The Oil Drum

26 comments on Revisiting the barrels per rig issue

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joule on November 4, 2005 - 12:21pm

The article in the Guardian said nothing about how one goes about making this 'super hydrogen', so one can't really assess the amount of energy that needs to be expended in making it.

Even if it gives off substantially more energy than normal hydrogen when oxidized to produce water, the important question is: how does that energy output compare with the required energy input?

These type of extraordinary claims of new energy sources by independent inventors pop up every several years, and most of them soon fall apart when held up to scrutiny. It reminds me of all the wasted effort during the 19th Century to come up with a perpetual motion machine.

Still, it's important to keep an open mind and to not dogmatically dismiss all such claims without a fair examination. Scientists and engineers have a bad habit of dismissing many new ideas 'by inspection'.

However every single method for extracting useful energy entails some entity going from a high energy state to a lower energy state and releasing useful energy in the process. The theoretical maximum amount of useful energy that can be obtained in such a process in the relative difference in energy between the two states. Unless one finds a way around the laws of physics as we known them, there is no way around this fundamental constraint.

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GreyZone on November 4, 2005 - 3:45pm

Quantum nucleonic reactors is a topic most here ought to familiarize themselves with. It's not a "free lunch" as you correctly observe that releasing energy always involves state transitions from higher to lower. And that's exactly what makes the quantum nucleonic reactor interesting. It's so interesting that the US Air Force is considering prototyping drone planes using that power source as a way to keep the drones aloft over a battlefield for days or weeks at a time.

After learning about quantum nucleonic reactors, I've always thought they would be an ideal way to power a rebuilt heavy rail system in the US.

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Everett on November 4, 2005 - 5:29pm

These reactors are really an advanced form of battery. You have to excite or create the Hafnium nucleus to it's isomeric state. About the only way I can imagine getting an isomer Hf-178 is to soak Lutetium or Ytterbium 176 in a nuclear reactor and wait for a couple of neutron captures and one or two beta decays. Hopefully, there is a decent probability of the product nucleus falling into the isomeric state. I don't have the decay scheme to say for sure. However, the fact the isomer has so much angular momentum probably means it has a low production cross section..