Re: This month's popular science - hydrogen powered hyper jet

SEE: http://home.att.net/~meditation/bio-fuel-hoax.html - with active
links!
- "The biofuel hoax is causing a world food crisis!"

The section on a nuclear-hydrogen economy is pasted below.--------

"If we truly wish to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we will
have to create an infrastructure based on nuclear energy, improved
electric car battery technology, and hydrogen fuel, not on biofuels.
Hydrogen releases water vapor when burned, and is the cleanest burning
fuel known to man. Hydrogen can be used in both internal combustion
engines and in fuel cells. Hydrogen fuel can be made through the
electrolysis of water via electricity generated from zero emissions
nuclear power plants, which currently produce about 19.4% of our
nation's electricity. We need to build large numbers of nuclear power
plants now using mass production techniques if we want to end global
warming. Otherwise, we will just continue talking endlessly about the
subject with no positive effect.

Nuclear power plants do not contribute to global warming because
they release no greenhouse gases at all. You do not need much land to
build a nuclear power plant, and you do not need to make fertilizer to
make nuclear energy grow. Nuclear power plants are not vulnerable to
attack by viruses, bacteria, fungi, insects, or competing weeds, as
are biofuel crops. We need to get off the organic carbon cycle for
energy production and use inorganic nuclear power to produce the
highly concentrated energy supply that solar and wind power can never
hope to provide. Even by the most optimistic estimates, solar and
wind power can only hope to satisfy perhaps 20% of our future energy
needs. Solar and wind power tap into natural energy sources that are
far too diffuse to be collected on a large enough scale to power an
advanced, industrialized nation. Solar and wind power currently
produce only about 2.4% of our nation's electricity, so even an
increase to 20% would be a major undertaking.

One of the added benefits of nuclear power is that we already own
huge amounts of nuclear fuel in the form of nuclear weapons materials,
which can be converted into fuel rods for civilian power production.
The United States Government has hundreds of years worth of nuclear
fuel in storage thanks to the Cold War nuclear arms race of the 1950s
and 1960s. We can turn our swords into plowshares while paying only
the modest costs of converting high level weapons grade materials into
lower level fuel rods suitable for power production. Unlike oil, we
do not have to import nuclear fuel from foreign countries or fight
endless foreign wars to protect our supplies. We have the fuel and
it's already paid for!

Nuclear fuel rods can be reprocessed over and over again because
only a tiny portion of the nuclear material is actually used up during
each fuel cycle. When you reprocess fuel rods there is very little
high level nuclear waste that needs to be stored. The nuclear "waste"
is simply reused as nuclear fuel, and that is part of the reason why
France's nuclear power program has been so successful. France relies
heavily on nuclear power plants and nuclear fuel reprocessing, and
thus France has the cleanest air and lowest electricity rates in
Europe.

The fears many Americans have about civilian nuclear power plants
are largely unfounded. Our latest nuclear reactor designs are
carefully engineered with many layers of redundant safety and security
features built-in. One single disaster that occurred at an obsolete
Ukrainian reactor is no reason to be eternally afraid of all nuclear
power plants across the board. The old Chernobyl reactor used a
dangerous design that has never been used in the West, and which did
not even have a containment vessel. The 1986 Chernobyl accident was
caused by Soviet engineers conducting wildly irresponsible experiments
that were totally unrelated to normal civilian power production, and
which would never be allowed in the USA. The Chernobyl accident
killed a total of 56 people, a great tragedy, but not a nation killing
disaster. Far fewer people died at Chernobyl than on Japan Airlines
Flight 123 in 1985, when a lone 747 jetliner crashed and killed all
520 passengers. Americans suffer over 40,000 deaths due to automobile
accidents every year, yet there is no great human cry to ban
automobiles.

Nuclear power plants in America have an excellent record for
safety and for clean, pollution free operation. By contrast, the over
600 coal burning power plants which produce approximately 49% of our
nation's electricity emit sulfur dioxide and oxides of nitrogen, which
combine with moisture in the atmosphere to form destructive acid
rain. America's coal burning power plants release approximately
200,000 pounds of toxic mercury every year, and an enormous skyward
bound river of carbon dioxide gas which represents nearly 10% of all
CO2 emissions worldwide. A single 1,000 megawatt coal burning power
plant can release as much as 12.8 tons of thorium and 5.2 tons of
uranium every year, both radioactive metals which naturally occur in
coal. The uranium figure includes 74 pounds of uranium-235, the
highly fissionable form of uranium used to make atomic bombs. Coal
burning power plants also release microscopic particulate matter which
clogs the lungs and is attributed to causing approximately 24,000
unnatural premature deaths in the United States every year, which is
428 times the Chernobyl death toll.

Why is there so little fear of coal burning power plants, but so
much hysterical fear of much safer and healthier nuclear power? The
answer is that nuclear power has been unfairly demonized by a
Hollywood entertainment industry trying to make a quick buck (The
China Syndrome, The Simpsons, etc.), and by scientifically
undereducated politicians and environmental activists. There has
never been a single death attributed to American nuclear power plants,
which produce electricity at an average cost of less than 3 cents per
kilowatt-hour (2008 estimate), a rate comparable to hydroelectric
power and less than natural gas or coal. The cost of coal power is
even more expensive if you figure in damage to buildings due to acid
rain and other air pollutants, and increased human health costs: the
monetary value of 24,000 human lives plus those who are simply made
ill.

Building newer, more efficient standardized nuclear power plant
designs using mass production techniques for major structural and
control components can make nuclear power a real bargain. Just like
automobiles and televisions sets, the more you build using the same
design, the cheaper they become and the more predictable and reliable
they become. For the total US cost of the Iraq War, estimated to be
well over 2,000 billion dollars (2 trillion), we could have built at
least 500 1,600 megawatt nuclear power plants, outputting 800,000
megawatts total. That would have given the United States virtual
energy independence, almost doubling our current national electric
generating capacity of 906,155 megawatts (peak capacity for 2006).

Nuclear power is the only technology that can produce an
extremely high volume of energy using only a tiny amount of land and
at reasonable cost, all without emitting any greenhouse gases
whatsoever. That is why the father of the living earth Gaia theory,
British atmospheric scientist James Lovelock, stated that nuclear
power is the only way to have a large human population on this planet
without causing global warming and destroying the environment. Please
read James Lovelock's public statement on nuclear energy, Nuclear
power is the only green solution, at:
http://www.ecolo.org/media/articles/articles.in.english/love-indep-24-05-04.htm

The economic benefits of a nuclear based, hydrogen fueled economy
are spectacular, and the United States foreign trade deficit and
Federal budget deficit can be greatly reduced. All of the nuclear
reactors will be built and run by Americans in America, who will make
high wages and pay taxes to Federal, state, and local governments, and
spend their income at local American stores. As the USA currently
imports over 60% of its oil supply, all of the dollars we now ship off
to Canada (18%), Mexico (15%), Saudi Arabia (14%), Nigeria (12%),
Venezuela (10%), and Angola (6%) will stay right here in the USA. In
the year 2007, the USA is estimated to have imported a total of about
3.8 billion barrels of crude oil in addition to a tremendous amount of
natural gas and other hydrocarbon products which can largely be
replaced by nuclear power. At $93. a barrel (12/24/07 price), 3.8
billion barrels of crude oil is worth over 353. billion dollars. A
nuclear based hydrogen economy will make the United States richer in
addition to saving us from desertification of our heartland, increased
storm damage, coastal flooding, and world wide starvation caused by
the deadly combination of global warming and massive, government
mandated biofuel production.

Hydrogen fuel produced by nuclear energy will be expensive at
first, but the price will decline over time as the infrastructure
grows and economies of scale lower production costs. Electric car
battery technology is constantly improving and will allow Americans to
drive our highways without guilt that they are burning up precious
natural resources or polluting the environment. If you modify a
Toyota Prius by giving it a hydrogen capable gas tank, slightly alter
its internal combustion engine so that it can run on hydrogen gas, and
rewire its electrical system so that its batteries can be plugged into
a charging station, then you have an excellent hydrogen-electric
hybrid automobile right now."

Christopher Calder
http://home.att.net/~meditation/bio-fuel-hoax.html

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