Nuclear Production of Hydrogen, Fourth Information Exchange ...

THE CONCEPT OF NUCLEAR HYDROGEN PRODUCTION BASED ON MHR-T REACTOR
Introduction
Nuclear power has firmly established itself in the sphere of electricity production, and will continue to
build up its potential in this market sector. However, even a large-scale deployment of nuclear energy
for electricity generation would not be able to solve the problem of the rising demand in motor fuel
and process/residential heat. Therefore there is a perspective for introduction of nuclear power
sources into the sphere of hydrogen production, energy-intensive industries and residential sector.
The size of this sector is in the long term comparable to that of the electricity generation sector.
Figure 1 gives an estimation of the size and structure of Russian nuclear energy industry in the
21 st century taking into account the export potential.
GW
900
Figure 1: The structure of Russian nuclear energy industry
in the 21 st century taking into account the export potential
PWR – thermal pressurised water reactors; BR – fast breeder reactors;
HTGR – high-temperature gas-cooled reactors for nuclear hydrogen engineering
800
700
600
ВТГР
HTGR
500
400
300
ВR
БР
200
100
Действующие
АЭС
0
PWR
ВВЭР
2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050 2060 2070 2080 2090 2100
Years
The concept of wide application of nuclear hydrogen as an energy carrier in industries, the
energy sector, transport and households developed in the early 1970s in Russia and was called
nuclear-hydrogen power engineering (Alexandrov, 1974; Kostin, 2005; Legasov, 1976; Mitenkov, 2004;
Ponomarev-Stepnoi, 2008; Stolyarevsky, 1988).
Because of its unique properties, hydrogen is a major prospective energy source in various spheres
of power engineering, transport and industry. Today, hydrogen consumption in the world equals
about 50 million tonnes. The largest consumers (as much as 90% of the total produced hydrogen) are
the chemical and oil refining industries. In the 21 st century, due to transition of basic engineering
industries to intensive methods of producing high-quality goods, a fast growth in hydrogen demand is
expected. Still, the largest contributors into the prospective growth of hydrogen demand in the world
will be the automobile transport and the distributed power supply systems because of their expected
transfer to the use of hydrogen fuel elements. After the large-scale mastering of hydrogen production,
transportation and storage processes, hydrogen can be used to solve the problems of power engineering.
Such problems are, for example, power accumulation in energy girds with irregular loads (especially
for nuclear power plants) and power supply for local and remote consumers.
The world’s demand in hydrogen in the 21 st century will grow from 50 million tonnes in 2000 to
370 million tonnes in 2050, and to 800 million tonnes by 2100 (Ponamarev-Stepnoi, 2008).
Large-scale production of hydrogen and hydrogen-containing products is mainly based on steam
reforming of natural gas (methane). Implementation of the endothermic process during steam methane
68 NUCLEAR PRODUCTION OF HYDROGEN – © OECD/NEA 2010