US Energy Fleet to Win the War To Save Our Planet and Economy

With the government now in the banking, infrastructure, and auto business, why not the energy business?

My background has included developing and testing the hydrogen fuel cell electrical power systems for the challenging Apollo program. Now, over 30 years later, GM and other car manufactures around the world spent millions and have developed hydrogen automobiles with refined hydrogen fuel cell power plants. The only waste byproducts from these “green” cars are water. The fuel cell electric powered cars do not depend on large expensive batteries as do current electric automobiles for long range and big power.

The giant challenge to this no carbon emission automobile is we need massive amounts of hydrogen to run them at a reasonable cost of no co2 byproduct production and distribution. My vision is for our government to build an “energy fleet” consisting of ships that would travel the world producing and selling hydrogen. We would be selling energy to foreign markets instead of buying it like we do now. Germany is now undertaking this idea using wind power on board ships to produce hydrogen.

In my vision, the hydrogen is produced from sea water using state of the art high temperature nuclear reactors cooled by sea water. On board production is done far out to sea away from population centers and sensitive eco systems. The government has large stock piles of nuclear material from the end of the cold war that can be converted to hydrogen. Nuclear waste can be deposited in the safe depths of the Arctic Ocean where Russia has been safely doing so for years .

This relatively newly developed nuclear technology can produce energy to run our cars with the cost efficiency close to that of oil. This newer method described above could bring costs for production and distribution under $3 a gallon equivalent. Even factoring in the cost of uranium and refinement.
Think of all the people we could put to work building this energy fleet of ships and the hydrogen powered automobiles. And put this investment back into our treasury from the proceeds coming from foreign trade. Selling stock in the government, i.e. Treasury bonds, like we did so well during the Second World War, could help fund this program.

Remember the Liberty ships? The US built over 2700 ships in four years to support the war effort. Imagine a fleet of over 2000 nuclear powered US Energy Fleet cruising the world. Their only emissions are large amounts of hot water used to cool the reactors. Our weather scientists could have a field day with the possibilities of controlling weather patterns by altering ocean water temperatures. That is another subject.

But now we have a greater war to win, not save our liberty, but to save our planet and our economy. Even with all the projects Roosevelt started to bring us out of depression, it took the Second World War effort to bring prosperity back to our country. This is the kind of all out effort we need now. No chanange too hard, no chalange too big for the heart and minds of all americans.

Adrian Floreani retired Apollo Engineer.

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future