Nuclear - Hydrogen - Carbon Energy System - DA

The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

It was predicted by Hubbert in 1956 and shall come to pass, because the alternative is horse-drawn carts.

David Archibald

Showgrounds Men’s Shed, Perth, 10th September, 2025

The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future National Electricity Market Installed capacity - blue bars Demand - orange line

David Archibald

Australia has taken the wrong path.

Capacity used to match demand.

Now it is 80% higher than demand.

So prices should have come down, no?

With the oversupply?

Oversupply?

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

Power prices doubled instead.

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

The results of doubling the power price for no good reason were entirely predictable.

Because they were predicted in this study by Brian Fisher from May 2019 and are happening on schedule:

Our GDP will fall by at least 10%. Percentage declines by sector:

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

How do we keep our aluminium smelters going after doubling the price of power?

- With enormous subsidies paid by taxpayers.

So our trading partners count those subsidies as an assault on their economies.

The fantasy world of renewables gets smacked by reality. Net Zero is a house of cards.

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

Hydrogen recycled:

We have seen enthusiasm for hydrogen before.

Those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

But what are we repeating?

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

The Nazi origins of renewable energy Page 47: Hydro and wind power can provide up to 80 % of energy. The renewable energy is flowing and free.

Page 60: Our mission is to build the new hydro and wind power plants independent of the electrical grid, so they produce valuable storable energy in the form of hydrogen gas. Hydrogen can easily be stored and transported in pipelines.

Cover of Technology and Economy in the Third Reich – a program for work

by Franz Lawaszeck, published in 1933

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

Design of a Nazi windmill 400 metres high producing 20 MW This would have taken 25,000 tonnes of steel to make, approaching the amount used in the Scharnhorst. So wiser heads prevailed and the Nazi renewables push petered out by 1936.

Renewable energy had its origins in Nazi technology.

It is as Nazi as Kristallnacht and Lebensraum, strength through joy, annexing the Sudetenland and Arbeit macht frei.

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

From 2006. 36 pages.

If you are a hydrogen enthusiast, reading this would be your fastest road to redemption.

If Twiggy had read this, it might have saved Fortescue shareholders hundreds of millions of dollars. https://afdc.energy.gov/files/pdfs/hyd_ economy_bossel_eliasson.pdf

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

The virtue-signallers will be the death of us.

We are destroying Australia’s industrial base while China goes hammer and tongs at putting CO2 into the atmosphere.

We export coal to China but don’t burn it ourselves.

China uses coal to make cheap solar panels to sell to us. Solar panels last 20 years before going to landfill.

Not enough value to be worth recycling and the cadmium loading of up to 10 grams/m2 makes them poisonous.

Windmills the same.

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

Still not convinced? China is putting out more CO2 than all the OECD countries combined.

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

But the likes of Kate Chaney, who wanted to block Perth’s gas supply, are as silent as the grave.

Perhaps this explains it.

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

On the subject of gas supply, it is now forbidden to connect new homes in Victoria to reticulated natural gas.

In and on gas stoves, 90% of the energy from the gas goes into the food.

More and more natural gas peaking plants are necessary to hold the grid together when the Sun goes down.

If you use electric stoves, only 30% of the energy from the gas burnt in gas turbines ends up in the food.

So, the Victorian regulations triple the use of natural gas for the home, which they are supposed to limit.

Governments in Australia are incredibly stupid, so prepare for the worst.

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

Has anyone thought this through?

Solar panels are made in China using power at US$0.05 kWh

Installed in Australia those panels make power costing US$0.20 kWh

Landfill after 20 years

If you used power from solar panels to make solar panels.

What would happen if you tried to make solar panels with power from solar panels?

Landfill after 20 years

Solar panels with power at US$0.80/kWh

Solar panels are neither renewable nor sustainable. They are an artefact of cheap Chinese coal.

Chinese polysilicon production has moved to Xiangjiang where the coal power is cheapest and the Uighur slave labour is plentiful.

Solar panels with power at US$3.20/kWh

Infinity

Landfill after 20 years

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

China has burnt through half its original coal endowment.

- From here the mining cost goes up.

David Archibald China is now stockpiling 600 million tonnes of coal to go along with its 1,200 million barrels of stockpiled oil.

Surface to 600 m. - 80% depleted 600 m. to 1000 m. - 60% depleted 1000 m. to 1600 m. - 20% depleted The price of solar panels will go up with the price of Chinese coal.

China’s coal reserves of 130 billion tonnes are only 100 tonnes per capita. Each Chinese person is burning through that endowment at the rate of 3.4 tonnes per annum and importing another 336 kg of coal. By comparison Australia has a black coal endowment of 5,900 tonnes per capita and an equal amount of brown coal.

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

Reminder: Resource extraction tends to be symmetrical around a peak.

Net Zero is coming from running out of fossil fuels.

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

The most apposite historic analogy of what Australia is doing to itself now is the 1858 cattle-killing frenzy of the Xhosa tribe in what is now South Africa.

In the resulting famine, the population of the province dropped from 105,000 to fewer than 27,000.

The Xhosa had raised cattle for thousands of years but that did not stop them from doing something very stupid – eliminating their food source.

We are doing the same – eliminating our energy source.

200 years after the Enlightenment, we have gone back to nature worship.

Nongqause’s gravestone Nongqause dreamed a dream and most of her tribe died.

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

Where we are now – a jerry-rigged power market glued together by natural gas.

Somewhere on the east coast in 2024 18

The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

The moral basis of the quest for Net Zero – global heating due to carbon dioxide.

Carbon dioxide is tuckered out as a greenhouse gas.

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

Burn as much coal as you like, because it will move the needle only a tiny bit.

The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

There is 50 times as much CO2 dissolved in the oceans as in the atmosphere.

The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

We did have a warming in the second half of the 20th century, so what caused that?

The Sun was more active in the second half of the 20th century than it had been in the previous 11,000 years.

The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future The message from the Greenland ice cores: solar magnetic flux > galactic cosmic ray flux > neutron flux > Be10 And then less cloud cover.

The spike in the 1690s killed a third of the population of Finland.

David Archibald

The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

As a result, glacial trees were operating at c i values much closer to the CO2-compensation point for C3 photosynthesis than modern trees, indicating that glacial trees were undergoing carbon starvation.

The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

20 cm in 125 years

David Archibald

The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

We send other people coal.

And we get it back as plant growth.

The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

The extra carbon dioxide is equivalent to 70 kg per hectare of nitrogen.

In Western Australia, the average amount of nitrogen (N) applied to wheat crops is around 40-50 kg per hectare.

The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

Atmospheric temperature has risen by 0.5˚°C over 40 years.

That’s 0.0125°C per year.

The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

The global warming nightmare is over.

The US Department of Energy has produced the first government report on the planet saying that global warming is a hoax and will use that to reverse the endangerment finding on carbon dioxide.

The authors are Christy, Curry, Koonin, McKitrick and Spencer.

Carve their names with pride.

Professor Happer was to write it for the first Trump administration but was held up Jared Kushner.

And so we suffered another eight years of the global warming hoax.

The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

Australia has chosen energy sources that will send us backwards.

The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

The situation is more complicated. We need to leave fossil fuels before they leave us.

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

Howard County, Texas leads the way.

Tight oil boom in Texas has kept oil prices low.

Howard County production is now plunging while total Texan production flatlines.

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

Howard County was the first to hit the bubble point – major economic and geopolitical consequences.

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

No production plateau for Howard County – straight into decline.

Howard County is now in 30% annualised oil production decline.

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

District 8’s year-0n-year production decline of 260,000 barrels per day is equivalent to Australia’s oil production.

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

We are going to Net Zero whether we like it or not – because the biggest sources of supply growth over the last 20 years have tipped over into steep decline. Fossil fuels are leaving us before we leave them. Much pain and suffering follows.

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

What we learnt from the 2008 LNG boom: - When the price of oil goes high enough, the prices of all other forms of energy go to the oil price less the conversion cost.

Coal can be converted to diesel and petrol using the Bergius process.

- So coal will go to the oil price in energy content terms.

Nuclear will be the only energy form not affected by this.

So countries that go nuclear early will have an advantage, and a higher standard of living.

When you have coal, you go Bergius.

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

Flow diagram of the Bergius process from Bergius’1931 Nobel Prize acceptance speech.

Adding 5 kg of hydrogen per 100 kg of coal changes a low value solid into a precious liquid.

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Nuclear

Power

Electrolyser for Hydrogen

Coal and Biomass

Hydrogen Gasometer Bergius Plant

Tankage Bergius Process reconfigured to use hydrogen from electrolysis - 250 atmospheres pressure (3,500 psi) - 300˚C - One hour residence time - 1 kg coal yields 1 litre of product - Stainless steel pipe required to stop hydrogen embrittlement above 200˚C - 900 mm diameter, 10 mm wall pipe likely optimum for reaction vessel

Distillation Column Diesel Jet Fuel Petrol Methane

Benefits - Reduction in capital cost from switching from steam reforming to electrolysis.

- 5 cents/kWh = $7.00/kg hydrogen cost = $2.12 per litre diesel energy equivalent - Electrolysis can operate down to 25% of rated capacity.

- Benefits power market by providing an alternative use for power from variable sources.

- Able to utilise low-cost power at night.

- 20% increase in product yield.

- Once-through process is much easier to operate than with a close-coupled steam reformer.

- Distributed production will greatly increase fuel security.

- Can use coal too low-grade for export - Diesel is 14% hydrogen by weight but 41% by energy content.

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

We can self-sufficient in energy in 10 years.

David Archibald

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

The share between grid demand and liquid fuel demand

Electrolysis to produce hydrogen for the Bergius plants will allow the nuclear power plants to operate at permanent full power.

Electrolysers can be turned down to 25% of capacity.

This graph is to scale for Australia.

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

Where Nuclear Energy Comes From Energy from the Fission of One U

235

Atom

Kinetic Energy of Fission Fragments Kinetic Energy of Neutrons Gamma Radiation Beta Particles and Neutrinos

MeV

% of Total

168 5 15 12

84.0% 2.5% 7.5% 6.0%

Essentially it is the release of nuclear binding energy in creating the fission products, for example barium (atomic number 56) and krypton (atomic number 36).

There is a 0.1% loss in mass from the U235 atom.

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald What sort of nuclear?

Only 0.4% of as-mined uranium is burnt in light water reactors.

Nobody could be proud of such a wasteful technology.

Also, putting water and zirconium in the same container is not a good idea.

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

At US$80/lb for yellowcake, uranium is half the cost of making fuel rods and fuel rods are one quarter of the cost of nuclear power. If the yellowcake price doubled, the price of power would go up by 12.5%. Breeder reactors using depleted uranium would be 34% cheaper to operate.

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

The Two Main Problems with Nuclear Power that neither side talks about.

1. Delayed fission reactions - 7% of power at steady state comes from nuclei that have absorbed a neutron but not split immediately. It can take months for reactors to cool down. Bigger reactors make the problem worse because volume is increased relative to surface area.

1. High level waste - Used fuel rods are not being recycled currently, leaving the problem for future generations. This is bad.

The three operating reactors at Fukushima blew up because delayed fission caused the cores to heat beyond 300˚ after which the zirconium cladding of the fuel rods reacted with water to produce hydrogen which accumulated and exploded.

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

Our current U235 burning reactors only use one 250th of our uranium, and there is four times as much thorium as uranium.

The oceans hold 4 billion tonnes of Uranium.

So we are only using one 1,250th of our nuclear fuel endowment with the current technology.

Any spare neutron should be used to breed from thorium.

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

One barrel of oil and one pound of yellowcake (U3O8) cost about the same.

There are 385.6 grams of uranium in a pound of yellowcake.

Burning the uranium in one pound of yellowcake provides 5,444 times as much energy has burning one barrel of oil.

This is all the uranium including the 99.3% U238, not just the U235.

The current dominant technology consumes only 1.5 grams of uranium per lb of yellowcake.

A 100 million lb deposit of uranium has the inherent energy of 544 billion barrels of oil. Bass Strait was 2 billion barrels.

The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

Uranium Deposits of Australia

The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

We should require that anyone buying our uranium should send us back the depleted uranium. Then we would get back 80% of the energy content of the uranium sold. And also send us the used fuel rods. Then we would get back 99.6% of the energy content.

The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

The Solution: Breeder Reactors Plutonium and Thorium - Have successfully operated for decades in Russia, and also in France.

- No waste – everything is recycled until it is burnt up.

- Can be built so they don’t melt or explode.

- Plutonium from U238 can have a high breeding margin in a lead-cooled reactor.

- Thorium to U233 has an 8% breeding margin.

What is needed is two-fluid, molten salt breeder reactors - one design optimised for breeding Pu239 from U238 and the other on breeding U233 from Th232. Thorium breeding requires removal of protactinium for neutron economy. Ultimately, the excess breeding margin achievable from plutonium breeding may be needed to get thorium breeding over the line.

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

Current Technology - U235 burning light water reactors Almost all the uranium is wasted, water and zirconium in the same vessel.

I wouldn’t want to live near one.

Solid Fuel Breeder Reactors Sodium-cooled breeder reactors in the fast neutron spectrum have worked in Russia and France.

But the sodium does leak and is difficult to clean up.

Russia is currently building a 300MWe lead-cooled fast breeder reactor in Seversk near Tomsk in central Russia with a 5% breeding margin.

Molten Salt Breeder Reactors Two-fluid breeders in which the fissile salt and the fertile salt are handled separately will make thorium breeders possible.

The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

Russian Lead-cooled Breeder Reactor

The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

Two fluid molten salt reactor

David Archibald

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

Fireball Reactor - From 70 years ago

- U235 dissolved in NaF and ZrF4 - 60 MW thermal with a diameter of 1.4 metres

- Core power density of 1.3 MW/litre - By comparison, a BMW 3.0 litre diesel engine produces 0.065 MW/ litre.

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

Molten Salts

David Archibald

BeF2 LiF Melting mole % mole % Point

Lithium flouride Beryllium flouride

100

Eutectic Flibe

50 33

100

845 °C 544 °C

50 67

360 °C - too viscous 459 °C

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

At 1,852 watts continuous, each Australian needs 156 grams of beryllium for all our power to be supplied by molten salt reactors. That is 4,000 tonnes for the whole nation.

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

Like the rocket business, nuclear power hasn’t seen any technical change for 60 years.

SpaceX got into the rocket business and reduced costs by 90%. The same is possible with nuclear.

Source: Shyam Sankar, Palantir, The Defense Reformation 31st October, 2024

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

How fast can we do the requisite rollout?

Australia’s current consumption

France added 245 TWh of nuclear power’ between 1980 and 1992 - Equal to Australia’s current consumption - We can do it in 12 years too.

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

All up it is less than a suburban block.

David Archibald

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

Summary We are going to Net Zero whether we like it or not because one day we will run out of fossil fuels.

Nuclear is the only energy source that can maintain civilisation at a high level.

Breeder reactors are the only nuclear technology that will use all our nuclear fuel endowment.

Coal should be saved for conversion to liquid fuels, not burnt in power stations.

Hydrogen enables the conversion of electrical energy from nuclear reactors to chemical potential.

Carbon is the carrier for hydrogen so that it can be used in high-energy-density liquid fuel at room temperature and pressure.

The sooner we start down that path, the safer we will be.

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

The Big Picture The world will be divided into those countries with the IQ and critical mass to use breeder reactor technology and those countries that live off the crumbs from the first group.

Reactors will be two-thirds breeders and one third burners. Burners will be used for activities down to 20 MW such as a Panamax cargo ship. For all other activities, energy will be distributed as diesel and petrol.

For making things, we will need a new chemistry of feedstocks and processes.

The future will belong to those countries with the lowest energy costs – the optimum combination of nuclear technology and carbon yield from biomass.

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The Nuclear – Hydrogen – Carbon Energy System of the Future

David Archibald

Last four books

davidarchibaldperth@gmail.com

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