Hydrogen Produced by Nuclear Energy

Abstract

Features and technologies to produce hydrogen using nuclear energy are reviewed. For the world under constraint of environment and resource, the sustainable bulk supply capability is one of the important features of producing hydrogen as well as generating electricity from nuclear energy. Production technologies, such as the electrolysis of water by nuclear electricity, thermochemical decomposition of water by nuclear heat, and nuclear-heated steam reforming of natural gas, are under development in Japan and other countries. Cost competitiveness of nuclear production is one of the issues to be solved for commercialization, although nuclear-produced hydrogen is economically advantageous to fossil-derived hydrogen when compared by the total cost incorporating the green house gas effect by carbon dioxide emission. These hydrogen production technologies and also the nuclear reactors to supply energy to them are in differing stages of development. It is technologically possible to produce hydrogen at present using the nuclear electricity from Light-Water Reactors and the conventional electrolysis. Hydrogen production through nuclear-heated steam reforming of natural gas is viewed as an intermediate step to the ultimate target of clean and efficient hydrogen production by thermochemical decomposition of water by nuclear heat.