Nuclear Production of Hydrogen, Fourth Information Exchange ...

CHANGING THE WORLD WITH HYDROGEN AND NUCLEAR: FROM PAST SUCCESSES TO SHAPING THE FUTURE
Early developments for producing liquid fuel from coal which can be found in many countries
took place in the 1840s in Germany and England. They were the first steps of the petrochemical
industry. These processes produced kerosene to fuel German airplanes during World War II and
supplied up to 90% of the demand in liquid fuels at that time. Sasol’s plants in the Republic of South
Africa are the only industrial coal-to-liquid production capability that remains today with an annual
production of 7.5 M tonnes of liquid fuels (gas oil, kerosene) and chemical products.
Jules Verne
In 1874, Jules Verne, a French novel writer, prophetically examined the potential use of hydrogen as a
fuel in his popular work of fiction entitled The Mysterious Island and he had this extraordinary vision:
“I believe that water will one day be employed as fuel, that hydrogen and oxygen which constitute it,
used singly or together, will furnish an inexhaustible source of heat and light, of an intensity of which
coal is not capable.”
At the end of the 19 th century, hydrogen had made a breakthrough in the transportation system,
the principles of electrolysis and fuel cells were known, and brilliant perspectives of applications were
anticipated as an energy carrier, whereas nuclear physics were still in limbo.
Development of nuclear over the 20 th century
Pioneers of nuclear energy
The development of nuclear physics began with the discovery of radioactivity by the French scientist
Henri Becquerel in 1896, and associated fundamental works by Pierre and Marie Curie who all received
the Nobel Prize in physics in 1903.
The first half of the 20 th century experienced a unique series of advances in the fields of nuclear
physics that founded the bases of core physics and paved the way to develop and test of a wide
variety of reactor technologies from the 1940s to the 60s.
This was initiated by the first description of the atom structure in 1913 by Ernest Rutherford, a
British scientist and Niels Bohr, a Danish scientist. Then came the discovery of the neutron in 1932 by
James Chadwick (a British student of Rutherford), the discovery of artificial radioactivity by Irene and
Frédéric Joliot Curie (Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1935) and finally the discovery of fission in 1938 by
Lise Meitner, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman (German scientists) which brought Hahn the Nobel Prize
for physics in 1944.
Fermi reactor
In 1942, Enrico Fermi demonstrated the first controlled chain reaction in the Fermi reactor, and that
was shortly followed in 1945 by the start-up of the Soviet uranium-graphite reactor in Moscow. The
enthusiasm for nuclear energy in 1950s was so great that scientists would say that “nuclear is too
cheap to meter”.
EBR-1
The Experimental Breeder Reactor EBR-1 was the first power reactor and the first fast neutron reactor.
It was put in service in 1951 on the site of Idaho in the United-States and it became the world’s first
electricity-generating nuclear power plant when it produced sufficient electricity to illuminate four
200-watt light bulbs.
Shortly after, in June 1954, the Russian reactor AM-1 (“Атом Мирный”, Russian for Atom Mirny, or
“peaceful atom”) produced around 5 MWe with a thermal output of 30 MW.
The International Atomic Energy Agency was formed in 1957 with a first mission focused on
safeguards, and other missions expressed by President Eisenhower in his famous address about
“atoms for peace” before the United Nations three years before: “apply atomic energy to the needs of
agriculture, medicine and other peaceful activities” and “provide abundant electrical energy in the
power-starved areas of the world”.
24 NUCLEAR PRODUCTION OF HYDROGEN – © OECD/NEA 2010