They mean the refrigerant does not need a pump. It still must be compressed back to liquid, which requires energy.

It is a big deal. The difference in emissions or power generated might be just 1.7%, which is indeed not too interesting (it does save a little bit tho), but because the power losses are reduced 2 or 3 times, you have less heat to remove and deal with, this is directly proportional to the size and additional infrastructure to run with the generator. It can saves tons of weight, space and extra stuff around the machine to make it work. It could reduce also the cost, but in applications like ships and submarines, it now allows you to have significantly (few times!) bigger power generation possibly than was previously possible. Same is true for example with power supplies for example. A difference between 90% and 95% could be a difference between needing active cooling and not needing active cooling, which is directly proportional to reliability, noise, and wider operating conditions.

Because industry has not fully caught up as of yet and it takes time for penetration of the market place. In a decade these will be considered cutting edge norm and will be considered the market norm but still will be expensive.

how about the energy industry doesn't want cheap electricity. so they buy all the patents and smaller firms that develop those.

Because it's a lot more expensive to build, I guess only research device exist at this point and no commercially available units.

FalcoGer Another reason is that different materials are being researched and discovered all the time. Materials with higher temperature superconductivity, better workability, cost, cryocoolers, insulators, magnetocaloric effect materials, etc. Imagine spending 50 million dollars for your first production run, and reading an article the next day about better materials that were just made at MIT! I wouldn't go down that whole "evil oil companies buying patents" road. The fact that you saw this video a year ago is proof that it isn't secret technology hidden from the world. They're still just electric motors. Magnetic field + electric current= torque, right? Right now, cryogenic liquefaction is very energy intensive. That little drip of liquid neon or whatever it was at the end requires a lot of energy, partially canceling out any benefits. This could be recovered, however, if someone is smart enough to use a cryogenic rankine cycle to use the evaporated gas to spin a turbine to recover that energy, cooling (and partially reliquifying) itself in the process. Oh wait, I guess someone IS smart enough to think of that :) If you're one of those conspiracy types, then don't rely on the electric companies. I bought my cryocooler for $500 on eBay, an automotive a/c compressor is easy to modify into an air motor, and you can buy HTS materials online. Just do it yourself. complete solar panels are around $1/ watt. Use liquid air (nitrogen) as energy storage instead of batteries (the PV panels power a cryocooler). The evaporated liquid nitrogen spins a turbine, powering the superconducting generator, which is cooled by the liquid nitrogen itself. Get it?

Like it says in the video, material science advances are needed to decrease the volume required to reach the high flux density