Nuke generator joins hydrogen association
The press release today announcing that nuclear operator Bruce Power has joined the Canadian Hydrogen Association wasn’t in itself that interesting. Sure, it’s the first electricity generator to join the association, and the fact that company CEO Duncan Hawthorne will be joining its board shows that he wants nuclear power to play a serious role in the hydrogen economy. Of course, the nuclear industry overall is pushing the whole idea that only a nuclear society can support a hydrogen economy, since you want emission-free power to produce the hydrogen, not coal power. They argue only nuclear can supply enough clean power that can produce the hydrogen necessary to make the paradigm shift toward fuel cell cars and home heating/power systems.
But check out this paragraph from the Bruce Power press release: “Hawthorne said there is a direct link between nuclear energy and hydrogen, an emissions-free fuel which could be produced using electricity from nuclear plants during off-peak hours. Following the restart of Bruce A Units 1 and 2, it is estimated the output from Bruce Power alone could produce enough hydrogen to fuel more than half of the vehicles in Ontario if they were powered by hydrogen.”
For those who don’t know, Bruce A Units 1 and 2 together represent 1,500 megawatts of power and they are in the process of being refurbished. It will take a few years.
What I want to know is if hydrogen can be produced during off-peak hours using nuclear baseload generation, then why can’t we do the same for charging electric cars at night? I keep hearing critics of electric vehicles talk about the lack of capacity on the grid, but given there’s a surplus of baseload electricity produced overnight from nuclear generators, why isn’t Bruce Power joining an electric vehicle association or trying to push the EV concept, which is within reach today?
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
July 19th, 2006 at 12:04 am
You’re right, it doesn’t make any sense. A battery car is pretty much exactly twice as efficient as a hydrogen fuel cell. Battery cars available today require about 0.22kWh/km, a fuel cell car running on hydrogen from electrolysis will require 0.48kWh/km. Just looking at these numbers, hydrogen is dead from the start. Then start looking at what 80% of our driving is, and you’ll find that it’s within the range of a battery car, no need even for a plug-in hybrid really.
July 19th, 2006 at 12:15 am
One thing that I forgot to mention…I think this whole notion of producing hydrogen/charging batteries or whatever during off-peak hours is a good idea, but it’s not as if it’ll “just work”. If we all plug our EV’s in at night, then base load capacity will go up, and we’ll either have to build new nukes so that Ontario becomes greater than 50% dependent on them, or we start running coal power plants during off-peak hours as well.
I think we should be using EVs to deal with the intermittency of renewables instead. So, we drive and EV, if it’s parked, it’s always plugged in to the grid. This way if wind is blowing but it can’t be sold to the grid, then the EVs can just soak up the wind power. Same goes for when there isn’t wind, the EVs could sell some energy back to the grid if they need it. An EV has what..maybe a 30kW engine…considering the number of cars that are parked at any given moment, that’ll be more than enough load leveling to deal with intermittency of renewables.
July 19th, 2006 at 9:00 am
I think we’re a long way away from having to worry about 100 per cent of vehicles plugging into the grid. And over that time, more renewables, hydro and — well, nuclear — will be added. The debate over whether more nuclear should be built to support this future needs to take place, but just because we can’t support 100 per cent of cars today doesn’t mean we should move forward with a goal of 5 or 10 per cent.
July 19th, 2006 at 9:02 am
I meant to say, it doesn’t mean we “shouldn’t” move forward with a goal of 5 or 10 per cent.
July 19th, 2006 at 1:12 pm
If the EEStor technology pans out, it could potentially solve both the intermittency issue of renewables and the energy storage and recharging issues with electric vehicles.
Stephen
July 19th, 2006 at 1:39 pm
There is another slight factor for Bruce power and hydrogen. Bruce has the heavy water generators that if they are running at all are way under utilized and if I am remembering right heavy water is H3O therefore you get one extra hydrogen molecule form the conversion. Though I have no idea if this is energy efficient to the effort of getting heavy water?
Chris C
July 19th, 2006 at 2:10 pm
Heavy water isn’t H3O, it’s water that has heavy hydrogen in it–i.e. at least one of the 2 hydrogens has an extra proton.
Dave K
July 19th, 2006 at 2:31 pm
Well that ruins that theory.
Chris C
July 21st, 2006 at 9:44 am
Sorry, I meant neutron, not proton
Dave K
July 27th, 2006 at 3:29 pm
The problem is fuel capacity. EVs just can’t get the same bang/buck as hydrogen powered vehicles. Hydrogen is a more efficient (For now) energy storage mechanism – and electrolysis is a GREAT energy sink for always-on nuclear reactors.
August 26th, 2006 at 2:47 am
Another issue that all the eco clean freaks conveniently forget is their so called clean electric battery cars require guess what to operate…batteries! By it’s very nature the industrial process producing batteries and disposing of spent ones is in itself extremely toxic and polluting. Also an infrastructure for hhydrogen already exists along the lines of the propane filling stations across Canada and the USA. The internal combustion engine is going to be around for a long, long time because no one is going to en mass pay the ridiculous cost markups for battery cars or for their limited power and range…no matter what critics say. The present high tech internal combustion engines can with very minor modifications run on hydrgen today – that is all cars can if a government legislated it. Look at the strides California has made. We cannot afford to wait decades for these pie in the sky battery mobiles to take off; one dodo bird – windmill power – is enough thank you!