In 2020-8, the European Commission adopted the “EU Hydrogen Strategy”.
According to it, the construction of an electrolysis plant with a total of 6 gigawatts must be promoted within the EU so that 1 million tons of renewal hydrogen can be produced by 2024.
Between 2025 and 2030, a total of 40 gigawatt electrolysis plant will be needed. As a result, the EU will produce 10 million tons of renewal hydrogen. From 2030 to 2050, renewable hydrogen technology should mature and be widely used in the industrial transportation field, where decarbonization hurdles are high. The “renewable hydrogen” used in this strategy refers to hydrogen obtained by electrolyzing water with electricity obtained from a renewable source.
Hydrogen that is not renewable includes hydrogen extracted from fossil fuels. It becomes “low carbon hydrogen” with a carbon dioxide capture process.
This “low carbon hydrogen” and “renewable hydrogen” suppress greenhouse gas emissions in total from upstream to downstream of economic activities.
However, in this “strategy” document, there is no mention of nuclear power as a “low-carbon power source”.
Foratom raises questions. In order to produce a large amount of hydrogen, a large amount of electric power supply for electrolysis should be stably required. Is it possible to achieve that without a nuclear power plant?
If you try to pursue that goal without a nuclear power plant, it will not be a “cost effective” approach.
So the title of the position paper is: “Hydrogen production by nuclear power plants-low carbon technology that holds the key to European decarbonization”. The EU should adopt a technology-neutral policy for the goal of increasing hydrogen and reducing carbon dioxide. That is, do not stand in the position of anti-nuclear power. What is bad and what is good should be based on the total carbon dioxide emissions in the life cycle.
The electricity generated by nuclear power plants is undoubtedly low-carbon electricity. * In the Netherlands and Belgium, the land area is halved just by raising the sea level, so I understand that global warming is a fear, but what are the benefits of the Nordic countries against warming? Is it because the towns are densely packed along the sea level zero meters along the coastline?
