Stephen Harding wrote:

Ralph Savelsberg wrote:


I have refrained from participating in this discussion before, but
I certainly have some doubts about your remark about H2.


Come on Ralph! Everyone is OT on r.a.m these days! Go ahead! Be
naughty!
Do it! In fact...let's bash French fuel cell technology!!!

In fact I stopped posting alltogether a few months ago. The irritation
over the stupidity being expressed by people from both sides of the
Atlantic (and some other parts of the world as well) had begun to
outweigh the enjoyment I got from many of the discussions and
interesting exchanges of ideas/information. Anyway, I'm back now.
It's not the fact that its off-topic that stopped me from getting
involved in this thread, but its title.


Great! However, the big question that very few people seem to be
able to answer (myself included) is where the energy to make the
H2 should come from? I'm sure you're aware that H2 is not
something you can dig up from the ground. Perhaps our hope should
lie with nuclear fusion, though that's not without its own
problems either. In my opinion H2 not the answer to a possible
energy/environmental crisis. Focussing on H2 is just replacing
one problem with another.


There's so dogone much H2 around that its use for energy is almost as
attractive as splitting atoms in the long term.

But yes, those H and O atoms really like to stick together, and the
energy it takes to coax them apart is problematic at the moment.

But I really think this technology is going to fly...and probably
nuclear power will triumph over the long haul.


SMH


I realise that truly `green' types of energy simply aren't enough.
Wind-power is suitable for some situations, as is electricity from solar
panels. In some cases biomass can be a nice addition, but even a
combination of these on any realistic scale cannot satisfy all our
energy needs. We will run out of fossile fuels in the future. That's
simply a matter of consuming them faster than they are being produced.
As for nuclear technology I tend to be somewhat pessimistic. We will
also run out of useful fissionable materials, although on a longer
timescale than the fossile fuels. And then there is the issue with the
waste. Jim Yanik has great hopes for future technology to do the trick,
but I'm not so sure. Fission might be the only thing to keep us going
until fission comes along, but
who knows how long it will take to get nuclear fusion working properly?
For know the energy it takes to create an environment suitable for
fusion exceeds the energy you get from the fusion. Knowbody really knows
how big a tokomak must be before you could expect it to actually deliver
energy.

Regards,
Ralph Savelsberg