[CasearianDaoist]

The only way to mke a hydrogen economy" work would be cheap and abundant nuclear fusion. Here hydrogen it a plentiful by-product of the process. BTW, we just rejoined ITER, the large internaltional next generation fussion project. It may turnout that long term funding of fusion and hydrogen engines will turn out to be look quite visionary 20 years or so down the line.

[Petronski]

Wouldn't the use of fission reactors to generate the electricity needed to separate hydrogen from water also be potentially feasible?

[ancient_geezer]

An example of an application of new catalytic processes

http://www.ornl.gov/ORNLReview/v33_2_00/micropower.htm

In the summer of 1998, CTD's Jonathan Woodward and researchers John Getty and Mark Orr tried a new way to make hydrogen from sugar, which involved the deposition of the metal platinum on a glucose-digesting enzyme. The experiment worked.

"After several different experiments," Woodward says, "we then observed that mixing iron powder with water also produced hydrogen at ambient temperatures, but the production was not sustained. Then we discovered that if we add gluconic acid as well as iron powder to the water, we obtained sustained hydrogen production under certain conditions."

Gluconic acid is an organic acid consisting of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen (C₆H₁₁O₇) that is produced from glucose sugar, an abundant and renewable carbon source. Woodward noted that the sustained hydrogen-production reaction works well under three conditions: a temperature of 80°C, neutral pH, and the absence of oxygen.

There are many such approaches being currently explored. To say that Hydrogen cannot become a viable fuel resource and technology is just plain shortsighted and foolish.

[pjd]

You are right about the need for abundant nuclear fusion. However,...

I have it on highest authority (a colleague who is a prominant name in nuclear fusion research and who was offered the position to be the head of the entire ITER project, but turned it down), anyway, he says that we will not see sustained, practical fusion in our lifetime. He thinks 50 years is extremely optimistic, and is more likely 100 years away.