Hydrogen production for the next century
by Alfred Lecocq, Kazuo Furukawa
International Journal of Global Energy Issues (IJGEI), Vol. 3, No. 4, 1991

Abstract: The growth of energy consumption at world level should induce, in the next century, a strong supply of all primary energy resources. Nuclear devices, renewable and solar resources, will finally close the fossil era, but the dominant primary fossil energy in the next 100 years will be natural gas. This shift will not prevent the increasing concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere. Nuclear energy is able to alleviate the problem of CO₂ emissions through steam reforming of natural gas. With this chemical reaction, carried out in large chemical-nuclear power centres, all the energy of the original methane, plus about 30 per cent deriving from nuclear heat, appears in the form of hydrogen. CO₂ gas, produced on an industrial scale, could be easily recovered for injection underground, instead of the usual release into the atmosphere. But nuclear energy has to solve its own problems which are the supply of fissile resources, flexibility versus power size and demand, safety, proliferation and terrorism, waste, economics and public acceptance. All these topics may find a global solution only through a deep change in the philosophical approach to nuclear fission energy. Molten salt mixtures made of beryllium, lithium, thorium and fissile fluorides can be used in a new kind of fission reactor and fissile breeder. These have already been studied and described by laboratories all over the world, and will be the next generation of nuclear power generators.

Online publication date: Fri, 18-Jul-2014

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