Japan shut down its power plants in the wake of the nuclear accident and switched to coal and natural gas. The need to move to renewable energy has, of course, been more pressing over the past ten years, and he has started to explore for safe ways to use nuclear energy, which is seen as the new renewable energy.
First of all, it restarted the HTGR (High Temperature Gas Reactor) reactor, a design that prevents core melting and overheating even when the cooling systems are turned off and no one is there. This device uses special multilayer ceramic spheres to contain radioactive elements, which are then cooled with inert helium gas. The system is so secure that even after all of the pumps and other components were switched off for a week merely for testing, the core temperature stayed steady, lowering to 1328 °C and then to 1320 °C, and the reactor was not even slightly harmed.
The 30 MW test reactor constructed in 1998 was used for research up until 2011, when it was shut down along with all the other reactors in the nation following the Fukushima Disaster. A new structure will now be constructed next to the reactor using the heat generated from this process, and a hydrogen manufacturing facility will be developed with the aid of a high temperature catalyst. The Japanese Atomic Energy Agency and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ collaboration will enable the continuous use of high temperatures and chemical catalysts to break down water in the vapor state into hydrogen and oxygen. The critical factor in this situation is that the water is approximately undergoing chemical disintegration about 850-950 °C.
Efficient use of Hydrogen
The fact that hydrogen can safely be blended with up to 20% of the natural gas line used in residential buildings makes this one of hydrogen’s most promising applications. In other words, with just minimal network modifications, we can use hydrogen to replace the 4 billion cubic meters of gas that Turkey currently uses to heat its 20 billion cubic meters of homes. Additionally, home production using renewable resources gives us the opportunity to accomplish this. This entails blocking 5.6 billion euros worth of the annual imports’ 23 billion euros.
In addition, it is feasible to switch vehicles like long-distance ships, trucks, airplanes, and trains to hydrogen fuel instead of fuels made from petroleum. On the other side, cars have the option of continuing from the battery or switching to a hydrogen fuel cell hybrid. For the steel sector, which demands extremely high temperatures, it is also possible to set up and run a high-temperature (1000 ° C) production unit in tiny proportions.
Original source: https://energynews.biz/japan-to-produce-hydrogen-using-nuclear-energy/
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