[Mb-civic] John Dizard: Bush, Iraq and the hydrogen economy

[Michael Butler]

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John Dizard: Bush, Iraq and the hydrogen economy
>Published: January 30 2005 20:26 | Last updated: January 30 2005 20:26
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There can be no one left who thinks that yesterday's elections in Iraq will
have ended the political instability in the Middle East. It is now assumed
even by the US military leadership that the forces in Iraq cannot be
significantly decreased for years. There is going to be more and more
political pressure to achieve energy independence rather than face the
prospect of endless military occupations of sources of oil.

The closest thing to an independence plan produced by the Bush
administration or the energy industry is the hydrogen economy. The idea is
to convert our vehicles, ships, and aircraft to burn the pollution free fuel
in various forms. It would solve a problem, but it could take 20 years or
so.

However, hydrogen isn't a source of fuel - it's a storage medium. It is
produced by expending some other primary source of energy.

The source the government, energy industry, and the automotive industry has
in mind is nuclear power. We are talking about literally thousands of new
nuclear facilities dedicated to the production of hydrogen through fission
powered electrolysis (the splitting of water into hydrogen and oxygen gas).

The hydrogen economy is really a nuclear economy. Investors and the rest of
corporate America may not realise how close the country is to making a
gigantic bet on a nuclear future. The scientists and engineers at the Idaho
National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory have been developing the
advanced nuclear technologies that would power the hydrogen world.

Among the designs the INEEL has been working on is the Very High Temperature
Reactor, the one best suited to provide the process heat necessary to break
hydrogen apart from water so it can be turned into fuel. (There are a few
issues with storing hydrogen, but we won't deal with them here.) Among the
high temperature reactor variants is the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor being
developed here and in China.

I asked Dr Steve Herring of the INEEL how many of these new, relatively
efficient reactors would be needed to displace the estimated US fuel import
requirements 20 years from now. Based on the Energy Information
Administration's estimate of 2025 fuel imports (measured in quads, or
quadrillion British thermal units), the output of 300MW per VHTR reactor,
and the comparative efficiency of hydrogen fuel compared to gasoline, you
come up with a requirement of about 4,000 reactors.

Now these reactors are much smaller than most of the power reactors in
operation, but that's still a significant number. However, the US used to
have more than 1,000 land-based nuclear ballistic missiles in underground
silos. The relatively small VHTR reactors might be housed in underground
facilities that wouldn't be much bigger.

Anti-nuclear activists want hydrogen fuel to come from renewable energy
sources, such as wind power. However, that arithmetic doesn't work. For
example, California has the most developed wind power industry in the US.
Its share of those reactors in 2025, based on population, would be about
480. The entire current wind development in California would only account
for four reactors' worth of energy for hydrogen production.

Whatever your doubts about nuclear power, the hydrogen economy might at
least be cheaper than occupying the Middle East indefinitely. Using a cost
estimate of $1,200 per KW for the reactors, those 4,000 reactors would cost
about $1,500bn.

The direct costs of the peacekeeping, if that's the term I'm looking for, in
the Middle East, are about $100bn a year. Over 20 years, that's $2,000bn.
Throw in the deferred military capital costs, not to mention the survivors'
benefits, and nuclear powered hydrogen becomes quite competitive. The real
hurdle with nukes is the capital cost. Maintenance, fuel and operation add
up to less than 1 cent per kwh, and total energy content in a kilogramme of
hydrogen or a gallon of gasoline is about 50 kwh, which would mean operating
costs of about 50 cents a gallon.

There would still be a couple of issues. The first would be finding all the
new uranium supplies to fuel the reactors. Geophysical surveys suggest there
should be enough uranium in the US and Canada.

Then there is the problem of storing the used fuel. It would be necessary to
find, or create, some caves in geologically stable formations such as the
granite in the Northeastern US. That would be politically difficult.

Then we'd have to gather the helium that's used for heat transfer in the
pebble bed reactors. There's a lot of helium in the universe; little of that
is on our planet. The US produces a lot of helium, mostly in association
with natural gas. The problem is helium reserves are running down and would
be in decline by 2025. It might be necessary to go overseas to where new
helium reserves have been discovered.

Where would some of those be? In Qatar, just across the Gulf from Iraq.
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