The weapons of the next war will not be missiles but something called hydricity, says scientist DAVID SANBORN SCOTT
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By DAVID SANBORN SCOTT
The Globe and Mail,
North America's obsession with preventing terrorist attacks on our soil may be blinding us to an even greater threat: terrorist attacks on Islamic soil. While assaults on more of our skyscrapers and government nerve centres would be unnerving, to say the least, imagine the impact of attacks on Saudi Arabia's oil-production facilities. The economic effect of such an event would be several orders of magnitude worse. Crude oil is the imported commodity upon which the United States and most democratic economies are absolutely dependent. Last year, the United States imported 56 per cent of its oil, a quarter of that from the Mideast; western Europe imported 60 per cent, almost half of which came from the Mideast; 82 per cent of Japan's oil originated in the Persian Gulf. In these times of crisis, ask yourself how we'd fight a war without oil. It was Japan's lack of oil that led to the Pacific war; that stopped Hitler at Leningrad, that almost tipped the Battle of Britain the other way. Far fetched? Not at all. Saudi Arabia has long been a tinderbox, where hatreds between the majority Sunni and minority Shia Muslims could trigger internal terrorism, and where the profligate privileges of the House of Saud's extended royal family are reminiscent of those of the ruling Pahlavi family in Iran two decades ago. Many Muslims, not just extremists, despise such behaviour and hate the way Saudi princes turned over sacred Saudi soil to U.S. troops. Extremist attacks on the country's oil facilities would teach a lesson to lapsed Muslims, as well as strangle the great Western evil. What's more, taking out Middle East or North and West African oil production would probably be a lot easier than taking out Western skyscrapers. Consider a few strategic factors: The average production rate of an oil well in the United States is about 12 barrels a day. In Persian Gulf countries, it is about 5,000 barrels a day. In all these areas, tanker ports are few. A little sabotage would go a long way. Forget about perimeter defences around the Persian Gulf. Our only defence against this threat is to return to -- and this time implement -- the 1970's buzz phrase: "energy independence." In North America, we must rapidly increase our harvest of indigenous fossil reserves. As Canadians, we must expand the harvest of our Western oil sands. And, however discomfiting, throughout North America we must be prepared to drill for oil wherever it might be found. Unfortunately, such a short-term path to oil independence will put us in harm's way for an even more enveloping attack: global climate disruption. Often named "global warming" and thereby trivialized, this environmental juggernaut is predominantly caused by the carbon-dioxide effluent from today's energy systems. ("Warming" is not the concern. Shutting down the Gulf Stream and freezing Britain could be. Or flooding the Netherlands, Florida and much of Southeast Asia.) So, to avoid that, we must have a phased, two-prong strategy. First, we must quickly strive for oil independence by almost any means. Second, we must accelerate the coming hydrogen age -- which I prefer to call the "hydricity" age because it will employ the two energy currencies, hydrogen and electricity. Both hydrogen and electricity are carbon free and so, when manufactured by non-fossil sources, send zero carbon dioxide into the environment. How will it work? Both hydrogen and electricity are energy currencies, not energy sources. Both can be harvested from any energy source, fossil or non-fossil. Both are renewable: Hydrogen, for example, returns to water after it is used. The two currencies are mutually interchangeable -- fuel cells convert hydrogen to electricity; electrolysis converts electricity to hydrogen. (The same cannot be said about our oil economy -- oil may be converted to electricity but electricity cannot be converted to oil.) Electricity will continue to power information technologies and some fixed-route transportation, like subways. Because hydrogen is storable, it will become the staple fuel of free-range transportation vehicles like cars, trucks, buses, trains and ships that employ fuel-cell engines. It will also power liquid-hydrogen aircraft that will fly farther (because hydrogen weighs about a third of what conventional fuels weigh) and fly cleaner (because the exhaust is water vapour.) The synergies inherent in hydricity systems will permit extraordinary technical, industrial and regulatory flexibility, thereby improving efficiencies, reducing costs, adding security and bringing environmental gentility. There's another benefit: Had a liquid-hydrogen-fuelled jumbo hit the World Trade Center, enormous damage would have occurred but the towers would not have come down. The towers collapsed because tons of burning jet fuel softened the buildings' steel backbone, allowing top floors to sledgehammer lower floors. Liquid hydrogen can't burn until it vaporizes and then, being so much lighter than air, it's up and away. Structural damage, fire and death would have been confined to the floors the aircraft struck. While the twin hydricity currencies can be manufactured from any source, to avoid climatic disruption we must rapidly move to non-carbon sources. We can harvest wind, tides, sunlight and the internal heat of the Earth to produce hydrogen that, in turn, can power airplanes, buses and our family cars. Whenever practical, those are the sources we should use. These, however, will not be enough. To satisfy all our needs we must have the courage to re-examine one of our favourite hates: nuclear power. Ironically, nuclear power is probably the cleanest and safest of all non-fossil sources and the only one with any prospect of delivering the energy services we need. Worried about terrorists? Wondering what would happen if a 747 were aimed at the Pickering nuclear power plant outside Toronto? The answer: a disaster. But a minor disaster compared with hitting the World Trade Center. It's physically impossible for a nuclear power plant to blow up like a nuclear bomb. And, unlike the Chernobyl design, it's unlikely a Western reactor, struck by a jumbo jet, would release enough radiation to cause civilian deaths. It's often said that nations prepare for the next war on the experience of the last war -- never more true than today. The weapons of this 21st-century war will not be more or better missiles -- and certainly not missile defences. Our arsenal must include the technologies of electrolysis, fuel cells, hydrogen liquefaction and storage, hydricity infrastructures and, yes, CANDU nuclear power plants -- especially the next generation of CANDU designs. As we move toward hydricity, we'll find several opportunities for synergy. For example, the bitumen of the Athabaska oil sands is hydrogen poor, carbon rich. Harvesting this energy source today involves carbon rejection -- sending it off as carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Yet, it's technically feasible and economically attractive to build CANDU plants that would provide heat for extraction, electricity for processing, and hydrogen for upgrading the hydrogen content. Even oxygen, the by-product of electrolysis, can be used in an upgrading process called partial oxidation. So we'd get more upgraded crude from every grain of oil sand -- with less waste and environmental disruption. And, by using our best technologies, the Athabaska oil sands could deliver some 330 billion barrels of oil, compared with Saudi Arabia's reserves of 300 billion barrels. Canada once led the world with a 20th-century weapon: It was called the Avro Arrow. Today, we lead the world in some of these energy technologies and have a chance to help build world peace and security, no matter what shape the battle takes over the next few decades.
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