Nuclear Production of Hydrogen, Fourth Information Exchange ...

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Conclusions: economics and market analyses of hydrogen production and use are subjects of
active studies, in spite of uncertainties due to the developmental stage of the technologies:
• IAEA offers a tool (HEEP) and a framework for such analyses.
• DOE-NE also proceeds with such analyses (H2A) to document the selection of hydrogen
production processes retained for future work in the United States and possible demonstration
with the NGNP.
• Entergy and AREVA express encouraging positions about the commercial viability of nuclear
hydrogen production.
• Universities address other interesting issues such as the value of product flexibility and active
carbon recycle systems for sustainability.
Such analyses are essential inputs to the decision-making process about R&D orientations and
pre-industrial technology demonstrations.
Works in this field presented during the session by two prominent representatives of the nuclear
industry (a utility and a vendor) expressed encouraging visions about the commercial viability of
nuclear hydrogen already today.
• Entergy, which is known to take up challenges and participate in FOAK endeavours, supports
HTGR technologies to widen applications of nuclear production with encouraging views on
the potential performance of high-temperature steam electrolysis and thermochemical cycles.
• AREVA is convinced that technologies could be implemented today with little developments
to de-carbonise transportation fuels massively in the short term with limited developments.
Alkaline electrolysis powered by nuclear electricity can already be a viable option in certain
conditions and sets a lower bound for other technologies to compete.
Major criteria to direct future work on more advanced processes include flexibility (load
following…) and sustainability.
Session 6: Safety aspects of nuclear hydrogen production
Co-chairs: Jozef Misak (UJV), Theodore Krause (ANL)
The licensing and operation of a nuclear power plant to provide heat and electricity to a chemical
plant that produces hydrogen will require a regulatory licensing framework and will introduce safety
issues which are different from those associated with the licensing and operation of a nuclear power
plant to produce electricity for grid power applications. Although there are instances of nuclear plants
operating in close proximity to chemical plants and even presence of hydrogen in proximity of
nuclear plant is not a completely new issue, the deployment of a nuclear hydrogen production facility
will be the first example where the operation of the nuclear power plant and the chemical plant are
integrated. Releases from the chemical facility may represent a certain risk for the nuclear power
plant, close coupling between nuclear and chemical plant leads to specific transients, and transport of
radioactive product from the nuclear part potentially affects operation of the chemical plant.
Given that the development of nuclear hydrogen production technologies is still in the early
stages of pilot-scale testing, nuclear regulatory agencies responsible for licensing nuclear reactors,
such as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in the United States, have not yet fully considered the
requirements and defined the protocols that will be required to license a nuclear hydrogen production
facility. Nevertheless certain nuclear safety considerations associated with hydrogen production are
already available, e.g. in NUREG/CR-6844. In the future it would certainly be appropriate to develop at
the international level (e.g. by IAEA) more specific safety standards applicable for the given issue.
Safety engineers and experts are now being asked to conduct the risk assessments required to
understand the impact of component and structural failures, uncontrolled radiation or chemical
releases, transient operations and unanticipated shutdowns occurring at the chemical or nuclear plant
on the safe operation of the other plant. Based on these assessments, control systems and mitigation
actions are being developed to minimise the impact of a component or structure failures. Finally,
16 NUCLEAR PRODUCTION OF HYDROGEN – © OECD/NEA 2010