Posted on 02/10/2003 2:01:51 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
Don't get sidetracked. Today's cars are already extremely clean. What this is all about is CO2 and global warming. How to get the US to commit economic suicide.
When I worked at So.Cal.Edision, the mainframe computer team alone was huge. I didin't work at that location, so I'm not familiar with details. But it was pretty obvious from watching some of the projects that the work involved had nothing to do with genuine "safety". It was bureaucracy for its own sake, pure and simple.
After all, with so many people involved, how can it possibly be unsafe? I can just imagine the inspection people dropping in and being impressed by the building, the computer room (back when it took a room), the highly paid professional staff. How could they say it was unsafe, when So.Cal.Edison spent so much money at the reactor site?
Except that the current hybrid cars are already on the market and we already have a fuel distribution system for them.
Can you say Chernobyl?
There is a reason that Chernobyl was a problem. The Ruskies built it as a bomb making factory. My nuke E prof in college showed us a picture of the plant, and was very vociferous about the safety problems and the reason for them. I guess he was po'd because it gave nuclear energy a black eye for no reason other than the Ruskies wanted to build more bombs.
They also mentioned some other trick they had patented which helped them improve yields....
Disappointing few people acknowledge/see this important discovery.
I haven't done it myself, but I knew a guy that did it in his garage, and as I understand it, very little engine modification is necessary. Used a Camaro--lost about half the horsepower and the range of the car wasn't what it was, but as I recall, the only major modifications he did was added a storage tank for the hydrogen.
Of course, you do run the problem of "cracking" the hydrogen (as the article puts it) in your garage. Hydrogen can be dangerous stuff, and I don't think your insurance agent would take too kindly to filing a report about how you blew up your garage...
The guy is basically saying it's cheaper to just go on using gasoline. The question is, has he figured the cost of rebuilding one of our major cities every three or four years into the equation? I mean, we've seen what the people sitting on the oil do with money we give them for it....
Granted, I'm taking the word of someone who is a hydrogen promoter.
But... since one of the methods is to use electricity at night which right now is thrown away. It would seem to me that hydrogen produced by that method is basically "free". Likley, there wouldn't be enough surplus power this way, but as other posters have pointed out, there are many ways to skin this cat.
And right now, I so want to unplug from the Saudis. I'll even take some effort and expense on my own to do my little bit.
Yeah, I would like to throw in a comment on this--of course, the melt down at Chernobyl was "deliberate," in that they deliberately removed the control rods as part of a test. It turned out to be a monumentally stupid test, but it's not like it was just an accident. Yeah, it was an accident that there was a meltdown, but that accident was the direct result of the stupid decision to remove the safety devices.
There were a lot of other problems, to be sure, and maybe there would have been a meltdown in the future, but come on. Gotta use the noggin.
Gasoline burns pretty well too. But then, we've become accustomed to the safety issues involved, and we're used to the risk.
I'm certian that there are ways to make hydrogen "safer". Probably safer than gasoline, which tends to spread all over and flow in wrecks. There are several techniques that might be used with hydrogen. The "explode" component of hydrogen is a problem, but again, I think that can be controlled. Cost and ease-of-use I'm not sure of.
Well, where I live there are a lot of cars and not much room or tolerance for scummy ponds. Solar radiation is an inherently very diffuse and unsteady source of energy. Sounds nice in theory, but it's not a large-scale solution.
That's my point. They spent money in the name of safety that was probably mostly wasted. This inflates the "cost" of fission unnecessarily. So back to my original point. I think if you built standardized fission plants with a "proper" amount of safety, they could be run for far less than conventional fuel.
And here's the really dirty little secret. Until recently, utility companies, being regulated monopolies, got to make a profit of a particular amount over their expenses. So, how do you make more money? Just spend more in expenses. I have no doubt that a great pile of the cost of fission reactors was due to this artificial reason.
We need "real" deregulation of electricity to fix all these problems. Something that California doesn't yet have.
We've got plenty of room, and believe it or not, plenty of water out here in Arizona. Hydrogen can be piped anywhere in the country.
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