In my usage I just meant as some hypothetical pie-in-the-sky future technology that solves all possible energy problems but the Wiki article gives a bit more history and detail.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion

"In the broadest sense, cold fusion is any type of nuclear fusion accomplished without the high temperatures (millions of degrees Celsius) required for thermonuclear fusion. In common usage, "cold fusion" refers more narrowly to a postulated fusion process of unknown mechanism offered to explain a group of experimental results first reported by electrochemists Stanley Pons of the University of Utah and Martin Fleischmann of the University of Southampton.

Cold fusion gained attention in 1989 when Fleischmann and Pons held a news conference in which they reported producing nuclear fusion in a tabletop experiment involving electrolysis of heavy water on a palladium (Pd) electrode.[1] They reported anomalous heat production ("excess heat") of a magnitude they asserted would defy explanation except in terms of nuclear processes.[2] They further reported measuring small amounts of nuclear reaction byproducts, including neutrons and tritium.[3] These reports raised hopes of a cheap and abundant source of energy.[4]

Enthusiasm turned to skepticism and ultimately scorn as a long series of failed replication attempts were weighed in view of several theoretical reasons cold fusion should not be possible, the discovery of possible sources of experimental error, and finally the discovery that Fleischmann and Pons had not actually detected nuclear reaction byproducts.[5] Although cold fusion has gained a reputation as pathological science, some researchers continue to investigate cold fusion and publish their findings at conferences, in books, and scientific journals.[6] The field is sometimes referred to as low energy nuclear reaction (LENR) studies or condensed matter nuclear science.[7]

The majority of a review panel organized by the US Department of Energy (DOE) in 1989 found that the evidence for the discovery of a new nuclear process was not persuasive. In 2004, the DOE convened a second cold fusion review panel which reached conclusions that were similar to those of the 1989 panel.[8]"

Actually he beat you by 1 minute and seven seconds with a much more detailed post.

Samurye.

That's actually not quite true. The deuterium + tritium reaction produces equal parts Helium and neutrons (in other words, every reaction produces a neutron), which will cause induced radioactivity within the reactor. Bombarding pretty much any material with neutrons has the unfortunate consequence of generating radioactive isotopes.

Additionally, even though tritium isn't highly radioactive, it's somewhat insidious. Like regular hydrogen, it's very difficult to contain and could leak from reactors. And, like free hydrogen, tritium easily binds with organic compounds and oxygen (resulting in tritiated water). And even though it's not highly radioactive and the radiation it produces can't penetrate the skin, if it's inhaled or ingested, or if tritiated water is absorbed through pores in the skin it is still plenty dangerous.

That said, the hazardous waste generated from fusion is negligible when compared to any type of practical, reliable large-scale power generation.

all about that fusion sounds actually not bad but as i assumed ist part of a future most of us wont live in in my opinion.

but what about another theoretical way to produce energy:

with the warm, inner of the earth. in swiss some research lab was working on something like that. but they had an accident some years before (im living at the south-western corner of germany where france and swiss are not even 50km away) where a earthquake was caused by that in the rhein-graben, a thin part of earth-crust between germany and france. it was not realy strong but since that accident i never heard anything about that again? i mean, for sure the temperatures needed to generate energy by turbines is that high, that it would need to dig many kilometers into the ground but...  you maybe heard something about that ?

That's why I think attempting cold fusion at liquid helium temperatures is practical.   The particle accelerators are already working in that space, researching materials, etc., so it makes sense.  I don't care that much about the colliding protons itself (other than the fact that you have several world-class quantum physicists at your fingertips).  I just care about those superconducting coils. 

There's a reason why the SuperCollider was funded by the DoE.

Damn, this is what happens when I take a day to do other things.

That's at current use. To do as you are proposing would increase use rate dozens of times over. If you tried to use that to supply the entire energy supply for the world, think more in the range of 10 years to exhaust the supply.

True, but you are discounting two enormous factors. One, much of the technology used in modern globalization did not exist when the first waves occurred. Without modern telecom systems, we wouldn't be exporting call center jobs to India. Second, it's a chain reaction. There are now more high SOL populations chasing the cheap labor, and as the labor costs rise, that demand will move on. While 20 years is a low estimate, 50 is not out of the realm of possibility.

Also, you can't consider the end point to be when change reaches 100% of the population. There are areas in the US where the last 50 years have had only minimal impact. For that matter, we are one of the slowest developed countries in terms of internet access, despite most of the technology being developed here.

Before anybody tries to achieve nuclear fusion at near absolute zero temperatures, someone has to come up with a hypothesis of how it can be done. Frankly, I'd be absolutely shocked if it were possible to generate a net gain of energy by doing fusion at such low temperatures. The thing is, we don't have any problems causing fusion to occur. If you could get ahold of some deuterium and tritium it's actually not hard to build a shoebox-sized device that will cause fusion to occur. The problem is getting ignition - causing a fusion reaction that creates more energy than it uses, and then uses some of that energy to keep the fusion reaction going.

The temperature of the equipment in the LHC is the coldest environment known to man (even colder than deep space!). But the temperature of the colliding proton beams are enormous (~200,000,000,000,000,000 Celsius). That the equipment is so close to zero is entirely irrelevent - the only relevant factor is the energy (aka temperature) at which the actual collisions occur. But sustained, energy-producing fusion is not going to happen in an unmodified particle accelerator any time soon, if ever, because they are designed to do something very different.

And the biggest reason why trying to achieve fusion at near absolute zero temperatures is that the fusion reactants would have almost no kinetic energy at all. Fusion occurs when two atoms collide with enough kinetic energy to overcome the electromagnetic repulsion that tries to keep them apart. If the two atoms 'touch' then the attractive but extremely short-ranged nuclear strong force takes over and pulls the two atoms together - sometimes resulting in fusion, sometimes resulting in an explosion. But if the fusion reactants are kept at such low temperatures (aka energy) then the electromagnetic force will be more than able to prevent fusion from occuring at any significant rate.

Believe it or not, the DoE funds a lot of physics projects that are not directly related to energy production. However, the Super Collider would have told us a lot about the nature of the world, and it isn't unreasonable that some of that knowledge might've been applicable in various types of energy generation.

And an even bigger problem: we have litterally thousands if not millions of tons of radioactive crap lieing around everywhere. After a nuclear plant is decomissioned pretty much all the interior equipment cannot be disassembled due to it's relatively high radioactivity. So unless we start building SoaSE size capital ships just to dispose of our radiactive waste, its not goin anywhere anytime soon.

"It is too bad though, that the world's major problems can't be solved with two or three sentances in a single paragraph. Oh well."
I'll do it in 2 words. Nuclear War.
Global warming is fixed, since we will be in a nuclear winter, overpopulation is fixed because everyone is dead, and noone has to worry about globalization now that the world's infrastructure has been destroyed!

Hmmmm.... This might sound crazy but, I have always wondered why we dont simply ship all the waste to Hawaii (my adopted home State). I figure the best way to get rid radioactive waste and other garbage for that matter would be to dump it all in an active volcano. I like to think of volcanoes as natures professional recycling agents. We could put the waste in concrete blocks and fly them to the top and drop them in and or build a conveyer system.

Note, I'm aware the impact such a think might have on the tourist industry but hey, I bet such an industry would bring lots more money and better paying jobs for most people there.

I honestly don't understand what you're saying. First of all, if all you care about is the cold equipment it'd be much easier to just build your own supercooled super conductor than to use the LHC's... Also, if you meant doing fusion experiments with the equipment at the LHC would mean being able to use the physicists who work on the accelerator, that's just wrong. The physicists working with the LHC aren't just assigned a random research project by some administrator. They are all working either with a research group or on their own individual projects... They are doing research that they choose to do.

That's all true, but it's only a small part of the story. For one, the electrons in superconductors are essentially unbound. I don't think there has ever been an observation of a similar situation in which there are free protons floating around inside a material. In fact in order to create an analogous situation using protons instead of electrons, you'd need to create a lattice structure with negatively charged nodes - in other words negatively charged nuclei. As far as I can think of, the only way to do something like that is with antimatter, which is obviously impractical (impossible with our current technology, really) and dangerous. And it still probably wouldn't work because protons do not behave the same way as electrons. Yet another problem is that p+p -> 2He is going to require a net input of energy, considering 2He is not even remotely stable.

And yet another problem is, yes Cooper pair electrons are attracted to each other due to phonon exchange, but only weakly as a result of phonon exchange; the key word is weakly. Even assuming it were possible to create a 'reverse' superconductor with free protons, and even if p+p -> 2He were exothermic, and even if the heat generated wouldn't break the superconductivity, the probability of any of the proton pairs fusing would be amazingly miniscule. The attractive force in Cooper pairs is weak; the attractive force would be overcome by the electromagnetic repulsive force long before the particles could get close enough for the strong force to take control.

Don't get me wrong, if someone were to prove me wrong, or provide me with a workable hypothesis for achieving fusion ignition in superconducting materials I would be ecstatic. For one, if somebody pulls it off it would be an enormous leap forward in physics and would involve lots of new ideas. Not to mention the fact that if somebody figures it out we'd finally have our fusion powered world.

Well we already are capable of building containers that are effectively invulnerable. I was watching the History channel the other day and I caught the end of a show about... I'm not sure what. But they were demonstrating the fortitude of this giant barrel-looking thing (very big - maybe the size of a small train car). They rammed a train into it, dropped a giant concrete block on it from way up high from a crane, and tried to blow it up; and it came out completely intact. The problem I'd imagine is that I doubt such a container is cheap to build... But the point is we have the technology to safely transport radioactive waste safe from pretty much any kind of accident except the accidental bunker buster landing on it.

Uhh, the problem with that is that volcanoes generally involve stuff coming OUT of a hole in the ground. What you want is a place where things are sucked into the ground, such as burying the containers in a subduction zone under the ocean.

The problem there is that those containers are designed for accidents, not intentional sabotage or attack. If a 80s era antitank rocket can penetrate depleted uranium armor (available on the black market for a few hundred bucks), I'm willing to bet that container won't contain anything for long after one hits it.