4 Nuclear Power Plants Gearing Up for Clean Hydrogen Production

[Finishline42]

Hydrogen has the potential to play a significant role in the nation’s transition to 100% clean energy.

It can be used across multiple sectors to store and deliver usable energy to power the grid, drive industrial processes, or create energy dense fuels needed for long-haul trucks and airplanes.

But, around 95% of the hydrogen currently produced in the United States comes from natural gas—resulting in carbon emissions.

That’s why the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is investing billions to help lower the cost and scale-up the production of clean hydrogen by leveraging the nation’s existing energy assets, including nuclear power plants.

How Is Clean Hydrogen Produced?

Most of the hydrogen currently produced in the U.S. is made through steam-methane reforming. In this process, Methane reacts with high-temperature steam to produce carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen.

One way to produce hydrogen without emissions is through low- and high-temperature electrolysis by splitting water into pure hydrogen and oxygen. High-temperature electrolyzers use both heat and electricity to split water and are more efficient.

Traditional and advanced nuclear reactors are well-suited to provide this constant heat and electricity needed to produce clean hydrogen, which could open new markets for nuclear power plants.

DOE estimates that a single 1,000-megawatt reactor could produce up to 150,000 tons of hydrogen each year. This could be sold regionally as a commodity for fertilizers, oil refining, steel production, material handling equipment, fuel cell vehicles, or even carbon-neutral synthetic fuels.

Details of the 4 demonstration projects can be found at the link...

https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/4-nuclear-power-plants-gearing-clean-hydrogen-production

[Middlevoter]

1. Check out Air Products Design

Heavily invested in this company after I learned they planned to build a clean hydrogen plant in Louisiana. They haven't let me down. Save the world and make some $$$

[llashram]

6. still spam

NUKE

[NNadir]

2. This is a huge mistake, and a waste of valuable nuclear resources.

Electrolysis is a thermodynamic nightmare, hyped in general by people who can't think very clearly, and wasteful in the extreme.

It's a dangerous popular fad driven by public stupidity that is in no way green. It would be acceptable, barely, in a case where electricity was fossil fuel free, but it isn't, not even close to it, because anti-nukes won the day, driving climate change in the process.

[Mr.Mystery]

3. Pipe H directly into home heaters instead of

Natural gas (methane).

But it might be more efficient just to use the electricity of nuke plants directly?

[Caribbeans]

4. The Panasonic Ene-Farm makes every home an energy producer

Feed it with natural gas for now and hydrogen in the future

Ene-farms produce electricity, heat and clean water. And when using green hydrogen, it's 100% green. Panasonic has sold over 200,000 of these mostly in Japan but they are now selling in Europe. Most Americans don't even know they exist.

But it might be more efficient just to use the electricity of nuke plants directly?

There are times when there is too much electricity for the grid, where supply must equal demand. Hydrogen is a way to store it. Overbuild solar, nuclear and/or wind and there will always be electricity to run an electrolyzer, make H2 24/7.

Someone inevitably says "hydrogen can't be piped because of embrittlement" - not knowing that there are thousands of miles of hydrogen pipeline around the world in operation right now.

Air Products dedicates world’s largest hydrogen pipeline system

Houston Chronicle | JIM MOLONY | Oct. 30, 2012

Air Products, the leading global hydrogen provider, formally dedicated its Gulf Coast Connection Pipeline connecting the Houston Ship Channel to New Orleans at a ceremony Thursday at the company’s Pasadena facility.

In August Air Products began supplying more than 1.2 billion cubic feet of hydrogen per day to refinery and petrochemical customers. Air Products had operated two hydrogen pipeline systems in Texas and Louisiana before joining them with a new 180-mile segment. The 600-mile pipeline span is fed by more than 20 hydrogen production facilities, giving Air Products the world’s largest hydrogen plant and pipeline supply network...more
https://www.chron.com/life/health/article/Air-Products-dedicates-world-s-largest-hydrogen-9453155.php#photo-11151451

[NNadir]

5. The second statement is true. The first statement is appallingly dangerous.

Hydrogen embrittlement will cause more homes to explode than natural gas already does.

It's a well known effect.

[hunter]

7. Methane is easy to handle.

Hydrogen, not so much.

Heat pumps are a reliable and efficient technology. There's no reason homes shouldn't be all electric.