Dec 10
27

Do nuclear-powered cars use hydrogen as fuel?

8 Comments

I’ve done an extensive amount of research on nuclear-powered cars, and I’m finding articles talking about how nuclear energy can generate hydrogen.

Basically, all I’m asking is, are hydrogen powered cars, basically, nuclear powered cars?

Or are they really two different alternative fuel sources?


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This entry was posted on December 27, 2010 at 1:06 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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8 Responses to "Do nuclear-powered cars use hydrogen as fuel?"

  • Breath on the Wind says:
    December 27, 2010 at 1:07 pm

    Hydrogen powered cars are not nuclear cars but it is possible to obtain the free hydrogen from nuclear reactions not on board the vehicle.

    There are several different ways that nuclear fission reactors can be used to produce hydrogen: http://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/nuclear.html The advantage over producing hydrogen from some other means is suggested to be a matter of efficiency. Economics may still be in favor of the various chemical reactions.

    The idea of hydrogen from nuclear reactions is a red herring and not a viable alternative fuel. It suggests that we should concentrate on carbon emissions and note that nuclear power produces no carbon emissions in its operations. It suggests that we should concentrate on hydrogen as an energy carrier and that it’s only operational bi product is water.when used in a hydrogen fuel cell.

    However for a long time carbon dioxide emissions were considered harmless and the real concern was other pollutants. Spent nuclear waste is as much a pollutant as any chemical compound and if risk can be measured by the degree of hazard multiplied times the time of concern there is no greater pollutant. The half life for spent nuclear fuel from a breeder reactor is 20,000 years. A material is considered safe after 20 times its half life if it does not decay into another radioactive material. At a minimum this would be 400,000 years. 5000 years ago the English channel did not exist. Can any human predict the shape of the landscape over the course of 5000 years let alone almost 1/2 a million? No civilization has lasted more than 2000 years. What hubris would allow a government to suggest that they could protect a stockpile for even this long let alone almost half a million years. Nuclear Fission is not a pollution free technology.

    The advantage of hydrogen for those who advocate it is that it presents a seeming alternative to solar based technologies and thereby keeps the control of energy centralized. Hydrogen is not currently an economical carrier of energy. It may always cost more to produce in energy than it gives back, but it will also maintain a central control of energy that has existed at least as far back as all recorded history. We have the capacity to do better.
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  • Harley Drive says:
    December 27, 2010 at 1:07 pm

    there is no such thing as a nuclear powered car, so I cannot see how you can do extensive research on them, hydrogen cars are in two types one where the hydrogen is burned like fuel and two where the hydrogen produces electricity in a fuel cell, both are extremely inefficient as they use a huge amount of electricity to produce the hydrogen

  • permanently drunk says:
    December 27, 2010 at 1:07 pm

    he never heard of the ford nucleon lol ^^^

    there 2 different sources.

  • John W says:
    December 27, 2010 at 1:07 pm

    Differentiate between an energy source and a fuel used to convey energy. Technically a gasoline car is nuclear powered because it’s the energy from nuclear fusion within the sun captured through photosynthesis and converted to sugars and oils millions of years ago and transformed over that time into crude oil which we refine to produce gasoline. Fuels are just stored energy, just as a battery stores energy chemically so does a fuel. You can actually synthesize gasoline from just about any energy source by heating cobalt oxide to 2400 Celsius such that it gives off it’s oxygen, allowing it to cool to 2000 Celsius and exposing water and carbon monoxide to it thereby allowing the cobalt oxide to strip an oxygen atom away leaving a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen gases (syngas) from which linear hydrocarbons are synthesized. Sandia Labs demonstrated this in their CR5 reactor and the synthesis of fuels from syngas has been well known since the 1920′s and is one of the ways that we’ve diluted our high sulfur diesel down to meet the new ultra low sulfur requirements, gasifying the heavy bitumen of the tar sands into syngas to synthesize valuable hydrocarbons is how the "upgraders" work and both WWII Germany and embargoed South Africa gasified coal to syngas to produce the diesel and aviation fuel on a national scale when oil was not available. The US airforce also synthesizes jet fuel by gasification of coal in order to have a politically secure source of fuel.

  • Vikrum says:
    December 27, 2010 at 1:07 pm

    You should search for that on google.

  • joel.almon says:
    December 27, 2010 at 1:07 pm

    Nuclear fusion compresses two Hydrogen atoms into one Helium atom which gives off immense amounts of energy. There are projects (ITER) working on this energy source but nothing that would fit in a car. All reactors today are fission reactors which break apart Uranium to produce energy.

    The form of hydrogen power being suggested for cars is where a hydrogen electron is separated from the atom by being forced through a fuel cell membrane. The free electrons repel each other (like charges repel) and that creates electricity through a circuit.

    Nuclear reactors can be used to produce electricity to break water down into H2 + O (electrolysis), but nuclear material isn’t in the actual car.

    Nuclear fusion and fuel cells have absolutely no similarities in technology or application, other than they both use forms of Hydrogen as fuel.

  • varun says:
    December 27, 2010 at 1:07 pm

    i think ,there are different

  • yankee_sailor says:
    December 27, 2010 at 1:07 pm

    You’re thinking of the DeLorean powered by "Mr Fusion" from "Back to the Future"?

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