Part 2 of 3 Parts (Pease read Part 1 first)
Hydrogen production:
Hydrogen gas for use as a fuel has been touted as a possible game changer with respect to clean energy. It could help reduce the generation of carbon dioxide in industrial sectors from agriculture to transportation. It has also been mentioned in conjunction with next generation reactors because hydrogen can be extracted from their steam via their high temperatures and available energy.
Jose Reyes is a founder of the SMR company, NuScale. He said in a recent interview, “Where you can really affect carbon reduction is not just providing electricity, which will help with the grid, but now you can start affecting the transportation sector. There is big interest there.”
Just one of NuScale six-module small reactor designs could produce about two hundred metric tons of hydrogen per day. This would be enough to provide fuel for sixty thousand hydrogen powered cars. However, in order for hydrogen production to produce steady revenue, there would need to be massive investment in money and time to build a hydrogen transportation sector. The DoE has already started to spend research funds to investigate what capabilities the existing nuclear power reactor fleet could have for hydrogen production.
In September, the DoE announced that it was providing eleven million dollars to fund three demonstration projects for hydrogen production at three nuclear power plants. Those three plants are: FirstEnergy Solutions Corp.'s Davis-Besse plant in Ohio, Arizona Public Service Co.'s Palo Verde plant in Arizona, and one of Xcel Energy Inc.'s two nuclear plants in Minnesota.
Bruce Hallbert is the director of the DoE light Water Reactor Sustainability Program. In announcing the demonstration projects, he said, “These first-of-a-kind projects represent significant advances for improving the long-term economic competitiveness of the light water reactor industry.”
Pairing Up:
Xcel Energy is carrying out one of the DoE hydrogen fuel production demonstration projects. They are also going to investigate the feasibility of having their nuclear plants switch to hydrogen fuel production when Xcel’s renewable assets such as solar and wind energy are more in use. If such a system were in place, nuclear power plants could switch back to producing electricity when renewable sources are not producing as much electricity as needed. This flexible interplay of energy sources is one vision of how the next generation of reactors could be used. In this case, nuclear power would be working in tandem with renewables instead of competing with them.
Kosnic of the NEI said, “You can imagine this nuclear asset of the future: that it can be all-in to the grid if that's what the grid needs. Let's say it's a windy, sunny day and you need a little bit less right now; you can be then diverting and saying, 'Well, I'm going to make hydrogen then for a while' or 'I'm going to send my steam over to someplace else,' you know, or 'I'll run a desalinization plant for a while,' and then all of a sudden the sun goes down and all of a sudden the wind stops blowing and all of a sudden the grid needs that support, and then you can shift back."
That shifting back and forth is already being explored as utilities attempt to combine intermittent resources such as wind and solar with natural gas plants or battery storage to increase production of clean energy and meet climate change mitigation goals.
Supporters of SMRs say that they could provide the same sort of backup power when the wind is not blowing and/or the sun is not shining. They point out that an added benefit would be additional carbon reduction by not burning natural gas. This is an attractive proposition for some states which have a goal of net-zero carbon emission by 2050.
Please read Part 3