(204b) Estimation of Unit Hydrogen Production Cost with G4ECONS Program for Nuclear Power Plant Coupled with Sulfur-Iodine Cycle

Massive hydrogen production without environment pollution is important to achieve hydrogen economy. Nuclear hydrogen production has been a potential candidate for massive and clean hydrogen production.  A Very High Temperature Reactor (VHTR) with an outlet coolant temperature of 950 °C coupled with the thermo-chemical Sulfur Iodine (SI) cycle is considered as an efficient hydrogen production plant to achieve the hydrogen economy.

The economic assessment was performed for an nth-of-a-kind plant consisting of PMR coupled with SI plant. The thermal output of the reactor is 2,400MWth (4 X 600MWth).

The Levelized Unit Hydrogen Production Cost(LUHC) was calculated with G4ECONS program developed by EMWG of GIF for the VHTR coupled with SI cycle based on the assumptions such as  36 months of plant construction time, 5.34 % of discount rate, 60 years of operation and 5.6 % of fixed charge rate. The result indicated estimated unit hydrogen production cost is 2.67 $/kg H2.  

The parametric study was done for the major factors that would affect the hydrogen production cost. The result indicated that the fixed charge rate, discount rate and energy cost have more significant influence on unit hydrogen production cost than the construction time, fuel cost and decommissioning cost.