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Originally Posted by JSLTIGER
The problem is that on Earth, all of the hydrogen is bonded to oxygen, in the form of water. In order to retrieve the hydrogen, a large amount of energy must be put into the water. That energy has to come from somewhere.
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You hit the nail right on the head, sir.
Oil is an energy storage unit. Energon is an energy storage unit. Beer is an energy storage unit. Spinach is an energy storage unit.
The oil has been storing up energy for several million years. All I'm saying is use hydrogen to store the energy from man-made nuclear reactors. Coupled with core re-processing, we can buy all the uranium we need from Australia and Canada. Very soon, India is going to be using thorium breeders to power their country, and would likely be interested in a bit of trade.
We need to decentralize power production, such that the transmission losses are far less than what they are now; a superconductive transmission grid would help alleviate this particularly
significant issue. We also have tons of radioactives left over from 30 years of plutonium production, quite a bit of which can be used in the medical industry as well as the power production industry. In fact, our airline industry can use some of the radioactives for non-destructive material integrity testing. The rest can be vitrified and for various localized purposes, such as de-icing the sidewalks; not that you would just roll the bloody barrel down the sidewalk, but designing a small system of thermal transfer is within the capability of even the most inexperienced civil engineer.
The problem has been, and continues to be even today, nuclear proliferation. Pakistan, China, Bill Clinton, and Iran have taken care of that issue for us, so there's really not much utility left in a non-proliferation agenda.
I think on-site hydrogen production,
especially for the highly populized east and west coasts, is the viable energy transfer solution for America. It's even possible to pump ocean water into the central states instead of actual hydrogen, using the resultant salt for dietary and industrial purposes.