Hydrogen transport as ammonia

It will take a while, a decade or two, until the anti-CO2 insanity blows over. Let's hope it's not another mini-ice-age that makes the point. A lot of people would die. Solar activity is looking scary lately.

We could run most everything on CNG and LNG, but luckily we have lots of oil too.

LP is good. CNG and LNG storage weighs too much.

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m of hydrogen is germane.

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les. One mole occupies 22.4 litres at standard temperature and pressure, so 58.7 moles occupy 1,352 litres or 1.352 cubic metre.

urrounded by that much ammonia, which wouldn't be enjoyable. Don't inhale.

rike any matches while getting away, though it's pretty hard to light.

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That's no myth. Krw - like John Larkin - hasn't a hope of comprehending the scientific evidence, but the evidence is there and it makes a over-whelmin g case for not making the surface of the planet any warmer.

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gm of hydrogen is germane.

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oles. One mole occupies 22.4 litres at standard temperature and pressure, s o 58.7 moles occupy 1,352 litres or 1.352 cubic metre.

surrounded by that much ammonia, which wouldn't be enjoyable. Don't inhale.

trike any matches while getting away, though it's pretty hard to light.

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The insanity - or at least inanity - is all John Larkins's. If he'd paid at tention during his undergraduate science lectures, he'd be able to follow t he evidence.

John Larkin doesn't understand much, and scares easily. Ice ages are charac terised by atmospheric CO2 levels around 180ppm, inter-glacials by CO2 leve ls around 270 ppm.

The current CO2 level is 409 ppm scarcely incipient ice age territory, and higher than it has been for about 20 million years. Solar activity doesn't vary much, and has very little effect on climate when compared with the ef fects that switch us between ice ages and interglacials.

No. It's not a company, according to ASIC, our corporate regulator.

It's similar, but a bit more complicated. It's a political battle between those who do and don't believe in public funding for science. In the USA, you have DARPA and similar methods for providing funding, but we don't do that here. So CSIRO has to run PR campaigns to garner public support, or the politicians will cut stuff that's in the public interest and wouldn't happen in private enterprise.

If they have a catalytic process for splitting ammonia, then filtering is the remaining problem.

We already have that. The Haber process produces NH4 from natural gas, and thence mostly to ammonium nitrate and urea, produced in the hundreds of megatonnes, and has done that for a century.

Clifford Heath

Then what *is* it? Here either it is part of the government or it is a company or it is just some guys playing with stuff in their basement.

I though that was what I said, they are looking for more funding... ?

I'm not going to watch the video again to find the exact language. My point was about that. They used an odd verb that I don't think actually applies in this case as if all they needed to do was gather the eggs from the chicken nests.

Yep, we have invented all sorts of processes for doing stuff. But scaling it up to the levels required to supply energy in significant amounts is not so easy. But the BIG problem with the Haber process is what do you do with all the CO2? Isn't that the reason they want to ship ammonia instead of LNG or oil? Kinda defeats the purpose if you are just going to release the carbon into the atmosphere. I guess that's another part they didn't talk about, doing something with the carbon if the energy source isn't carbon neutral.

Australia isn't "here" for Americans. It is a government funded agency, set up by the government to do scientific and industrial research in the Australian national interest

It employs more than 5,000 people, rather more than few guys playing with stuff in their basement, and it does have some heavy duty toys.

They do need to keep politicians and the electorate on-side, but there's a lot of history that does tend to keep both on-side.

That is absolutely true. The challenge, however, is to do this in cost-efficient way that does not involve destroying the planet.

So if you have a good way of making methane (or ethane) from atmospheric CO? and water, using non-fossil energy, then that would be ideal. We have the infrastructure for transporting ethane, we have the cars that can use it. If we could make it cleanly and efficiently from recycled atmospheric CO? then we would just be moving the CO? around, not strangling the planet with it.

Agreed.

With these things, there are all sorts of fiddly details involved - and we know a good deal more about them than we did in the 50's. For example, the materials used have to be able to cope with the radiation, nasty chemicals, heat, etc. We know more about how that works now.

Really, it is time people started on the /engineering/ of thorium reactors rather than researching the theory. The problem is that no governments in the word have the guts to start it - people are too scared of radiation. Look at what the mess in Japan after Fukushima - there were plans to evacuate Tokyo when the levels of radiation were not even as high as the normal background levels here in Norway. No one died at Fukushima as a result of radiation - lots died as a result of stress, panic and depression due to evacuations and scaremongering from the authorities. Fixing that attitude is going to be a lot harder than the mere engineering problems of thorium reactors!

Yes, that sounds strange - I don't think we sell oil or gas to Russia, as they have enough of their own. (Certainly they have enough gas.)

I have seen a couple of articles from Norwegian scientists calling for research and investment in thorium reactors, but nothing concrete. They have also been in cover articles in our biggest popular science magazine, which helps to inform the public about possibilities.

Usually it all comes down to money! Making thorium reactors is a big investment, so I think you are right that states will have to provide capital to get over the initial hurdles.

(I am actually from Scotland, but I live in Norway.) No, I don't remember seeing that program - but it does not sound like it was based on reality.

Fear of everything nuclear, mainly, combined with complaisance. We are second only to Island on the cleanness and greenness of our electricity

- it is almost all hydroelectric. And we have a higher proportion of electric cars than anywhere else. So there is a tendency to see clean energy as a problem for other countries (while we are quite happy to sell them gas and oil).

To Norwegians, nuclear power is synonymous with dodgy reactors on the Kola peninsula (the bit of north-west Russia that is near Norway), leaks from Sellafield in the UK, and radiation clouds from Chernobyl. A huge amount of lamb had to be discarded as inedible due to radiation from Chernobyl at the time. (Later it was found that the radiation levels in lamb meat were not much lower in meat from before Chernobyl - it's just that no one had bothered testing it until then.)

A molten fluoride salt reactor design that could burn low enriched uranium or thorium was developed at ORNL in the 60's and 70's. It was never built though as a liquid metal design won out.

The devil is always in the details. Nuclear fission is one of the more promising ways of making very large amounts of energy without CO2. Fusion would be better but it looks like it will always be a technology that shows promise for great returns some fifty years into the future.

It is very much an engineering problem and a political one of selling nuclear anything to a now very sceptical general public. Tricky bit is dealing with the resulting high level radioactive waste over a geological timescale. Nimby's in the most geologically suitable UK locations don't want it so it will probably be dumped in fractured rock beds under Sellafield (formerly Windscale (formerly Calder Hall)). Renamed after each major c*ck-up at the site. Thank heavens for Cockcroft's follies or the UK would have had a major fallout incident.

The word nuclear has been excised from all public signage here in the UK to prevent unnecessary public worry. So it is MRI rather than NMR etc.

I think you fall short of understanding the Japanese people. Japan is the only country on earth that has had nuclear weapons used against them. They have a special fear of radiation that none of the rest of us can appreciate. I'm not sure what you mean about deaths from "stress, panic" etc. I've not read about this. Regardless of how the accident killed people, if they died, that was a result of the accident.

I didn't want to go into all the details. The hydrocarbon supplies to Europe were cut off as an encouragement for them to use the Thorium technology Norway developed. Somehow that got up Russia's nose and they invaded. For whatever reason Europe saw Norway as a rogue state and didn't care that Norway was occupied by Russia.

Most of the speaking was not in English, but was subtitled in English. I would have thought it was a Norwegian show, but I'm pretty sure I saw BBC in the credits.

That's good. I don't think anyone here is calling for research except a few not really crackpots, crackpots. They have no real funding, but seem to be able to get the occasional honorarium. It can't be much as the audience seems to be a bit of a mixed bag and not too large.

No, I'm sure it wasn't, but I'm guessing it is a known thing that there is at least some interest in thorium research in Norway. I was just surprised that the thorium reactor idea is known enough to have made it into any show.

Can't get much better than hydro power... except for the ecological issues, lol. I understand dams mess with the ecology and can create problems for those living next to the river, both upstream and downstream, not to mention the people that get moved. This was a major issue in China a short while ago with a very large dam they built.

I don't think the problem is the radiation *level* per-se. It is the specific elements that are radioactive. For example, strontium replaces calcium in bones and remains for a long time releasing radiation. Other elements would wash out of the body limiting the degree of harm.

A friend from Hungary has had cancer a couple of times, supposedly from her exposure to the Chernobyl cloud. I haven't heard from her in some time now. I should get in touch.

That's one of the advantages of thorium reactors, they produce much less waste and in fact, the currently stored waste can be added to the thorium fuel and burned reducing the volume that needs to be stored.

Of course, you may want to read more than Wikipedia to get information from a variety of sources, but it will do as a starting point.

Yes, I understand that the Japanese have a right to real more afraid of radiation than other people. But they are also a country that makes heavy use of nuclear power.

And I would distinguish between deaths due to the accident, and deaths due to mishandling after the accident. The Japanese (both the authorities, and the people in general) do an excellent job of dealing with serious disasters such as earthquakes and tidal waves - but they made a total mess of this one. Unnecessary evacuation and knee-jerk reactions killed people, not the breakdown of the nuclear power station.

Is this it?

I missed that series - I guess I will have to find it and watch it now. There is not enough time to see all the good television.

It appears to be a purely Norwegian production, with distribution rights sold to the BBC (and many other countries). But it is also quite possible that the BBC were involved in the production - the BBC and Norwegian TV companies have a lot of cooperation. Mostly it is between the NRK (our "BBC") and the BBC, but also with TV2 (our "ITV", if you understand British television).

But no, it is not based on reality, any more than the average James Bond film.

political/thriller/crime writers. It is part of his job to know about the reality of technical ideas and developments, and then extrapolate them wildly until you get an exciting story!

Yes, people sometimes forget that flooding a valley is not environmentally friendly. And burst dams have killed vastly more people than nuclear accidents (even if you count the secondary effects due to evacuation, relocation, etc.). But not in Norway, fortunately.

Indeed.

There have also been international conflicts in Africa with one country damning up a river that flows on to its neighbour.

Yes, absolutely - I was not trying to be biologically precise here.

Cancer is influenced by a huge range of factors, some of which we understand, and some of which we don't. It takes a lot of radiation exposure to be able to say that was the /cause/ of a particular cancer - at best, it is usually only possible to say that it gives a statistical increase in the likelihood of certain types of cancer.

Germany announced that they missed hitting their CO2 reduction goals because it's been too cold.

A tad of irony is fun now and then.

John Larkin confusing weather and climate again. The German situation is a little more complicated because as the Arctic Circle warms up (which is hap pening even more rapidly there than across the rest of the planet) the Bare nts and Kara Seas (north of Finland) are more likely to be ice free, and th e jet stream is more likely to move south, dumping loads of cold air across German, the Netherland, Northern France and the UK during winter, calling for extra heating.

This was actually written up by climate modellers and published in November 2010, just before some very early snowfalls in the area that December. Joh n Larkin has been reminded of this from time to time, but never seems to ta ke it on board.

Yes, I would need to read more than Wikipedia to find info saying Japanese government "mishandling" caused deaths. That section of the Wikipedia article does not say that. It simply says "approximately 1,600 deaths related to the evacuation conditions" occurred. Saying it was related to the evacuation is not the same thing as saying it was because of government mishandling.

Everything I have read about Fukushima indicates the government underplayed some of the concerns to help minimize overreactions. The initially evacuated a smaller zone than ultimately was evacuated and consistently downplayed the extent of the damage to the reactors and buildings. At least that is what I recall. But then I suppose that really was Tepco, not the government.

Yes, that was it and it was good, even with the subtitles. I guess the BBC brand was on it just because they were showing it. It appears to be a Norwegian production.

No, I don't. I've seen British jokes about BBC4 that fall short with me.

Except it shows the Norwegian audience at least has heard of energy from thorium. If you talked about that in the US I expect less than 1% would even know the term. But maybe I'm reading too much into this show. I see stuff all the time here where they use some scientific sounding terms that mean little, but it sounds good to people.

He did a great job with this one! One of the things I noticed was the near total lack of pomp in the government. Is that realistic? They would have a high level cabinet meeting that looked like any other office meeting. But then I saw this a few years back and my memory may not be so accurate. I understand that people often recreate details in memories to match a general impression rather than being an actual memory. lol

I know, the impact of radiation or chemical exposure on cancer is to increase the probability. So it is hard to pin down the cause of any one cancer. But that is not a conversation you have with someone receiving cancer treatment.

Not responsive to the comment. The 'very limited sense' is a way of saying that "The problem" and "The myth" are both nonsense outside of a well-defined context. Current atmospheric composition DEFINES THE CONTEXT, and any engineering that doesn't honor the real-world context doesn't matter. Because, fantasy problems and problems of past centuries are not in need of engineering at present. Current and future problems are the only profitable ones.

Turning a blind eye to climate change is a self-defeating strategy.