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Originally Posted by joesushi
Well, it could have been! Yeah it was a little bit off topic. sorry.
As for Jet's response, there certainly aren't any plans for the US to get one. The frenchies are gonna have one up on us, if and when they get it going.  |
Fusion power aside, the real problems we have are those of power transmission.
We have nuclear power plants that, in the grand scheme of things, make little to no pollution when compared to conventional power plants. So all we have to do is use power from them to break water down to the hydrogen and oxygen.
This is where the transmission problem comes into effect. If we did all that hydrogen making at the power plant, it would be pretty cost effective, but when you transmit power, to say, a gas station with a hydrogen generator, you lose a lot of the cost benefit because of all of the work required to get the power to the places that you need it. The catch 22 thing is that if we made the hydrogen at the power plant, or at a gas station, you defeat the main advantage, filling your car up with water. The only real feasible way to do this is to have a car that you charge up with electricity in a wall outlet, which is supplied by the local nuclear power plant, and charge up a bunch of batteries, which run the electrolysis to make your hydrogen, and uses an alternator, regenerative braking, etc. to keep your batteries charged. Since there are energy losses in every system of that hypothetical car, yoiu would need to charge up the batteries occasionally as the alternator probably wouldn't be able to keep up with the energy needs of the car. This would be much like filling up your gas tank, except it would take place in your garage, with a wall outlet. If you did this, you could have a hydrogen powered car that you fill with water, that needs to be charged once a week. If you want to get even trickier, throw a small gas generator in the mix for emergencies to charge the batteries the way your current car does, and you could have a "gas powered" car that gets 500mpg.
We could do hydrogen powered cars fairly easily with our existing technology, fusion plants would be great, but I would be fine with having some really bad waste in a highly isolated, well guarded, underground bunker, as opposed to having a shitload of "not so bad" pollution that is wrecking the planet.
I don't want to sound like a hippie there, couldn't be farther from the truth, but what most people don't realize is that we have all the technology, but we are "afraid" to use it. Nuclear power is really the only feasible option we have currently, and if we keep waiting for something better to come along, we might just wait until it is too late to make up for our previous mistakes. All this because of chernobyl, and three mile island, and all the NIMBY hippie bullshit.