High-temperature helium-cooled reactors are the best understood nuclear technology that can supply high-temperature heat for thermal processes for producing hydrogen. The GT-MGR reactor -an innovative international modular design of a helium-cooled reactor with a gas-turbine cycle -best meets the requirements for hydrogen production and is proposed as a basis for a nuclear energy source. In this paper, the technical aspects of the proposed application of HTGR as a source of energy for producing hydrogen are analyzed. The required parameters of the energy obtained from HTGR for the presently completed and future hydrogen-production technology are examined. The problems and additional R&D work on the use of HTGR at high helium temperatures are indicated.Today, fossil fuels are mainly used in industry, for transportation, and for generating electricity. At the current rates of consumption, the stores of fossil fuel are sufficient for no more than several hundreds of years. It would be shortsighted to use up all of the available reserves of fossil fuels just to meet the increase in demand.The most efficient method for meeting increasing energy needs could be to convert nuclear power into electricity and hydrogen as the most effective and universal energy carriers. HTGR is a nuclear technology that can supply high-temperature heat for producing hydrogen. HTGR technology is highly safe and efficiently produces electricity while keeping environmental effects to a minimum.Today, the electrolysis of water and steam conversion of methane for subsequent stages -thermochemical decomposition of water and high-temperature electrolysis of water vapor -are the main technology which has been investigated and mastered by industry for producing hydrogen using energy from HTGRs. The main requirement for the source of high-temperature heat for producing hydrogen is that the coolant be heated up to 1000°C with pressures up to 5-7 MPa.Nuclear reactor designers became interested in high-temperature helium-cooled reactors more than 40 years ago because of the new possibility for heating the helium at the reactor exit up to 1000°C and the enhanced safety of the reactor. The first successes were achieved in the mid-1960s: experimental low-power reactors were developed -Dragon in Great Britain, the Pitch-Bottom nuclear power plant in the USA, and AVR in Germany. The first two reactors operated for more than 10 yr, and the last one operated for more than 20 yr, showing reliability, high readiness and safety, low radioactive contamination of the first loop, stability in transient regimes, and the capability of heating helium up to 950°C for a long time.
The future of nuclear power in Russia must be analyzed taking account of the trends which have appeared in recent years in the development of power in the developed and developing countries. In most developed countries the growth of energy consumption has slowed down, which to a large extent is due to effective energy conservation policy, whereas for the developing countries, characteristically, the demand for energy is increasing and there is a permanent growth of powergeneration capacity.In Russi~ the situation is determined by factors such as the following: the restructuring of the economy, accompanied by a substantial decrease in the volume of industrial production; exhaustion of technical resources in a significant fraction of the fossil-fuel burning heat and power plants; more stringent health and hygenic requirements on newly designed power sources and the associated need for decreasing emissions and other action on the environment; and, lack of investments for modernizing and constructing new power plants as well as the subsequent implementation of an energy conservation policy in industry.In the next few decades the demand for energy in Russia and most other countries will be satisfied by different sources: coal, natural gas, oil, atomic energy, hydroelectric power, and others. Therefore, competition between them is unavoidable. The factors determining the choice will be economic indicators and ecological consequences of the use of one or another energy source taking account of the regional peculiarities of the location of a source.At present, the most widely used traditional power sources are heat and power plants burning coal and natural gas. However, the increasing requirements for clean air and, in consequence, the degree of scrubbing of the emissions, the need to reduce the quantity of greenhouse gases, and the high sensitivity of the cost of electrical power to the cost of the fossil fuel make the prospects for increasing further the scales of utilization of fossil fuel, at least, uncertain. There are serious grounds for believing that the combustion of coal, gas, and oil is by no means the best application of these unique natural materials.Taking account of the possibility of expanded production of nuclear fuel, nuclear power possesses unlimited fuel resources. Under normal operation, nuclear power has undoubted advantages over its competitors. The action of nuclear power on the environment is limited only by its heat effect. Therefore, the prospects for developing nuclear power are determined by its safety and the cost of the energy produced, i.e., the degree to which the technical solutions guaranteeing elimination of radioactive emissions during any technically possible accidents in amounts exceeding the admissable health standards have been worked out; capital expenditures on the construction of nuclear power plants; and, operating costs, including the cost of burial and shipment of spent fuel, as well as assurance of safe handling and burial of radioactive wastes.
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