The following comment was submitted by David H. Bailey.
This article, just posted to the Scientific American website, has some interesting data on energy usage in the industrial sector. Overall, industry uses 32% of energy worldwide, but of that sector, only 26% is in the form of electricity — the rest (74%) is for heat, moistly in chemical production, manufacturing and mining operations. Among other things, this suggests that Rossi’s focus on heat for industrial applications isn’t a bad way to start, even if electricity production is a subsequent goal.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/solar-energy-isnt-just-for-electricity/
On another topic, here is an interesting report from the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory on their attempts to use AI methods to forecast and deal with sudden disruptions in tokamak-type fusion reactors. Such studies underscore the very difficult task the conventional hot fusion researchers have in constructing a consistently workable system. In addition to government labs, some commercial operations are pursuing hot fusion reactors and claim progress. but in general it is clear that the hot fusion field still has quite a ways to go to achieve a commercially viable system.
