Die Wasserstoffwirtschaft - eine langfristige Antwort auf das Energieproblem ?

Abstract

“The theme was THEME”. This was the headline of The Hydrogen Economy Miami Energy Conference which was the first international conference of this type and which took place in Miami, March 18-20, 1974. For the first time, about 700 participants from all over the western world discussed all the ramifications and aspects of a hydrogen based economy. Non-fossile hydrogen, produced from water by either electrolysis or by direct use of process heat from a nuclear source is a clean, all-synthetic, automatically recyclable, and inexaustible fuel. It may support the World’s future energy requirements beyond our present selflimited fossile-fuel era. A large number of papers and news were presented on this conference reflecting this effort.

The following article is intended to report on the highlights of the conference and to give a survey on the present state of the art in the hydrogen field. Furthermore, the author includes own ideas and conclusions predominantly by taking into account the trends in the development of future nuclear reactor systems and symbiotic high-temperatur-reactor/breeder strategies being the primary energy input of a hydrogen economy and providing a most promising avenue for solving both the World’s energy and environmental (entropy) problems.