On 4/30/2010 3:43 PM, Mark Thorson wrote:
> "Pete C." wrote:
>>
>> No, it does not. Hydrogen is *not* an energy source, it is an energy
>> carrier, basically a better battery. The energy still has to come from
>> somewhere to produce / separate the hydrogen and compress it into a
>> useable state.
>
> It's called nuclear hydrogen.
>
> http://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/nuclear.html
>
> This would be a good complement to electricity production,
> because nuclear plants can't be throttled quickly.
> You either have to use fossil fuel to meet peak demand,
> or you have to have something to do with all that
> nuclear energy when demand is low. In France, the
> export electricity to the UK, Germany, and Italy
> at night -- Italy had a nationwide blackout one
> night when a thunderstorm knocked out the transmission
> lines between France and Italy.
>
> With nuclear hydrogen, we could increase the
> proportion of electricity from nuclear, and use
> the energy during slack demand to make fuel.

Do a little more research Mark, hydrogen makes a poor fuel because it
doesn't have enough Btu's to fire a furnace, or run an engine,
efficiently. I ran boilers for a large oil company back in the sixties,
they tried putting excess hydrogen into the fuel feed for the boilers
and everything went to hell in a handbasket. Natural gas, of which there
is a plentitude in the US, serves better in large boilers, can run cars
more efficiently, and does a better job than H. Of course H is a cleaner
burning fuel as the residue is basically H2O, aka water but the CO and
CO2 of natural gas, aka methane, can be scrubbed fairly easily from the
exhaust.