|
Edited on Mon Oct-10-05 09:28 PM by NNadir
of the source of the electricity.
But yes, I am in favor of high temperature nuclear reactors using one or more of the high temperature thermolysis of water reactions.
The hydrogenation of carbon dioxide is well understood, but an important caveat is that no scheme for the industrial removal of carbon dioxide from air has yet proved economic for the production of fuels. As I've written elsewhere, as an intermediate step, I might be willing to accept of the capture of carbon dioxide from coal fired power plants for hydrogenation. This would have the effect of removing all of the carbon dioxide input currently resulting from the burning of petroleum products. I note that biomass is also a source of carbon - and where it is available, environmentally acceptable, and economic, it can also be transformed into syn gas.
However we know that the reduction (of which hydrogenation is a form) of carbon dioxide from air can be driven by equilibrium shifting - this is what plants do all the time when they produce glucose. What is required is an input of energy, which in the case of plants is provided by the sunlight.
As we all know from lots of hype over the years, an industrial process using sunlight is also theoretically a source of this same hydrogen. The problem is that the direct production of hydrogen from sunlight is far more technologically primitive than the use of nuclear power. Thus any industrial scheme is likely to come too late - assuming it isn't too late already.
Nuclear power on the other hand is well understood and is already industrial and has been so for many decades. All of the failures have been analyzed, and few, if any, have been repeated. The physics of nuclear reactors are clearly understood and have been tested by industrial experience and scale up. The problem with nuclear power is not technical at all - it is political and perceptual.
I've speculated to myself about why this is for some years now, since the anti-nuclear position is so clearly irrational. (I note that I was anti-nuclear until after the events at Chernobyl.) I suspect that some of the reasons behind it probably have more to do with the way that the word "nuclear" was introduced to common parlance, things which involved the events at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The impressions were further reified by the events of the cold war, the most chilling of which was the Cuban Missile crisis. The use of commercial nuclear power was trivial at that time, and so there was no balancing between the military and civilian applications - the military clearly outweighed the commercial.
As I frequently state, the military technology has little to do with nuclear power technology, any more than refineries have to do with the existence of napalm or than molecular biology has to do with germ warfare. In the latter case, had the science of molecular genetics been announced as the result of a plague used in wartime, the public perception of the technology may have been very different than it currently is.
(I note that some people have strong negative reactions to biotechnology as well as nuclear technology. A class of people exists who are known as Luddites. These people will oppose any technology less than 100 years old - unless of course the technology is made to seem harmless by being insignificant in its application.)
I've also heard that people often do not fear what is most dangerous, but rather they fear what they themselves do not control. For example, it is infinitely more dangerous to drive your car to Walmart or Burger King than it is to live next to a nuclear power plant. No one in the United States has died from a nuclear power plant whereas tens of thousands of die each year driving their cars and many more are maimed and injured. The situation is even worse with respect to smoking. The difference in perception of course is that most people have never operated a nuclear power plant, whereas many people have experience with driving cars and lighting butts. Even though it is not really true, they feel as if they control what happens to them in a car; just as they imagine they can control their smoking.
I do feel that we are exhausting the luxury of being able to indulge irrationality. We must take action now with the tools available now, irrespective of people's fertile imagining of this possible disaster or that possible disaster. I rather think that the case is like worrying about getting sunburn someday at the beach while a powerful hurricane is smashing things just outside the window.
We do not, I believe, have much time left unless we act forthwith.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
