Balibouse of Reuters reported in early 2021 that Watchdog says nuclear must play part of hydrogen strategy. The European Hydrogen Strategy must include nuclear in its long-term plans for the region’s hydrogen economy and the current focus on renewable power only greatly weakens the commercial incentive for nuclear to invest, the New Nuclear Watch Institute (NNWI) said in a study at the end of last year.
The strategy acknowledges that other forms of low-carbon hydrogen production will be required in the short- and medium-term to facilitate early-stage market development, but fails to provide long-term certainty to potential producers and excludes the other forms of generation from its major targets, it says. “This technological prejudice is to the detriment of the Strategy on a number of fronts,” the study 'On the Role of Nuclear Power in the Development of a European Hydrogen Economy' says (more).
“The production of hydrogen using nuclear power rather than intermittent renewable energy has a number of general advantages, not in the least that the former is able to supply electrolysers at a far higher capacity factor, allowing greater operational efficiency, and to facilitate continuous production of hydrogen that is essential for its industrial applications.”
The report shows that for every unit of installed capacity of electrolyzer, nuclear power produces over five times as much low-carbon hydrogen as solar and twice as much as wind power. The land area required to produce hydrogen using nuclear power is considerably less than that need by renewable energy sources, it added.
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