Regarding hydrogen vehicles and safe fission reactors, over at LENR Forum I wrote:
It may be possible to develop safe fission reactors. I cannot judge. Some experts say pebble bed reactors might be safe. However, we know for a fact that solar panels are safe, and they can produce electricity much more cheaply than fission. Probably cheaper than pebble bed reactors. So why spend a ton of money inventing safe fission reactors now? We don't need them anymore. If they had been invented before solar PV fell in price, we could have used them. No doubt they would have some advantages, such as being more compact, with less overall material needed. Any technology has advantages and disadvantages. Years after integrated transistors were invented, Ken Shoulders and Charles Spindt invented special purpose chip with microscopic vacuum tubes on it. Spindt told me it was better for some purposes than transistors. If they had come up with that in 1955, perhaps we would not have needed integrated transistor chips. Not for a while, anyway. Suppose Toyota had come up with the Mirai hydrogen fuel cell car in 1990. It might be cheap and widespread by now, and we might have hydrogen gas stations everywhere. It has a better range than today's electric cars. Hydrogen made by some processes is renewable and not polluting. Hydrogen fuel cell cars might have progressed faster than electric cars, eliminating the need for electric cars. That's one of history's might-have-beens. It didn't happen, and now it is too late for the Mirai hydrogen fuel cell approach. Electric cars may not have been inherently better in 1990. They might have lost the competition. But they won, and you cannot undo that. A winning technology develops economic and technical momentum. It becomes a standard, as more and more people buy it, and mechanics learn to deal with it. Mechanics and automobile companies can only afford to support one or two technical standards -- gasoline and electric. They cannot afford to manufacture, sell and service another standard such as hydrogen fuel cells.
