Ammonia!

[Webstral]

Ever have one of those “Doh!” moments when you realize you’ve been looking at something for years and not seeing what’s there? Yeah. Having one right now.

According to Howling Wilderness, Colorado has a functioning nuclear power plant. The facility at Platteville is working at 8% of capacity. While electrolyzing water for hydrogen for ammonia is not as efficient as getting hydrogen from hydrocarbons, it certainly can be done. Ammonia is one of the most important soil additives in modern agriculture. As an added bonus, ammonia can be used in place of fossil fuels with minimal adjustments to the engine.

Y’all see where I’m going with this, right? With an operating nuke plant, Milgov can create ammonia for agriculture, moving the ammonia to the fields, and driving modified tractors and combines. The release of population for other important activities, like mining, fighting, and working machines, would be stupendous. The basis of the Colorado economy, with its 3 million inhabitants, might resemble a pre-war economy in a passing way.

Seeing the relationship between electricity and ammonia in this way changes absolutely everything. If ammonia can be synthesized without fossil fuels or organic energy, and if ammonia can both power farm machinery and double, treble, or quintuple crop yields, then anyone with a functioning nuke plant is a superpower. Heck with running the lights or even powering industrial machinery. Having fertilizer and transportation in your hands changes the entire post-Exchange equation.

Seeing this (and knowing that this knowledge must be pretty darned widespread) makes me reconsider the priority of putting nuke plants back on-line. It also makes me think that finding and recovering the people with the knowledge to run hydroelectric plants (also a good source of abundant electricity) would be a very high priority. If I can figure out a way to get ammonia produced in SAMAD, the fuel problem would be solved. I’m not sure if the labor picture would be changed all that much, since the most limiting factor in Samadi agriculture is water, which is applied by hand.

Unfortunately, the New Americans in west central Florida also have a real basis of power with their electrical plants. With ammonia for fertilizer and fuel, the New Americans will be even more powerful than they have been made out to be in Urban Guerilla.