Ford: Hydrogen ICE's in Five Years.

[GrendelKhan]

Originally Posted by WriConsult

As most people here already know, hydrogen isn't a source of energy, just a storage mechanism. The only reasons we're talking about hydrogen are (a) fuel cells can directly turn it into electricity for use by electric motors to drive the wheels, and (b) it has far greater energy density than any current battery technology. Otherwise there is no point to hydrogen.

Rather than burning fossil fuel to electrolyze hydrogen, we'd be better off just burning it directly in the engine. Wait a minute ... D'oh! We already do that!

When the SHTF, they will use hydrogen production as a great reason to build nuclear power plants. Power the grid by day, electrolyze hydrogen at night.

I'm not saying it's right. I'm just saying that's what they will be saying.

-Gren

[Shark29er]

Originally Posted by GrendelKhan

When the SHTF, they will use hydrogen production as a great reason to build nuclear power plants. Power the grid by day, electrolyze hydrogen at night.

I'm not saying it's right. I'm just saying that's what they will be saying.

-Gren

That is exactly right!!! As soon as we can get the US working on Nuclear power we can have virtually unlimited hydrogen!!! The environment will immensely cleaner, we won't have people killed in coal mines, the threat of radical islamofacists to our freedom will be a distant bad dream. The ONLY solution to our energy needs is nuclear power.

[GrendelKhan]

Originally Posted by Shark29er

The ONLY solution to our energy needs is nuclear power.

I'd prefer that we START with building solar, wind, and geothermal plants/farms everywhere first, and learn some real conservation. The threat of meltdown is real, and the waste is a nasty problem. Also, from what I've read, nuclear is not sustainable - there's only so much uranium. And it's freaking expensive.

Honestly, I think the deserts of the southwest should have been covered with solar fields yesterday. Well, that's extreme - but I wish there were some huge solar/wind projects....

-Gren

[Subversive]

I could be wrong, but I think he may have been being sarcastic.

[GrendelKhan]

Originally Posted by Subversive

I could be wrong, but I think he may have been being sarcastic.

Ah, sorry. New here.

-Gren

[brick]

Beautiful thing about hydrogen production: you can generate power and hydrogen at the same time!!!! That waste heat can be used to drive thermochemical processes (as opposed to electrolysis) essentially getting you usable fuel for an energy cost of nearly zero. Still gotta compress the gas, though .

Hydrogen is tricky. I built a hydrogen ICE on a $600 reserach budget using donated parts from Ford as a useless undergrad, and I can tell you with tremendous certainty that the engine is not the issue. Easy as throwing off-the-shelf parts on a stock block with some smart engine management software. It's getting the stuff and storing more than 100mi worth that gives the engineers a migraine.

[laserred02]

Originally Posted by GrendelKhan

I'd prefer that we START with building solar, wind, and geothermal plants/farms everywhere first, and learn some real conservation. The threat of meltdown is real, and the waste is a nasty problem. Also, from what I've read, nuclear is not sustainable - there's only so much uranium. And it's freaking expensive.

Honestly, I think the deserts of the southwest should have been covered with solar fields yesterday. Well, that's extreme - but I wish there were some huge solar/wind projects....

-Gren

Actually most of what you said is completely false so I will attempt to debunk it.

The waste is not a problem, if GNEP occurs reprocessing the waste and reburning the fuel from that process will cause the amount of spent waste to decrease by around 90+%. Along with the fact that the waste can then be put into a burner reactor of which the sole purpose is to generate electricity while converting the high level nuclear transuranics into fission fragments. This means that high level long lived radioactive waste will be turned into waste that has half-lives less than 50-100 years. This is compared to transuranics which have half-lifes on the order of 10s of thousands of years. This will essentially solve the waste problem.

As for a "meltdown" scenario, that is highly highly highly improbable. Not the least of which is the fact that as the fuel temperature increases beyond a certain point it's reaction cross section decrease, thereby decreasing the reaction rate and cooling the reactor. This is known as a passive safety feature, one that requires no human interaction whatsoever. Couple this with the massive amount of secondary and primary safety systems and you have a very safe way of generating power. Then look at the safety record of the U.S. nuclear industry over the last 20-30 years (post 3 mile Island) and you will see it is far safer than any other electric utility.

Third problem with your statement is the cost of Uranium is high, that is so completely uninformed that it should be deleted from this board. The cost of Uranium could quadruple and it would have virtually no effect on the price of electricity coming from a reactor. The major cost to a reactor is the capital cost to build, the overhead (i.e. insane bureaucracy to promote safety), and maintenance. Fuel is actually a very nominal cost, and considering we have enough uranium at current price and capacity to last several hundred years I do not think it is a problem. Couple that with the fact that we have breeder technology which allows us to turn unfissionable uranium or thorium into a fissionable fuel which would mean we have essentially limitless fuel quantities.

Solar, wind, and geothermal resources are expensive and regionally selective, the best places have been developed already. Without serious advance in solar cell technology that is not a feasible solution to our energy needs, however nuclear is. It already contributes 20% of our power, while doing it completely greenhouse gas free. A realistic and somewhat idealistic future would be one without coal, but have a large contribution of nuclear and renewables.

Sorry for the long post, but as a PhD candidate in nuclear engineering it perturbs me when people try to talk about nuclear that have little actual knowledge of the subject.

Rant complete.

[Himmitch]

Originally Posted by laserred02

Actually most of what you said is completely false so I will attempt to debunk it.

The waste is not a problem, if GNEP occurs reprocessing the waste and reburning the fuel from that process will cause the amount of spent waste to decrease by around 90+%. Along with the fact that the waste can then be put into a burner reactor of which the sole purpose is to generate electricity while converting the high level nuclear transuranics into fission fragments. This means that high level long lived radioactive waste will be turned into waste that has half-lives less than 50-100 years. This is compared to transuranics which have half-lifes on the order of 10s of thousands of years. This will essentially solve the waste problem.

As for a "meltdown" scenario, that is highly highly highly improbable. Not the least of which is the fact that as the fuel temperature increases beyond a certain point it's reaction cross section decrease, thereby decreasing the reaction rate and cooling the reactor. This is known as a passive safety feature, one that requires no human interaction whatsoever. Couple this with the massive amount of secondary and primary safety systems and you have a very safe way of generating power. Then look at the safety record of the U.S. nuclear industry over the last 20-30 years (post 3 mile Island) and you will see it is far safer than any other electric utility.

Third problem with your statement is the cost of Uranium is high, that is so completely uninformed that it should be deleted from this board. The cost of Uranium could quadruple and it would have virtually no effect on the price of electricity coming from a reactor. The major cost to a reactor is the capital cost to build, the overhead (i.e. insane bureaucracy to promote safety), and maintenance. Fuel is actually a very nominal cost, and considering we have enough uranium at current price and capacity to last several hundred years I do not think it is a problem. Couple that with the fact that we have breeder technology which allows us to turn unfissionable uranium or thorium into a fissionable fuel which would mean we have essentially limitless fuel quantities.

Solar, wind, and geothermal resources are expensive and regionally selective, the best places have been developed already. Without serious advance in solar cell technology that is not a feasible solution to our energy needs, however nuclear is. It already contributes 20% of our power, while doing it completely greenhouse gas free. A realistic and somewhat idealistic future would be one without coal, but have a large contribution of nuclear and renewables.

Sorry for the long post, but as a PhD candidate in nuclear engineering it perturbs me when people try to talk about nuclear that have little actual knowledge of the subject.

Rant complete.

And I was just about to say that!

[BailOut]

Originally Posted by GrendelKhan

I'd prefer that we START with building solar, wind, and geothermal plants/farms everywhere first, and learn some real conservation. The threat of meltdown is real, and the waste is a nasty problem. Also, from what I've read, nuclear is not sustainable - there's only so much uranium. And it's freaking expensive.

Honestly, I think the deserts of the southwest should have been covered with solar fields yesterday. Well, that's extreme - but I wish there were some huge solar/wind projects....

-Gren

You took the words right out of my mouth.

[laserred02]

Originally Posted by BailOut

You took the words right out of my mouth.

you should read my post above, because quite frankly everything said about nuclear in that post is false, absolutely false.

as for the stuff about renewables, of course I support that, but it isn't as easy as people think to just install solar, wind, or geothermal. there are only select spots where it is even feasible, and most of the best places have been used, growth in those markets would have to be astronomical in order to even make a dent in current U.S. energy needs. Currently solar, wind, and geothermal combined contribute less than 1% of current us total energy use.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.r...ds/table1.html

Most renewable energy comes from hydro and biomass, and most hydro resources have been developed. If you want to make a serious dent in U.S. or even world energy needs, without producing greenhouse gases, then nuclear is the only feasible and realistic alternative. Using nuclear power you can produce electricity greenhouse gas free, as well as produce hydrogen within the same loop if a hydrogen car economy is the wave of the future.