Carbon Brief editors also reported in late 2020 that hydrogen gas has long been recognized as an alternative to fossil fuels and a potentially valuable tool for tackling climate change. Now, as nations come forward with net-zero strategies to align with their international climate targets, hydrogen has once again risen up the agenda from Australia and the UK through to Germany and Japan.
In the most optimistic outlooks, hydrogen could soon power trucks, planes and ships. It could heat homes, balance electricity grids and help heavy industry to make everything from steel to cement. But doing all these things with hydrogen would require staggering quantities of the fuel, which is only as clean as the methods used to produce it. Moreover, for every potentially transformative application of hydrogen, there are unique challenges that must be overcome.
In this in-depth Q&A – which includes a range of infographics, maps and interactive charts, as well as the views of dozens of experts – Carbon Brief examines the big questions around the “hydrogen economy” and looks at the extent to which it could help the world avoid dangerous climate change. Hydrogen can also be generated using nuclear power to drive electrolysis. According to the IEA there is “no established color” for hydrogen produced via nuclear power, but reports have variously referred to it as “yellow”, “pink” and “purple”.
In addition, heat from nuclear reactors could have applications in hydrogen production by producing steam for more efficient electrolysis or fossil gas-based steam methane reforming. In the longer term, the very high temperatures of advanced nuclear reactors could directly extract hydrogen from water by thermochemical splitting (aka boiling). Such projects are still in the very early stages of development. Prof Robin Grimes, nuclear chief scientific adviser at the UK’s Ministry of Defense, recently authored a Royal Society paper on “nuclear cogeneration”, the process of using heat from reactors in “hard-to-decarbonize” sectors, as well as producing electricity.
While no large-scale hydrogen production facility using nuclear energy has so far been built anywhere, Grimes tells Carbon Brief the two industries would benefit from greater integration: “Rather than nuclear being orphaned as something that can only produce baseload electricity, actually nuclear is part of the solution because…its heat can be used directly when the electricity is not needed. That’s this cogeneration idea.”
Using nuclear power to produce hydrogen was a popular idea in the early days of hydrogen research and is still being advocated by France, Russia and the US, nations that already rely on nuclear for much of their power supply.
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