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Inexpensive Nanosheet Catalyst Splits Hydrogen From Water
An anonymous reader writes "Traditional methods of producing pure hydrogen are either extremely expensive or release lots of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Now, scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory have developed an electrocatalyst that addresses one of these problems by generating hydrogen gas from water cleanly and with drastically more affordable materials. Goodbye platinum; hello nickel and ammonia."
Blame Wall Street friend. Myself and many others have said that long term research is essential for the very survival of our race and its pretty obvious to anyone with eyes that wars for resources will replace wars for territory in the future. the problem is on wall street if you don't say "Damn everything but the quarterly earnings!" then your stock is gonna take a big old dump and bye bye buddy.
Personally i believe in a broad approach, i think we should be building at the very least small scale test reactors for thorium and for reprocessing our nuclear waste into usable fuel, we should be investing in battery tech and fuel cells and every other possibility that has any real chance for success because frankly the one that trips over a viable replacement for gasoline is gonna make Gates and Buffet look poor and whatever country they are in will probably have a new golden age but sadly the USA is just too short sighted thanks to the government sucking the dicks on wall street to do anything that the money men don't approve of.
I bet the next big breakthrough will probably come from China, they are investing heavily in science and like Japan in the 50s they are learning and improving daily thanks to all the work we have given them. Remember when made in japan meant shit? In a decade i wouldn't doubt if the same change happens in China. Looking at history one has to wonder if this is not inevitable, if once an empire gets to a certain size the wealth becomes too concentrated and apathy and trying to hang onto what those at the top have becomes more important than innovation and stagnation simply can't be avoided.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Nuclear is bad. Nuclear is not safe and never will be. It is also going to be necessary for the next 50-100 years.
All strong sources of energy are inherently dangerous and expensive (in absolute terms). They differ enough from each other to make you choose your poison, that's it. For the amount of energy nuclear plants produce, they are relatively cheap and safe.
Coal has many operational issues, but failure is limited to the plant and extremely immediate surrounding area.
Coal plants are failing continuously (as a part of their design), and by doing so they affect much larger area than nuclear plants will ever do.