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Re: News Advisory: Still Crazy After Oil These Years!




Michael Delceg <mdelceg@nelson.planet.org.nz> wrote:

> Those of us who have fought nuclear proliferation will obviously 
> have to take up the cudgels again.

> One can expect to see more of 
> this nuke pushing as an alternative to fossil fuels while the sun, 
> wind and waves are ignored.


One approach frequently touted by renewable energy advocates is the
production of hydrogen by electrolysis using electricity from solar,
wind and other renewable sources, with the hydrogen serving to
transmit the power from sunny regions to regions of high demand, and
to allow power to be supplied during the winter.

It is not widely considered, however, that electrolysis plants can,
without much extra cost, be designed to also produce heavy water as a
byproduct (this is because there is a strong isotope effect prefering
the liberation of H to D at the cathode of an electrolysis cell).
Recall that before WW2 electrolysis was the commercial method for
heavy water preparation; the Nazis were getting their heavy water from
a captured plant in Norway (powered by good old renewable
hydroelectric power.)

Light water reactors of the kind currently used in commercial nuclear
power have never been implicated as contributing to proliferation.
Heavy water reactors, however, have been; India and Israel supposedly
went this route.

An opponent of proliferation should prefer a light water reactor
electric economy to the renewable hydrogen economy.

	Paul





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