engleski

Hydrogen Economy and Nuclear Energy

Global energy outlooks based on present trends, such as WETO or WEO study, give little optimism about fulfilling Kyoto commitments in controlling CO2 emissions and avoiding unwanted climate consequences. Whilst the problem of radioactive waste has a prominence in public, in spite of already adequate technical solutions of safe storage for future hundreds and thousands of years, there s generally much less concern with influence of fossil fuels on global climate. In addition to electricity production, process heat and transportation are approximately equal contributors to CO2 emission. Fossil fuels in transportation present also a local pollution problem in congested regions. Backed by extensive R and D, hydrogen economy is seen as the solution, however, often without much thought where from the hydrogen in required very large quantities may come. Hydrogen produced with fossil energy may even aggravate CO2 situation rather the help it. With welcome, but insufficient, contributions from alternative sources, nuclear energy is the only source of energy capable of producing hydrogen in very large amounts, without parallel production of CO2. Future high temperature reactors could do this most efficiently. Extrapolation from the present level of nuclear power to the future level required by serious attempts to reduce global CO2 emission is a matter of justified concern from the point of view of nuclear proliferation risks. Finding the sites for many hundreds of new reactors would, alone, be a formidable problem in developed regions with high population density. What is generally less well understood and not validated is that the production of nuclear hydrogen promises the required large increases of nuclear power without the accompanied increase of proliferation risks. Unlike electricity, hydrogen can be shipped or transported by pipelines to places very far from the place of production. Thus, nuclear production of hydrogen could be located and concentrated at few remote, controllable sites, far from the population centers and consumption regions. At such remote places all other related nuclear facilities could be collocated. Limited number of such sites operated by international consortia under full control of IAEA and located in the far North of Asia, Europe and North America could be one form of the future nuclear development acceptable from the nuclear and environmental safety and proliferation point of view.

nuclear; hydrogen; proliferation

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