What happens when two engineers, a pile of fuel cell machinery and a condemned Belgian nuclear site collide with one week to move a factory, no money and a challenge to build a vehicle from the wreckage?

Nick Abson finds himself deep inside Belgium’s VITO site, where a sudden shutdown leaves a full fuel cell factory stranded mid operation. Nick is given one week to move the entire facility and in response, he challenges the remaining staff to do something even more outrageous: resurrect the company and build a working fuel cell vehicle. But how?

What starts as an emergency evacuation turns into an audacious rebuild attempt: not just saving equipment, but trying to turn it into something tangible before everything disappears entirely.

Key takeaways

- What it looked like when the world’s only industrial fuel cell production line was dismantled piece by piece under pressure

- How Elenco went from cutting edge ESA contractor to a system collapsing overnight

- The surreal reality of relocating a live industrial plant covered in carbon dust into a half ruined building

- The role of the lost European Space Agency contract in triggering the rapid unravelling of the entire operation

- Why building a fuel cell vehicle became both a technical goal and a survival strategy for keeping the project alive

This isn't just a podcast. It's an investigation into the clean energy revolution we almost had and the future we can still build.

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00:00 Introduction

02:10 The Evacuation

04:02 Engineering under Pressure

10:52 Building the Team & Vision

12:35 Pivoting from TV to Tech

14:04 The Need for a Demonstration

15:35 Partnering with Pasquali

20:04 The State of EVs in the 90s

25:38 The Battle Against the Status Quo

28:35 A Look Back at Nick's Roots

The true story of limitless clean power, and why we still don’t have it. Maverick TV director turned hydrogen fuel cell pioneer Nick Abson (and same guy who brought us Queen’s ‘We Will Rock You’ and Kate Bush’s ‘Wuthering Heights’) - resurfaces after years underground - to tell his unbelievable story, in conversation with filmmaker Harry Otto Brünjes; having been locked in an against-all-odds battle to liberate clean energy, after the tech was stolen by Russians. JOIN THE MISSION at https://www.goingcleanisdirtybusiness.

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