- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se
- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se
You must log in or # to comment.
Why run ammonia when you can just run liquid hydrogen? Why run liquid hydrogen when you can just run a nuclear reactor?
Hydrogen is definetly harder to store than ammonia and it takes a lot of energy to compress or liquify it.
And I certainly don’t want commercial nuclear ships, because companies will just create “independent” companies that will “mysteriously” go bankrupt once a ship reaches end of life and needs to be decontaminated.
So the taxpayer would have to pay for the decomissioning costs.
Hydrogen is definetly harder to store than ammonia and it takes a lot of energy to compress or liquify it.
It takes a lot of energy to convert hydrogen to ammonia and whatever challenges there are to handling and storing hydrogen, ammonia has its own. At least a hydrogen release isn’t a toxic, polluting event.
And I certainly don’t want commercial nuclear ships, because companies will just create “independent” companies that will “mysteriously” go bankrupt once a ship reaches end of life and needs to be decontaminated.
So the taxpayer would have to pay for the decomissioning costs.
Yes. Let’s just get ahead of the game and nationalize shipping.
Nuclear marine propulsion is mainly used in naval warships, and it looks like there are some serious issues for their use in another context:
Nuclear-powered merchant ships’ collisions, severe machinery damage, fires, explosions, or nuclear leakage may cause serious harm to the marine environment. Current research on nuclear propulsion for merchant ships has shed light on the technical, economic, and sociopolitical challenges to widespread adoption. However, despite the valuable multidisciplinary insights, there remains a deficit in thorough and in-depth research from an international law perspective. [source]
See also: Why nuclear-powered commercial ships are a bad idea | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
The serious issues in the articles you linked are essentially red tape and public perception, which have to be surmountable if we’re taking global warming seriously.
I’m getting really fucking tired of seeing the fossil fuel industries’
cockpropaganda in that person’s mouth.That’s where most of the anti-nuclear sentiment comes from: because they don’t like competition from a technology that is better than them in every way including cost of life per gigawatt hour…
Hydrogen leaks like crazy
It does not leak like crazy. I know because I have experience engineering and operating high pressure electrolysis, storage, and fueling systems for hydrogen. Even when it does leak, what’s nice about hydrogen is that it’s not toxic to humans or pollutive to the environment, unlike ammonia or fossil fuels. Hydrogen leaks are easily mitigated with proven detection and ventilation techniques.
I thought hydrogen could leak through containers? On account of being so small?
Hydrogen will leak through a latex balloon, but it is not going to leak through the steel wall of a pressure vessel. The leak risk occurs at the various fitting connections in a hydrogen system, which is overcome by using the proper fittings.
@CrimeDad @thedeadwalking4242 It leaks like crazy and it is a GHG 11x worse than CO2.
That is an interesting article, but the authors are clear that they don’t know what to expect for hydrogen leakage in a developed hydrogen economy. Sure, hydrogen might be a greenhouse gas, but you can’t really compare it to carbon dioxide because that’s a waste product that we actively dispose of to the atmosphere. You can’t really compare it to methane either because it’s naturally abundant and the LEL is much higher. Relatively leaky valves and fittings are unfortunately acceptable in natural gas service. In other words, hydrogen leakage is barely tolerable, so we have no choice but to employ technology and techniques to prevent it.
