Emil Jacobs - Collectifission
@cstross @regordane @alexproe @ChrisMayLA6
Good moment to recycle an old meme of mine 🙂
On a more serious note: Liebreich did an excellent deconstruction of the hydrogen miracle myth a few months ago, that I'll just link here: https://yt.artemislena.eu/watch?v=w0Q9cuF8zKg
It's a bit long, but certainly interesting.
Charlie Stross
@regordane @alexproe @ChrisMayLA6 Hell, we've had *nuclear powered trains* for 45 years and they make more sense than hydrogen fuel cells! (Spoiler: it's the French TGV network, which is overhead-electrification all the way, driven by the French nuclear reactor fleet—which at peak supplied 90% of France's electricity. Nobody in their right mind would put a reactor IN a train, but leaving them in their containment buildings and using high tension cables is a no-brainer.)
Hilary
@cstross @alexproe @ChrisMayLA6
This. There might, possibly, be a few marginal cases where hydrogen generated on site is a sensible fuel for energy generation (I'm not actually aware of any).
But it is obviously daft and a complete non-starter for things that move (trains, road vehicles etc) or distribution over wide areas (eg for domestic use).
Hydrogen is total hype and the sooner the idea gets knocked on the head the better.
Charlie Stross
@alexproe @ChrisMayLA6 Hydrogen is greenwashing—it's almost 100% produced by reforming methane (natural gas): electrolysis from water is ferociously expensive. It's also much lower energy density per unit volume than methane, diffuses through metal, as a cryogenic liquid it's murderously hard to handle and embrittles seals and metal, and it's explosive when mixed with air in almost any ratio. Locos powered by hydrogen are leaking fuel-air explosive bombs, and you want them in passenger stations?
Alex P Roe
@ChrisMayLA6 See note below. Maybe instead of electrification with all the complex, rather unsightly (costly to maintain) infrastructure, they could use the review as an opportunity to look at hydrogen fuel cell locomotives? Something like this: https://newatlas.com/transport/flirt-h2-fuel-cell-train-guinness/ NOTE: From the comments I've been getting and after reading up a bit, I think battery-electric trains are a greener alternative to #hydrogen fuel cell trains.
Emeritus Prof Christopher May
As the electrification of the Leeds-Manchester rail line is again put under review to see if 'savings can be released', what successive authorities seem to miss is that each time they delay to review (to find costs savings), they're increasing the cost, making the extent of actual savings needed to make their target cost reduction that much harder, until eventually, the delays themselves raise costs so much the project (perhaps by design) becomes uneconomic.
#railways #infrastructure
h/t FT
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