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I think right now there's a bunch of combustion engine based designs that use the same or parts of the same infrastructure which are being shown around as a means to keeping those factories about.

The trade off is that IF you can land a working model you can start production with a already party established infrastructure instead of having to shift everything to electrical car design and production.

I think Vauxhall are also trying to land the new green fuel supporting car that does the same.

The article says its a fuel cell. I thought that led to electrical power rather than mechanical power, so it might have more in common with electric vehicles mechanically, even if the vehicle equipment layout is more conventional compared to batter EVs.

I always though hydrogen fuel cells were a type of EV. But so are hybrids, functionally, so the engineering is widespread for cars containing electric motors providing motive power. The challenge with EVs is where the electricity comes from, not the motors.

 Haighus wrote:
I always though hydrogen fuel cells were a type of EV. But so are hybrids, functionally, so the engineering is widespread for cars containing electric motors providing motive power. The challenge with EVs is where the electricity comes from, not the motors.

Current hybrids are generally either engine with motor assist/takeover, or EV with petrol-diesel electrical generator.

 Skinnereal wrote:

 Haighus wrote:
I always though hydrogen fuel cells were a type of EV. But so are hybrids, functionally, so the engineering is widespread for cars containing electric motors providing motive power. The challenge with EVs is where the electricity comes from, not the motors.

Current hybrids are generally either engine with motor assist/takeover, or EV with petrol-diesel electrical generator.

Ah, wasn't aware of the former, was referring to the latter type

 Flinty wrote:
The article says its a fuel cell. I thought that led to electrical power rather than mechanical power, so it might have more in common with electric vehicles mechanically, even if the vehicle equipment layout is more conventional compared to batter EVs.

It is indeed a fuel cell. It's basically an electric car in terms of the motive architecture but the hydrogen fuel cell acts as an onboard generator so instead of storing electrical energy in a battery like an EV does, you use the energy from the hydrogen to create electricity. You get longer range, faster fuelling and at least theoretically you can adapt the existing infrastructure to pump hydrogen instead of petrol/diesel. I think in practice it may not prove to be that simple and there are still big problems with the infrastructure and how we produce the hydrogen itself.

Battery EVs may not "refill" as fast and may have shorter ranges, but the ranges are increasing all the time and are not far off what many people would view as adequate for the vast majority of journeys. Charging speeds are increasing too, but will never get close to what you can get from a petrol, diesel or hydrogen pump. The massive advantage for EVs is how easy it is to set up the charging infrastructure. You can have a wall box at home if you have off-street parking, and installing charging stations in car parks or on streets is very simple compared to dealing with pressurised, flammable gas. I've had an EV for 5 years now and even with around 140 miles of range we rarely have to charge away from home.

The real issue with hydrogen is the same as electric cars. Its only as clean and cheap as the power you need to make it. So utterly useless unless the world adopts large scale nuclear power.

 Grey Templar wrote:
The real issue with hydrogen is the same as electric cars. Its only as clean and cheap as the power you need to make it. So utterly useless unless the world adopts large scale nuclear power.

Most renewable energy is cheap these days. The problem isn't cost, it is intermittency. Hydrogen power actually overcomes a lot of the intermittency problems of most renewable energy sources. It can be used to convert wind, solar etc. into stored energy, so it is very helpful in that regard.

The issue is efficiency is quite low regardless of electricity source. I recall around 50%, so half the energy is lost when converting it into hydrogen. This is worse than, say, pumped hydro storage, but much more space efficient and requiring less monumental infrastructure. If there is an efficiency breakthrough on hydrogen production it will be a big deal.

Ahh yeah I got the fuel cells mixed up with alternative combustion fuels!

 Grey Templar wrote:
The real issue with hydrogen is the same as electric cars. Its only as clean and cheap as the power you need to make it. So utterly useless unless the world adopts large scale nuclear power.

I still lament the fact that the west has been so slow to adapt more nuclear power stations. You don't have to flood thousands of acres of upland and mess up river systems; you don't have to build huge farms of glass or huge windmills; you don't have to wait for the "right weather" and honestly the output of most nuclear stations in terms of waste is manageable. Plus whilst fusion is the golden egg of clean easy power; we are still so far off actually having a viable sustained reaction at a production level that can be used as a powersource.


It strikes me as somewhat daft that you've counties like Japan with loads of nuclear power plants situated on the "Ring of Fire" whilst a lot of European countries are pretty stable. No hurricanes or volcanoes for the most part. So super safe to build nuclear power stations in.

Oh, I'm not anti nuclear by any stretch but hydrogen specifically works fine with intermittent renewables as it is a storage medium in its own right.

 Haighus wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
The real issue with hydrogen is the same as electric cars. Its only as clean and cheap as the power you need to make it. So utterly useless unless the world adopts large scale nuclear power.

Most renewable energy is cheap these days. The problem isn't cost, it is intermittency. Hydrogen power actually overcomes a lot of the intermittency problems of most renewable energy sources. It can be used to convert wind, solar etc. into stored energy, so it is very helpful in that regard.

The issue is efficiency is quite low regardless of electricity source. I recall around 50%, so half the energy is lost when converting it into hydrogen. This is worse than, say, pumped hydro storage, but much more space efficient and requiring less monumental infrastructure. If there is a breakthrough on hydrogen production it will ne a big deal.

Renewables are not just highly intermittent, they are also quite limited in where you can actually do them. Solar is the least limited, but its also the most intermittent.

Wind farms are cool, if you have a spot where you can actually do them. There are actually very few locations where wind is practical, both in consistency and proximity to end users, and most of them are already being taken advantage of.

Geothermal again requires you to be lucky enough that you have geothermal near a location where you actually need power. Does you no good if its the middle of nowhere.


This is why nuclear is the answer. We have billions of years worth of fuel on this planet, more than enough to last till we unlock resources in space. The only other resource it requires is water, something which is always available where humans will be, and other than that it can go anywhere.

 Grey Templar wrote:
This is why nuclear is the answer. We have billions of years worth of fuel on this planet, more than enough to last till we unlock resources in space.

The problems are disposal, and accidents. In the main, nuclear power is clean and cheap (ish), and plentiful as you say.
Where-as, renewables can store excess power as Hydrogen, which as a by-product, is a win-win. Get enough excess, and hydrogen is just there, when you need it. Not just as vehicle fuel, but as backup power.
Renewables work best when mixed. Put solar, wind and tidal all feeding one plant, and you're covered.

Geothermal again requires you to be lucky enough that you have geothermal near a location where you actually need power. Does you no good if its the middle of nowhere.

Most of the time, it and you will be in the middle of nowhere. Build it as big as you like.

Essentially every house and building can accommodate solar panels, they aren't meaningfully limited by location and are still useful even at latitudes as high as the UK. Hence why intermittency is the main issue. But hydrogen generation can happen during the day with excess power, and stored for later use.

Nuclear is necessary for maintaining a grid without using coal or gas unless a region is very lucky (like Iceland with geothermic) but not for generating hydrogen.

Solar generating hydrogen is being keenly looked at. A lot of countries with the exponential growth of solar (I think at last count the installed base was doubling every 3 years) and poor storage are looking at that mix of power stations to cover the intermittent nature and also fuel their logistic infrastructure with hydrogen looking better for HGVs than batteries currently (and EV charging also being a thing).

The number of countries who are getting to the point for generating more energy than needed with solar is interesting.

There was a recent report of an electric car with a battery that charged to 80% in 5 mins. The range wasn’t great in the prototype, but it shows a handy direction of travel now that super fast charger infrastructure is expanding more.

Storage facilities are being looked at way too late. If it were me, that's the first thing I would be looking at in conjunction with renewable energy.

Hydrogen does require abundant renewable energy to be sustainable but that is within reach. The trouble is making sure governments are promoting research and subsidising cost to allow greater availability.

There are pilot projects on the go for running existing municipal gas grids off hydrogen. They run into “but hydrogen is dangerous, i don’t want that in my house” and current higher costs for hydrogen ready appliances. Oh and “it will all end up being fuelled with hydrocarbon derived H2 so why bother”

Flow batteries must surely be somewhere as they always sounded like a great solution.

For the cost of a forest full of waste PPE gear, so much more could be done.

 Skinnereal wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
This is why nuclear is the answer. We have billions of years worth of fuel on this planet, more than enough to last till we unlock resources in space.

The problems are disposal, and accidents. In the main, nuclear power is clean and cheap (ish), and plentiful as you say.
Where-as, renewables can store excess power as Hydrogen, which as a by-product, is a win-win. Get enough excess, and hydrogen is just there, when you need it. Not just as vehicle fuel, but as backup power.
Renewables work best when mixed. Put solar, wind and tidal all feeding one plant, and you're covered.

The actual risks of nuclear are way overblown. Chernobyl was basically almost as bad as it could possibly be short of deliberately trying to make it worse, and at the end of the day its not that bad considering.

Disposal is also fairly easy. Its not hard to dig massive deep mineshafts in the desert that are going to be proof for many millennia. Plus spent fuel has its own uses sometimes.


People shouldn't base their fear of nuclear upon what the Soviets did, they weren't exactly good at doing much.

also the Japanese and US hat their fair share of problems, not just at the reactor stage but already in making the fuel

the main problem with nuclear is that we still don't know everything that may happen, like Chernobyl was so bad because everyone thought that a reactor can never explode but the melting core is the worst possible accident (and we still don't know what excatly exploded there)
and the same problem with storrage of waste, we don't know all possibilities and therefore cannot prepare for them


yet when it comes down to cheap and clean energy, nuclear is simply no option any more as other technologies are available

it is just that there is no single tech that solves evrything but different types for different regions/needs
people trying to again fit a single solution for every problem is the main issue currently, as this will never work

The biggest problem with hydrogen at the moment is that the vast majority of it is actually produced from natural gas extraction and is absolutely not green. Of course it can be produced by electrolysis from renewable energy, but at the moment it’s not, so there’s a whole other set of infrastructure that needs to be built alongside the shipping and distribution to do that at industrial scale.

The other problem, particularly in the vehicle scenario, is that hydrogen is really slippery stuff. It’s a very small molecule and it leaks out of your storage container very quickly. Essentially, if you fill up your car at the start of the week and park it on the drive, by the end of the week you’ll need to fill it up again.

storage solution for hydrogen is with metal hydrids, it was already a commercial viable technology 20 years ago but considered not useful for cars because it is too heavy compared to liquid fuel (yet much lighter than current battery solutions) but still the best one for storage of large amounts

and cars are a problem of their own as the solution for too many cars is not a different engine

 Olthannon wrote:
Storage facilities are being looked at way too late. If it were me, that's the first thing I would be looking at in conjunction with renewable energy.

Storage is expensive, and the raw materials are being used elsewhere. The battery storage for infrastructure is currently all going into EVs, not leaving a lot for that.
There are storage projects going up (Aus had a huge one last year), and alternatives to batteries have been a thing for decades (https://www.visitcruachan.co.uk/ for water), along with melting salt, etc.

 Skinnereal wrote:

 Olthannon wrote:
Storage facilities are being looked at way too late. If it were me, that's the first thing I would be looking at in conjunction with renewable energy.

Storage is expensive, and the raw materials are being used elsewhere. The battery storage for infrastructure is currently all going into EVs, not leaving a lot for that.
There are storage projects going up (Aus had a huge one last year), and alternatives to batteries have been a thing for decades (https://www.visitcruachan.co.uk/ for water), along with melting salt, etc.

Widespread gas storage is practical, we used to have gasometers all over the place. They are barely needed on the current grid but intermittent gas production with a mismatch to usage loads is exactly the situation they were developed for. I wonder if the old designs can hold hydrogen effectively.

Electric mountain is great (anyone else go on a school trip?), but stored hydro is big infrastructure.

I am sure the holes in the ground from mining battery bits are just as big
We went when on holiday along Loch Fyne

I hear the main difference between Natural Gas and Hydrogen in the size of the molecules. Hydrogen leaks out at any point whhere the gaps are too big, and any joint in natural gas pipework has holes that are too big. Loads of pipes to be relaid. But once that is in and done, it's all back to being just pipes. Retrofitted gasometers will probably still do the job, if there are any still around.

 Flinty wrote:
There was a recent report of an electric car with a battery that charged to 80% in 5 mins. The range wasn’t great in the prototype, but it shows a handy direction of travel now that super fast charger infrastructure is expanding more.

That battery is only a bit smaller than my car has now. I have a 44kWh capacity car, that test one is 35. So, I'll be up for an upgrade to that:
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/07/02/2322244/british-startup-nyobolt-demos-4-minute-battery-charging-for-evs

A 5 minute stop every 100 miles is not a big problem, if enough chargers are put in that can support it.

I just saw a video about a new sodium nuclear power plant with an integrated energy storage facility using molten salt of some composition or other.
Sodium powerplants aren't new, but the energy storage thing is. It would allow the plant to ramp up electricity generation much more quickly than traditional nuclear plants. That has always been a problem for them (alongside significant wear and tear on various parts when using traditional "ramp up and slow down the nuclear reaction" techs), so this could be a game changer.
One potential downside is that the molten salt storage while more efficient than hydrogen generation has limited shelf life - measured in days - compared to H2. Though I suppose it would be a simple matter to attach an H2 plant to utilise any excess salt energy into H2 so you get both the benefits of higher efficiency on direct use and long-term storage albeit at less efficiency.

“Excess salt energy” is the best euphemism for the internet

Bran Dawri wrote:
I just saw a video about a new sodium nuclear power plant with an integrated energy storage facility using molten salt of some composition or other.
Sodium powerplants aren't new, but the energy storage thing is. It would allow the plant to ramp up electricity generation much more quickly than traditional nuclear plants. That has always been a problem for them (alongside significant wear and tear on various parts when using traditional "ramp up and slow down the nuclear reaction" techs), so this could be a game changer.
One potential downside is that the molten salt storage while more efficient than hydrogen generation has limited shelf life - measured in days - compared to H2. Though I suppose it would be a simple matter to attach an H2 plant to utilise any excess salt energy into H2 so you get both the benefits of higher efficiency on direct use and long-term storage albeit at less efficiency.

Sounds like its just storing more liquid sodium in the system than a normal sodium nuclear reactor.

For those who don't know. Nuclear reactors typically operate by heating up water with the reactor to steam, then that steam is used to turn the turbines.

Sodium reactors kind of add a middle step. Instead of heating up water, the reactor heats up a loop of liquid sodium. This liquid sodium is then used to heat water into steam to turn turbines. The advantages are that sodium has a far far higher thermal capacity than water without much expansion. Which means the chance of a sodium reactor exploding is basically none.

Seems like this idea is basically to just take full advantage of being able to run a nuclear reactor constantly. Its normally very annoying to fluctuate a nuclear power plant's output to match demand because they are somewhat ponderous to start and stop, but a sodium plant could just be run constantly and you can use excess energy to do stuff like make hydrogen.

Which really could still be done with a normal reactor, just ensuring that where the reactor is there is always demand.

From what I understood the molten salt storage is in a reservoir closeby but separated from the actual nuclear generator. It wasn't specified if the salt is heated by the reactor directly or with an extra step via the regular heated sodium as an intermediate. Or maybe I missed that bit.

But yeah, the idea is that having more excess heat stored that's directly accessible for powering the turbines means you can change output quickly without having to change the core's output on a moment's notice

Oh its all kept liquid via the reactor. Not easy to keep thousands of gallons of sodium in liquid form without nuclear radiation. And you don't want it to cool to a point where it starts solidifying in the pipes.

Basically its a closed loop with the sodium being pumped through the reactor, out to the steam turbines, and the back into the reactor to heat it back up. Mind you, even once the sodium leaves the steam turbines and has "cooled" it is still very hot.

main advantage being that the core is already molten and you don't need radioactive material to fuel it once it is running
it also runs under normal pressure so there cannot be any pressure explosion, but it does not mean any uncontrolled fission is impossible