Castagnola, and two co-authors, reported in 2014 that a technologically feasible transition towards a realistic and sustainable hydrogen economy (i.e. on large scale and without carbon dioxide emissions) could be made through the use of nuclear energy. In fact, nowadays hydrogen production methods without the employment of fossil fuel represent only a low share of the total production; but the use on large scale of hydrogen produced by “carbon-based” sources is neither environmentally nor economically meaningful.
In the present paper, besides a comprehensive evaluation of the state of art of hydrogen production methods via nuclear source, it has been proposed an energy scenario analysis (based on the hydrogen produced by the thermo-chemical Iodine-Sulfur process fed by High Temperature Gas Reactor (HTGR) included in a symbiotic nuclear fuel cycle), focused on the China region, that would meet the sustainability criteria in both the energy and environmental domains for transport sector.
The authors concluded that it is possible to create an alternative energy scenario for hydrogen production without the use of fossil fuels, and in particular by
means of nuclear energy. The need to study an environmental sustainable scenario arises from a comprehensive analysis of global energy consumption and of hydrogen production methods. Actually, a possible implementation of an hydrogen economy could not be carried forward, in an environmental friendly way, without matching with a nuclear strategy. Nowadays the most popular production methods foresee the use of fossil fuels either for thermal power production or for their chemical content.
Starting from this preliminary overview, a thorough analysis on new generation HTGR is carried on, with the aim of identifying the advantages and drawbacks of such reactors for the hydrogen production purpose. Then the most popular hydrogen production methods coupled to nuclear reactors are deeply studied. Particularly, a future scenario, based on the hydrogen produced in a thermo-chemical I-S based chemical plant fed by HTGR included in a symbiotic nuclear fuel cycle, has been analyzed for the China region. Considering the emerging and huge Chinese civil nuclear program, it has been feasible to study a hypothetical strategy of hydrogen production for this country via nuclear power.
With the purpose of developing such study, it has been used the NFCSS code provided by IAEA, that helped us to evaluate the material flows during the
period covered by our simulations. Furthermore, China has been chosen due to, amongst the others, its environmental impacting strategy of economic growth. The code allows us to evaluate the amount of material involved, from the front-end to the back-end of the cycle related to the strategy adopted.
At the end the authors found that, at the time of maximum productivity of hydrogen, it would be (hypothetically) possible, by the energy infrastructure proposed by the subject authors, to supply enough fuel for more than 700,000 vehicles without consuming additional mineral resources and/or increasing pollutant emissions (e.g. greenhouse gases) in the environment.
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