Robert Zubrin says yes.
The following is a guest post from Matt Wald, senior communications advisor at NEI. Follow Matt on Twitter at @MattLWald.
From the batteries in our cell phones to the clothes on our backs, "nanomaterials" that are designed molecule by molecule are working their way into our economy and our lives. Now there’s some promising work on new materials for nuclear reactors.
Reactors are a tough environment. The sub atomic particles that sustain the chain reaction, neutrons, are great for splitting additional uranium atoms, but not all of them hit a uranium atom; some of them end up in various metal components of the reactor. The metal is usually a crystalline structure, meaning it is as orderly as a ladder or a sheet of graph paper, but the neutrons rearrange the atoms, leaving some infinitesimal voids in the structure and some areas of extra density. The components literally grow, getting longer and thicker. The phenomenon is well understood and designers compensate for it with a …
From the batteries in our cell phones to the clothes on our backs, "nanomaterials" that are designed molecule by molecule are working their way into our economy and our lives. Now there’s some promising work on new materials for nuclear reactors.
Reactors are a tough environment. The sub atomic particles that sustain the chain reaction, neutrons, are great for splitting additional uranium atoms, but not all of them hit a uranium atom; some of them end up in various metal components of the reactor. The metal is usually a crystalline structure, meaning it is as orderly as a ladder or a sheet of graph paper, but the neutrons rearrange the atoms, leaving some infinitesimal voids in the structure and some areas of extra density. The components literally grow, getting longer and thicker. The phenomenon is well understood and designers compensate for it with a …
Comments
That said, I think he's probably barking up the wrong tree here.
Aside from the dubious economics, there's several technical issues which makes this alternative less likely.
If you're going to make liquid fuels from coal for OPEC-busting, the process of making diesel from coal is not very different to making methanol, and there are already car and truck engines in mass production using the stuff.
As an extra bonus, diesel engines are much more efficient than spark-ignition engines because of the much higher compression ratio.
In any case, this doesn't solve the problem of carbon dioxide emissions from combustion, which are highly likely to be the subject of regulation soon.
For what it's worth, my best guess is that plug-in hybrids with increasingly long all-electric ranges, hopefully powered by nuclear electricity, will become increasingly commonplace through the 2010s.
With dedicated Ethanol/Methanol engines the achievable efficiency is actually HIGHER than the efficiency of diesels.
With a high temperature reactor as process heat source the "mine to wheel" efficiency would be higher than either hydrogen fuel cell or battery electric. And it is doable with the existing liquid fuel infrastructure and without much retooling the existing car fleet.
Also gets away from the rising commodity prices for battery or fuel-cell materials.
- Klaus