Title: Hydrogen production for the next century

Authors: Alfred Lecocq, Kazuo Furukawa

Addresses: European Working Association for Molten-Salt Reactor Development (EURIWA). ' Institute of Research and Development, Tokai University, Japan

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.

Keywords: alternative fuels; energy demand; fission reactions; fluorides; fossil fuels; future trends; hydrogen production; molten salts; nuclear power; nuclear proliferation; nuclear energy; safety; thorium.

DOI: 10.1504/IJGEI.1991.063688

International Journal of Global Energy Issues, 1991 Vol.3 No.4, pp.204-209

Published online: 18 Jul 2014 *

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