Out of Thin Air: Oil

US Scientists at Los Alamos report that they can now make fuel from air (carbon dioxide) and water (not bottled) for roughly the same cost of fossil fuel. The catch? The electricity needed to power the processes would need to be nuclear. And to meet the billions of barrels of global demand, that’s a LOT of nuclear power.

This plan has a minor hurdle: the electricity for driving the chemical processes, according to a white paper describing the overarching concept, would come from nuclear power. The proposal says it’d be worth it to have a payoff of steady, secure streams of methanol and gasoline with no carbon added to the atmosphere (and a price for gasoline at the pump of perhaps $4.60 a gallon — comparable to petroleum-based fuels as oil becomes harder to find).

But it’s no secret that sooner or later, we will have to face the risks of nuclear power as oil reserves become depleted. Sooner seems better lest there is no later…

Los Alamos: The Milk Marketing Board of Nuclear Power.

In Full: New York Times