The US military knows that its branches need to revamp their thinking about the best way to engage in “the theater of war” inside the new, post-Cold War world of the 21st century. One thing that the military leaders tension is the desire for the forces deployed in the theater to have the ability to be far more energy-independent. Currently the US military has policies and procedures in place to interact with allies or sympathetic local populaces to assist its forces inside the field get their required energy and clean water when engaged in a foreign military campaign. Nevertheless, this isn’t wholly dependable, as the US may well well find itself facing unilateral military activities, or have itself in a situation where its allies can not support it with the resources it wants to conduct its military actions successfully.

The US military is quite interested in certain alternative energies that, with the right research and development technologically, can make it energy independent, or a minimum of a excellent deal extra so, on the battlefield. One of the things that greatly interests the military along these lines is the development of modest nuclear reactors, which might be portable, for producing theater-local electricity. The military is impressed with how clean-burning nuclear reactors are and how energy efficient they’re. Making them portable for the typical warfare of today’s extremely mobile, small-scaled military operations is some thing they’re researching. The most prominent thing that the US military thinks these tiny nuclear reactors would be useful for involves the removal of hydrogen (for fuel cell) from seawater. It also thinks that converting seawater to hydrogen fuel in this way would have less negative impact on the environment than its current practices of remaining supplied out in the field.

Seawater is, in fact, the military’s highest interest when it comes to the matter of alternative energy supply. Seawater may be endlessly “mined” for hydrogen, which in turn powers advanced fuel cells. Utilizing OTEC, seawater may also be endlessly converted into desalinated, potable water.  Potable water and hydrogen for power are two of the things that a near-future deployed military force will will need most of all.

Inside the cores of nuclear reactors-which as stated above are devices highly interesting, in portable form, to the US military-we encounter temperatures greater than 1000 degrees Celsius. When this level of temperature is mixed with a thermo-chemical water-splitting procedure, we have on our hands the most efficient means of breaking down water into its component parts, which are molecular hydrogen and oxygen. The minerals and salts that are contained in seawater would need to be extracted via a desalination process so that you can make the way clear for the water-splitting procedure. These could then be utilized, for example in vitamins or in salt shakers, or simply sent back to the ocean (recycling). Utilizing the power of nuclear reactors to extract this hydrogen from the sea, to be able to then input that into fuel cells to power advanced airplanes, tanks, ground vehicles, and the like, is clearly high on the R & D priority list of the military.