A REAL ANSWER TO THE PROBLEM OF GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE IS AVAILABLE

A BOOK REVIEW by Joseph W. Brennan

TITLE: “Smelling Land: The Hydrogen Defense Against Climate Catastrophe” (Enhanced Edition)

AUTHOR: David Sanborn Scott

ISBN 978-0-9809674-0-1

MAJOR CONCLUSIONS: 1. We must stop burning carbon based fuels at the earliest possible time.
2.Nuclear reactors will produce our electricity.
3.Nuclear reactors will produce the hydrogen that will power our vehicles.

Like me, I suspect that most of us have over the years built up a knee jerk reaction to the thought of building and using nuclear power plants as a major source of energy. My personal reaction to the closing of the nuclear plant in Wiscassset, Maine a few years ago was relief. I was pleased to know that I no longer lived only ten miles from a potential (if unlikely) source of catastrophic danger. I was happy that radioactive material would no longer be produced there, but I was concerned about the nuclear waste which had already been produced that would continue to pollute our air, soil and water with its life span of thousands of years.

Then, one day over a year ago I listened to an interview on the radio. The conversation was about the use of nuclear power to avert the looming and major problems related to the buildup of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. I wrote down the name of the author, and when I got home I ordered the book. Without the appendixes “Smelling Land: The Hydrogen Defense Against Climate Catastrophe” is 450 pages long. While most of the text is very readable, there are portions that made me wish I had passed chemistry in college. The coherent and complete explanations Mr. Scott offered for his conclusions turned my beliefs on their collective heads. I am not going to try to summarize everything, but I will try to offer the major messages as I understand them.

1.The entire world and all its living creatures are in serious jeopardy because of our flagrant use of carbon based fuels to power our civilization. The buildup of CO2 in our atmosphere is unprecedented in the preceding millions of years, and if we continue on our present course we will experience extreme disruption of all our way of life.
2.The problem is so serious and immediate that band-aid solutions are no longer sufficient. While it certainly is better to use alternatives to coal and oil to produce the enormous amounts of electricity we use and need, there is no possibility that solar, wind, thermal and/or tidal production of electricity will be able to fill the needs of mankind.
3.Even if the world actually and magically stopped using all carbon based fuels today, and all electricity was produced without any CO2 production, then it is possible that our goose is already cooked. That is, we may have already passed the “tipping point”. This means that the warming of the planet may have already reached the concentration that will result in continuing warming no matter what we do.
4.The important phrase in the last paragraph is “may have”. No one knows if this is true, and no one will know for many years or decades. Accordingly, in order to act in our own best interest we must change what we do as if it is still possible to reverse the process that started with the industrial revolution over two hundred years ago. To do nothing, or to do too little, guarantees the end of all we know.

Up to this point, the author is restating in harsh terms that which is generally known to be true. What follows required, for me at least, the unlearning of several preconceived ideas about nuclear power and hydrogen.

5. The only way to produce the enormous amounts of electricity our civilization uses is by using nuclear power plants to process water into its components: two parts hydrogen and and one part water (H2O).
6. As a society, we have to look at the misconceptions and false beliefs we have about nuclear power and about hydrogen, and replace these with factual information.

For this reader, this is the part that gave me the most trouble. However, Mr. Scott patiently explained the truths that lie behind the facts. Let's look at just a few of those beliefs that stand in the way of accepting his conclusions.
Belief One: Used uranium is a very dangerous substance. It is highly radioactive, and will remain so for a very long time (thousands if not tens of thousands of years). It poses an extreme danger to all of mankind, and will do so for untold generations. This very dangerous material is produced in large amounts by reactors, and there is no way to reduce its danger.
Truth: Storage: Used nuclear fuel can be stored safely underground, using technology already available to us.
Radioactive half-life: If used uranium is highly radioactive, its half-life is very short. Low radioactivity material will hang around much longer.
Volume of Radioactive Material: A new type of reactor, called a breeder, reprocesses spent nuclear fuel over and over, thereby greatly reducing the volume of spent fuel.
Belief Two: Any increase above the natural and normal level of radiation is harmful.
Truth: Exposure: Unless you live deep in a mine, we are all exposed to low levels of radiation. This natural radiation has always been a part of living on earth.
Slight increases in radiation may actually be beneficial. In approximately 1980 in Taiwan about 10,000 people were accidentally exposed to 100 times the normal background radiation over a number of years. An epidemiological study found that those exposed had less cancer and fewer birth defects than the general population. For cancer, it was 30 times lower, and for birth defects it was 15 times lower.
Another piece of evidence is that the Japanese people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki who did not die immediately from the atomic bomb explosion, or from the radiation burns shortly thereafter, had a significantly longer life span than the general population.
Belief Three: hydrogen is dangerous.
Truth: . I have watched the movie of the explosion and burning of the Hindenburg in 1937 at least 100 times, and every time the announcer explained that the dangerous hydrogen was burning. So, in my mind, there is a strong connection between the fuel hydrogen and fire danger. However, David Scott shows us that what burned on that terrible day, when people were filmed leaping from the burning dirigible, was the paint used on the exterior skin of the Hindenburg. The hydrogen was used to lift the craft off the ground and into the sky, as gaseous hydrogen is lighter than air.
Mr. Scott offers several reasonable explanations to support his conclusion that hydrogen is the safest of chemical fuels. I will not go into that at this time.
There are many ways to produce hydrogen, but there is only one way to produce it without carbon emissions and in the enormous quantities needed to replace the carbon based fuels (mostly oil and coal) that we use today to power our vehicles and produce our electricity. That method is by nuclear fission. There are no feasible alternatives, especially in the limited time frame we have available to us. We are headed into the hydricity (electricity and hydrogen) age, and we had better get there as soon as possible.