented with peaking generators which are started up or shut down as needed. The size of the grid smooths out the fluctuations enough so this method works, usually. As long as nineteenth century methodology, boil the water, use the steam to turn a turbine, dominates the generation of electricity, the use of small generation facilities will be confined to applications such as factories where the load is fairly constant.

This is in fact a dangerous technology -- but only economically and politically. There are squads of high powered contractors and ambitious politicians lining up to promote the next generation of the same old stuff, light water reactors. They are not going to be pleased to see their attempts to extract buckets of wealth by building risk laden plants to generate expensive electricity emasculated by a simple, relatively safe and inexpensive machine. Eric Lerner and his team know what they are doing. They have taken a giant leap into the future, but if we want to take advantage of their discoveries, we will have to fight for it.

My thanks to Cheerio Boy for the name of the Japanese inventor, Kohei Minato. As I understand his claims at the time he was able to reduce the inefficiency of the basic electric motor to one tenth of its former percentage, improving a 90% motor to 99% and a 50% one to 95%. Last I heard he was going into production making large motors for ventilation systems which need to be running almost all the time. I wish him a good market. With the now increasing cost of producing electricity, he might have quite an opportunity.

Regarding the tone of some of the responses to the initial article: The only thing more problematic than trying to prove that the impossible can actually be done is to try to prove that it will always remain impossible.