Hydrogen Economy

I skipped today's lecture by Cesare Marchetti in favour of work but apparently I missed an never to be forgotten blend of science and fiction. The topic: "How the Hydrogen Economy did pop up in the 60s and how it will fill the world in 2060" was just the start.

I've pasted part of the abstract as a case in point: "By producing hydrogen from water, oxygen would be released and travel by air to the point where hydrogen is consumed. You don't need the second wire to bring back the electrons...From these explorations it came out that hydrogen could efficiently cover the whole of the second half of the energy budget and consequently, at least conceptually, nuclear energy could become the sole primary energy for humanity...So I introduced thermochemical processes where a set of chemical cyclic reactions driven by nuclear heat led finally to the decomposition of water into hydrogen and oxygen...where the big strategy was deployed, converging finally in the concept of the Energy Island where technology is imported in an atoll where giant rafts with nuclear reactors and chemical plants are moored. Uranium is extracted from the seawater used for cooling and fission products put in capsules that selfsink by melting the rocks, down to 20 km."

I wait with bated breathe for this solution to work...

P.S. If you want a review of the actual lecture visit Elisabeth's only English blog post of the YSSP.