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The Nuclear Hydrogen Economy |
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zPoint: The Hydrogen Economy Hoax
The U.S. produces 9 million tons of Hydrogen per year, enough to fill half a million Hindenburgs and lift everyone in North and South America off the ground at once. Plenty of hydrogen, but no H economy.
What is an H economy? Hydrogen would be made in big hydrogen power stations, probably nuclear, just as electricity is made at big central stations. Hydrogen would be piped or trucked to hydrogen stations, factories, and homes for use in transportaton, heating, cooking, etc.
The problem is that making and transporting hydrogen expensive and it does not save fossil fuel. Someday it might save a little. Why doesn't it save fossil fuel?
If you make hydrogen from fossil fuel: The H you make has only 85% much energy as the fossil fuel used.
If you make hydrogen from nuclear or wind: The nuclear/wind used takes away from electricity generation, and more fossil must be used to replace the electricity. This uses even more fossil fuel.
A hydrogen economy will only make sense when we have so many nuclear power plants that we cannot use all the electricity they produce. The extra nuclear power, could then be used to make hydrogen.
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zPoint #2: Why the Hydrogen Hoax?
Convince the Greens that hydrogen is the perfect solution to pollution because it's "made from water" (sometimes) and it's clean when you burn it. They will push for the hydrogen economy. Once that has been sold, we will need nukes to make the hydrogen. Although Bush started with Hydrogen, nuclear power is getting the big bucks. The nuclear industry is enthusiastically behind hydrogen.
Car companies like hydrogen cars because they will stay so expensive that no one will want to buy one for thirty years, so they won't be asked to produce them. For them it's just advertizing that says: "See we love the enevironment, leave us alone."
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Nuclear Reactors Will Produce the Hydrogen
1973. To those in the know, "hydrogen economy" has always meant nuclear power. The idea dates from the early 1970's and was developed by engineers. It goes like this: We're running out of oil, but breeder reactors will give us almost unlimited, cheap nuclear power. The problem is that nukes make electricity, which is not so good for cars, trucks, airplanes etc. So let's make hydrogen with nuclear power and have hydrogen cars. In 1973, Scientific American published this plan (popNote), long before "Freedom CAR."
2001. In the late 1990's when the nuclear industry started to revive, it seemed a lot easier to sell nice clean hydrogen made from pure water (at 1400 degrees F with sulfer dioxide and nuclear power) than to sell nukes, so they went political. Here's a slide show called “BNFL/Westinghouse’s Perspective on the 495 Nuclear Hydrogen Economy” presented in Atlanta in 2000. First it tells us the “Scope of Nuclear Technology Interest” is “Energy Source ==> Hydrogen Production.” Then it tells us how DOE helped Westinghouse develop the best nuclear way to make hydrogen and ends with a slide, “Required Government Support” which includes “Fund R&D supporting nuclear hydrogen production ... and regulatory studies [about] nuclear plants for hydrogen generation.”
January 2003. “Tonight I’m proposing $1.2 billion in research funding so that America can lead the world in clean, hydrogen-powered automobiles,” said Bush in his State of the Union Address. By May 27, 2003, this quote is the lead slide in a Westinghouse presentation on, you guessed it, the “494 Role of Nuclear Energy” in “Hydrogen as the Ideal Energy Carrier.” The show goes on to explain how Cheney’s Nation Energy Policy report “recognizes the need to move to a hydrogen economy,” and then the “Freedom CAR.”
Note that from the beginning, the nuclear engineers are perfectly clear that hydrogen is just an energy carrier and not an energy source. And as Westinghouse concludes, “Nuclear energy and hydrogen are natural partners in a sustainable energy system.”
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When Nuclear Replaces Fossil, Hydrogen Is the Way to Deliver It.
In 1973, Scientific American published The Hydrogen Economy, an article describing how hydrogen would come to dominate energy distribution. It explained:
"Assuming that the development of the economically feasible 'breeder' reactors will soon eliminate any short-term concerns about resource limitations of nuclear energy, then by the year 2000 nuclear plants may be supplying as much as half of the nations electricity."
But this raised a problem in the author's mind:
"[I]f the 'energy gap' of the future is to be filled with nuclear power made available in the form of electricity .... The question arises: How desireable is this trend towards a predominately electrical economy?"
His answer was:
"In this situation a case can be made for utilizing the nuclear-energy sources indirectly to produce a synthetic secondary fuel that would be delivered more cheaply and would be easier to use than electricity.
And his conclusion: "the leading candidate for such a secondary fuel: hydrogen gas."
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The Hindenburg was 800 feet long with a gross lift of 242 tons. Since hydrogen can lift 13.3 times its own weight, it contained 18.2 tons of hydrogen. Current annual production, 9,000,000 tons, could fill 495,000 Hindenbergs. With a lift net of their own weight of 112 tons, these could lift 740 million people with an average weight of 150 pounds.
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http://zfacts.com/p/56.html | 01/18/12 07:27 GMT
Modified: Fri, 20 Jun 2008 05:00:38 GMT
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