Given: fossil fuel combustion contributes to global warming.

Given: the U.S. is dependent on foreign oil.

With those two concerns stated at the outset, researchers at MIT this summer published a paper on how nuclear power can affect the U.S. transportation sector. The study's co-authors, B.D. Middleton and M.S. Kazimi, reviewed using nuclear hydrogen with carbon dioxide from fossil fired plants to make liquid fuel and using nuclear energy to get oil from tar sands or shale oil, among other contributions nuclear energy can make.

Middleton and Kazimi proposed two reactor concepts to produce nuclear hydrogen: "the High-Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor (HTGR), which uses Helium coolant, and a modified version of the Advanced Gas Reactor (AGR) using supercritical CO2 as the coolant (S-AGR)." The study's upshot is that getting liquid fuels from nuclear hydrogen and captured carbon dioxide is "viable". We shall see.

Related:

• If nuclear power's gonna power cars, then the public seems to be OK with that
• Hydrogen vehicles, nuclear plants part of energy analysts' carbon-free plan

[Source: via The Energy Blog]