Hydrogen seen as car fuel of the future
Gas from nuclear power stations 'will power the world's vehicles'
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Paul Brown, environment correspondent
The Guardian, Friday 10 September 2004 01.41 BST
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Hydrogen produced by nuclear power stations will fuel the world's vehicles by 2050, providing pollution-free transport while combating global warming, the World Nuclear Association was told in London yesterday.
A combination of the need to cut carbon dioxide emissions, the prospect of increasingly expensive oil and the estimated growth in the world's vehicle fleet means that only hydrogen can plug the gap, Paul Kruger, of Stanford University in California told delegates.
Professor Kruger believes that the hydrogen will be produced by a combination of renewables such as wind and solar power and nuclear stations designed to produce hydrogen with surplus electricity.
The conference, attended by the world's main nuclear organisations, had a series of presentations on how nuclear energy will play a vital role in changing the energy market to one which runs on hydrogen rather than oil.
While a handful of buses in Britain already run on hydrogen, and BMW has designed a dual petrol/hydrogen engine, the problem was producing enough hydrogen for it to replace oil as the primary vehicle fuel, the conference heard.
While many have suggested that surplus wind and solar energy can be used for electrolysis to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, Prof Kruger floated the idea that nuclear power stations could also be built to provide electric power and hydrogen.
Making nuclear power stations slightly larger than necessary would allow surplus electricity to produce hydrogen at very little extra cost. This could be sold to a national network of hydrogen filling stations for fuel cells for cars.
The estimated growth in the world fleet of vehicles is from 900m in 2010 to 1,500m by 2050. The trick was to change the fuel from the 360bn gallons of petrol which would be used in 2010 to 260bn kg of hydrogen fuel needed 40 years later. To produce that much hydrogen, electricity production would have to be increased by between 15% and 25% more than that needed merely to keep the lights on, he said.
There are 440 nuclear stations operating worldwide, but providing enough electricity and hydrogen to meet the world's needs might need up to 3,500 new nuclear stations.
The advantage of hydrogen for fuelling cars is that it is that it recombines with oxygen to produce pure water as the only waste product.
The Bush administration is so convinced that dual electricity and hydrogen production is the future that the US department of energy has decided to construct a demonstration nuclear reactor to produce hydrogen in Idaho Falls.
Hans Forsstrom, from the European commission, said the EU was also considering the use of high-temperature reactors to produce hydrogen. The process had a "big potential".
Klaus Scheuerer, of BMW, said it had already developed a car which could run on hydrogen or petrol. The problem was not the technology but the supply of hydrogen.
"The long-term transition to hydrogen as a source of energy is an absolute necessity. Our progress in the development of a hydrogen engine makes us confident that the road to market is a short one."
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