Proceedings of the fourth information exchange meeting on nuclear production of hydrogen

The use of hydrogen, both as feedstock for the industry (oil and chemical) and as an energy carrier, is expected to grow substantially during the coming decades. The current predominant method of producing hydrogen by steam-reforming methane (from natural gas) is not sustainable and has environmental drawbacks, including the emission of greenhouse gasses (GHGs). Nuclear energy offers a way to produce hydrogen from water without depleting natural gas, a valuable natural resource, and without the emission of GHGs. The OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) has conducted a number of information exchange meetings with the objective of stimulating progress in the development of nuclear production of hydrogen. These meetings, held in 2000 in Paris, France, in 2003 in Argonne, Illinois, USA, and in 2005 in Oarai, Japan, were well-attended and very successful. It is hoped that the information presented at fourth meeting and contained in these proceedings may be useful in advancing the objective of achieving economically viable, sustainable and emission-free production of hydrogen. The need for a sustainable supply of clean energy is one of the main problems facing the world. Among the various energy technologies which may be considered (including hydro, wind, solar, geo-thermal, wave and tidal), only nuclear - through the use of fast-neutron fission reactors - is capable of delivering the copious quantities of sustainable energy that will be required. In view of this, one of the means under consideration for achieving the objective of nuclear-produced hydrogen is enhanced international cooperation, including the establishment of one or more OECD/NEA joint projects. In this respect, it is worth noting that similar joint projects undertaken in the past (for example, the Dragon Project and the Halden Reactor Project) have been highly beneficial and have provided significant amounts of useful information to the sponsoring countries at shared costs. This report describes the scientific and technical challenges associated with the production of hydrogen using heat and/or electricity from nuclear power plants, with special emphasis on recent developments in high-temperature electrolysis and the use of different chemical thermodynamic processes. Economics and market analysis as well as safety aspects of the nuclear production of hydrogen are also discussed