Akihabara News (Tokyo) — Mitsubishi Heavy Industries has been tapped for collaboration on a demonstration project that aims to produce low-cost green hydrogen from nuclear power.
The project will link the Japan Atomic Energy Agency’s High Temperature Engineering Test Reactor in Oarai town, Ibaraki Prefecture, with a nearby, yet-to-be-constructed hydrogen production plant.
Extreme heat obtained from the reactor will be pumped into the new facility to power the creation of hydrogen via the sulfur-iodine cycle, which in turn can be used as a zero carbon fuel for multiple purposes.
The 30MW graphite-moderated gas-cooled research reactor, which came into full operation in 2001, has previously demonstrated stable heat at 950 degrees Celsius.
It resumed operations last July after spending a decade offline, following the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.
The determination of the specific renovations necessary to connect the hydrogen production plant to the reactor, along with the licensing procedures, equipment modifications, and testing processes, will be conducted in stages.
On February 8, the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy, part of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), began accepting bids for the project, and the MHI-JAEA consortium received the nod.
No timeline for the completion of the project has yet been released.
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