<[email protected]> wrote: > > >right. In other words, the overhead is small; 1 MJ of electricity produces > >enough hydrogen to generate 5e13 MJ of heat. > > > I think you have dropped about 7 orders of magnitude. ;)
I wouldn't put it past me. I think I was looking at the numbers for D+D fusion. Anyway, it's a lot. The energy overhead is small. We do not need to keep any fission reactors running to supply the hydrogen or deuterium. Or any wind turbines or hydroelectric dams either. Many years ago someone said to me, "we will always need oil even with cold fusion, because you need oil to run the palladium mining equipment." This person did not realize that underground mining equipment runs on electricity. More to the point, if we do need liquid fuel for some purpose, we can synthesize it. - Jed
