Large scale non-CO2 emitting technology for power generation is nuclear energy. The nuclear power plants are not flexible from load changes point of view, thus the regulation of the energy market is a big issue here. It appears that a solutions which combines all those trends is most expected. In this paper we propose to combine high temperature electrolysis with nuclear power plant to achieve two goals: increasing the flexibility, energy storage in a form of hydrogen in zero emission fashion.
The splitting of water molecules, or electrolysis, is the oldest known electrochemical process and has been used in the commercial production of hydrogen since the early 1900s. Research into more efficient electrolyzers is ongoing, but costs remain relatively high. Nuclear power can be used for electrolysis, or to supply heat to reduce the energy requirements associated with steam reformation of natural gas, or in a thermochemical process for dissociating water molecules \cite{herzog2005hydrogen}. Hydrogen production may be the future of nuclear energy \cite{Forsberg_2009} and it is also possible that hydrogen itself may become a transportation fuel \cite{forsberg2010nuclear}. The nuclear-based hydrogen production was described in \cite{crosbie2003hydrogen} to speculate as to which of these processes is the best candidate technology that will start the age of the “hydrogen economy,” which many experts agree is on the horizon. Specifically, the potential of three hydrogen production processes under development for the industrial production of hydrogen using nuclear energy were compared and evaluated: advanced electrolysis, steam reforming, and the sulfur-Iodine water splitting cycle. As advanced electrolysis, the high pressure alkaline cells were considered with the efficiency at the level of 90%.