Environment & Energy

…

The hydrogen economy concept is gaining more and more interest and developing around the world. In addition to around 60 million tonnes of hydrogen consumed annually worldwide today — mainly as feedstock by petroleum and chemical industries — hydrogen is increasingly being used as fuel in the transport sector and its use for power generation is widely anticipated. More than 95% of the hydrogen used today is produced from fossil fuels (i.e. oil, gas and coal) and involves adverse effects such as resource depletion and environmental impacts due to the emission of greenhouse gases.

The strong and growing interest of Member States in a potential future role for hydrogen in national energy economies, including production from nuclear energy, prompted the IAEA to continue the work of a previous coordinated research project, entitled Examining the Technoeconomics of Nuclear Hydrogen Production and Benchmark Analysis of the IAEA HEEP Software, by launching a new project in 2018 entitled Assessing Technical and Economic Aspects of Nuclear Hydrogen Production for Near-term Deployment. These projects included information exchange on the status and challenges of hydrogen production from nuclear energy, an assessment of techno-economic aspects of production and the development, updates and benchmarking of an analytical tool to assist Member States in such an assessment. In the scope of these projects, hydrogen produced using nuclear energy was referred to as nuclear hydrogen.

…

There are currently several demonstration projects worldwide ongoing and planned for the production of hydrogen using operational nuclear power plants, as well as developments considering advanced reactor technologies for hydrogen production. Additionally, various hydrogen generation options are considered for being coupled with the nuclear component: conventional electrolysis, high temperature steam electrolysis, thermochemical cycles but also steam methane reforming, the latter one in the view of lowering the fossil fuel component of hydrogen production through the use of nuclear reactors to provide the necessary energy input for the process.

Currently several Member States have their national roadmaps for hydrogen generation, while just a few of them include the option of nuclear hydrogen production. The process of coupling different technologies brings various challenges, both from the technical and economic perspectives. Also, as hydrogen can pose additional hazards in the vicinity of a nuclear power plant, further research activities and tests should be conducted to understand the nature and the possibility of safe coupling of nuclear power plant with hydrogen production plant.

…