Nuclear Hydrogen Production - Doe's Nuclear Hydrogen Initiative Program

Hydrogen has the potential to be a clean and reliable energy carrier that can be produced from primary energy resources such as nuclear energy and renewables. However, improvements in hydrogen production technologies are needed to fulfill this potential. The U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Energy through the Nuclear Hydrogen Initiative (NHI) is developing processes for the production of hydrogen from water using heat and power from high temperature advanced nuclear reactors that would be capable of driving efficient processes based on thermochemical cycles and high temperature electrolysis. Research on these production processes and the associated thermal interface technologies will lead to selection of the production technology for a pilot scale experiment in 2011. The next stage will be the construction of an engineering scale facility to demonstrate hydrogen production from nuclear energy by 2019.