Prospects of nuclear-hydrogen energy farms with high-temperature gas-cooled reactors

Abstract

The effect of human activity on the environment can become the primary factor that determines how long the population can exist. Man should create his ecosphere - or noosphere - such that the wastes of one industry become the raw material for another. Closing the material cycle in the noosphere requires a significant amount of clean energy in a form that is convenient to use. This problem cannot be solved with only fossil fuels, both for ecological reasons and because their reserves are finite. In the transition period man cannot avoid the use of nuclear energy. The fundamental problem of using it widely is primarily the level of socially acceptable safety, which includes the operation of both the nuclear energy source itself and the systems that transform the nuclear energy to secondary energy sources and distribute and utilize them. It seems to us that the idea of integrated safety requires that the nuclear source must be removed from the population and that ecologically clean energy sources should be used. This is important primarily for psychological reasons. The concept of energy farms has been of interest for a long time, however, their advantages are not obvious for nuclear electricity because ofmore » the difficulty of transporting and storing the energy. These problems are best solved by going to nonelectric energy sources: hydrogen and its derivatives. Then producing work remains the primary sphere of application for electricity, while for hydrogen it is heat and chemical transformations of matter. The fundamental problem of hydrogen power engineering is choosing an efficient means to make the hydrogen. Hopes for thermodynamic water-decomposition cycles, in particular the sulfuric acid cycle, have not materialized due to their technical complexity and low real efficiency. Electrolysis at standard nuclear power plants is also inefficient, but simpler; therefore electrolysis is possible in the future, when organic fuel reserves are exhausted.« less