New nukes ?

Right now a lot of hydrogen comes from steaming natural gas. Which generates loads of CO2, you may as well burn the methane.

You _can_ make hydrogen by electrolysis. But

- It's inefficient

- the stuff is a B***r to store. It tends to leak

- It's really dangerous. You know what happened to the R101...

- You need something to make loads of electricity. How many solar panels and windmills will we need for that?

Mitsubishi seem to be planning to steam the methane out of natural gas, then capture the CO2. Again, why not just burn it directly?

Andy

I don't think that contacting Mitsubishi will have any useful effect on the discussion here. However, do you agree that what I said is true? Hydrogen is not an energy source, just a way of storing energy and moving it around? (I'm not saying that it is not useful, just that some of the claims being made are wrong.)

John

Not on combustion, obvs. Just a lot on /generation/. And as has been said, if you're getting it from methane, a lot more efficient (and therefore requiring less methane overall), to just burn the methane.

Very woolly. Advertising puff.

Which issues would those be, then - the ones being solved, I mean.

Well they stand to make money out of it, don't they.

You might be able to make some out of surplus wind power, by electrolysis. But the wind is not free, except in the same sense that oil and water are free. You still have to build and service the turbines, which ain't cost free. This is the sort of accounting that says, lets build a power source (at some cost), and then instead of using the energy it generates for industrial or domestic use, use it to make hydrogen - and then pretend that the hydrogen you make, comes at no cost!

This is a bit like one of my nephews - very woke/PC/post-truth, but a bozo. He needed a small laptop to do some work on, but had no money. So he borrowed it from the bank, spent it on the laptop, got on with the work. Fine so far. He finished the work (but was still paying off the loan). He then sold the laptop, pocketed the proceeds, and cancelled the direct debit for the loan repayments. He couldn't understand why the bank took a dim view of this - after all, he no longer had the laptop, so why should he be paying for it?

I'm afraid that too many people, in looking at this power business, are using my nephew's argument.

Did you actually read my post before selecting that passage ?

Below is the disclaimer which I wrote at the top of that post, which you rather conveniently snipped, and subsequently appear to have forgotten

Just as you attempted to attribute the quotati> Clearly you know a lot more about this than me. However a cursory

Now which word or words in the ten word sentence there

" Clearly you know a lot more about this than me"

are you having the greatest difficulty with ?

michael adams

... .

Except in fusion reactions...

What happpened to the R101 was nothing to do with its hydrogen. Unlike the Hindenburg...

Cant claim carbon credits if you do

What does worry me about all nuclear plants though, is what do you do with the bits that reach end of life which will be radioactive for many hundreds of years? Brian

Still at least we're no longer being ruled by unelected officials in Brussels,

And while you not like Boris Johnson's live-in girlfriend and mother of his latest love child, she's the one, we the voters chose, over that misery guts Cummings.

This is democracy in action and why you all voted Leave.

michael adams

....

And just like them, "hydrogen" as a solution seems "about 10 years away".

As indeed fusion was in the 1960s.

Just make sure they don't go anywhere. Can't be that hard. We seem to manage with the nations gold reserves (for example).

I'm still not really convinced about objections to dropping them into an open volcano ...

well the advanced torus thingie is on track to make power in a few years now. Only taken 70 odd years of low priority investment...

I think RR is seeking govt. committing funds (£135m ?) which if forthcoming they say will be matched by investors.

I don't suppose £270m goes far in mini-nukes, but it's in the right direction ...

I wonder what happened to that outfit the BBC were plugging a while back. (It was supposed to be a documentary, but focussed on this with company named a bit too long for my tastes). Somewhere in Oxford and using shockwaves to fuse hydrogen ?

It worries me that with this massive expenditure on Covid, govt investment in such projects will be significantly curtailed.

The thing I don't understand about Fusion is why anyone expects it to be cheap/economic, even if they did get it to work. i.e Fast breeders effectively give us enough power, why would fusion be cheaper?

In message <rolocm$s7f$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me, Jethro_uk <jethro snipped-for-privacy@hotmailbin.com writes

Hmm.. I sat next to an gentleman from Harwell (I think) at an energy managers conference around 1982. Asked the inevitable question, he said, at least 50 years!

Pah, drop in the ocean compared to Brexit spending so far.

Quite so. You decommission teh safe bits and leave the rest for 50 years. Then you decommission that. AIUI, the reactor of the Three Mile Island incident has been completely decommissioned.

By the way, Brian, you should understand that you (and I, in fact everyone) are radioactive. And so has been every plant and animal that ever existed.

Living not that far from the biggest nuclear reactor in the solar system might just have something to do with it.