Metrobus cancellations after hydrogen bus fire in Crawley

[NNadir]

2. Nuclear power, in theory, can be utilized in process intensification situations, to synthesize the wonder fuel DME.

This would involve a massive improvement in thermodynamics and exergy capture, feasible with modern nuclear designs, requiring the use of captive hydrogen. Hydrogen is an important industrial reagent, currently overwhelmingly made from dangerous fossil fuels, but accessible from nuclear driven thermochemical cycles, but the horrible physical properties, including the third lowest critical temperature of all known gases, means it is idiotic to think of hydrogen as a consumer product.

In 2011, in a paper I often reference, the late great Nobel Laureate George Olah described the pathway:

Anthropogenic Chemical Carbon Cycle for a Sustainable Future George A. Olah, G. K. Surya Prakash, and Alain Goeppert Journal of the American Chemical Society 2011 133 (33), 12881-12898

The ignorance of antinukes, of course, has precluded this outcome, and the loss of 15 years - actually thirty or forty years - is irretrievable.

When Olah and his colleagues published the paper, the publication date being May 25, 2011, the concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide in the planetary atmosphere was 394.99 ppm.

The most recent reported data:

Week beginning on April 26, 2026: 432.44 ppm
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 430.29 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 407.86 ppm
Last updated: May 09, 2026

Weekly average CO2 at Mauna Loa

I hold responsibility for this outcome for jokey ignorance about energy engineering, specifically nuclear engineering ignorance, a fad that kills people. I really am tired of hearing nonsense about how fucking cars, trucks and buses, which antinukes seem to think are essential to human survival on a planet where over a billion people lack access to improved sanitation, can't use nuclear power in self propelled vehicles. (It obviously can power ships, however.)

Bourgeois sensibilities in these increasingly dire times in the environmental sense, the moral sense, the political sense, and the sense of our responsibility to the future, rather offend me, and I certainly hope I'm not alone in this. I know I'm not alone, but on the other hand, I'm certainly in a minority, which is where I'm pleased to reside.

Have a nice day.