Tiny Nuclear Reactors Yield a Huge Amount of Clean Hydrogen

Source: Caroline Delbert · POPULAR MECHANICS · | December 14, 2020

They're another welcome weapon in the fight against fossil fuels.

Source: NUSCALE POWER

• NuScale has released new data on its small modular reactor's ability to split hydrogen from water.

• High-temperature electrolysis of hydrogen requires process heat.

• NuScale's reactor was competitive with solar electrolysis at the right scale.

After getting bodied in the news cycle for a few months, small modular nuclear startup NuScale Power has an additional potential path to the diverse energy market. In a new evaluation run by the U.S. Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory, NuScale’s nuclear module performed effective catalysis for hydrogen.

The company reports:

The updated analysis found that with the 25 percent increase in power output of a [NuScale Power Module™ (NPM)], one 250 MWt NuScale module is capable of producing 2,053 kg/hour of hydrogen, or nearly 50 metric tons per day, an increase from 1,667 kg/hour of hydrogen or 40 metric tons per day for a 200 MWt NuScale module.

NuScale says these numbers mean that correctly deployed nuclear modules could compete with existing solutions like solar hydrogen plants, helping to eliminate the need for fossil fuel hydrogen.