There is considerable potential for increasing the use of excess heat from electricity generation by nuclear power plants to desalinate seawater, produce hydrogen for the heavy industry, decarbonize the transport sector, and supply heat to residential and commercial uses: Nuclear cogeneration can offer sustainable and economic solutions for meeting the increasing demand in heat energy markets. However, as experts at an IAEA meeting agreed last week, for these nuclear co-generation products to enter the commercial market on a large scale, several challenges and barriers have to be overcome.

Around 60 participants from 33 countries, representing both countries operating nuclear power plants, as well as nuclear newcomers, technology developers and potential customers, discussed the pros and cons of non-electric applications of nuclear energy during the 16th Dialogue Forum of the IAEA’s International Project for Innovative Nuclear Reactors and Fuel Cycles (INPRO), from 12-14 December 2018 in Vienna. Since 2010, these fora have focused on different aspects of developing sustainable nuclear energy systems and the related complex relationships among technology suppliers, customers and other stakeholders.

Participants presented ongoing cogeneration projects and plans or considerations in countries embarking on nuclear power. If such newcomer countries decide to include cogeneration in their nuclear energy planning, they should begin planning those applications right from the beginning, participants recommended.

“Nuclear cogeneration is very important, particularly if nuclear power is to expand much more broadly in energy markets to meet the need for clean and sustainable energy, while helping to mitigate climate change through avoidance of carbon emissions,” said Mikhail Chudakov, IAEA Deputy Director General and Head of the Department of Nuclear Energy.

Traditionally, the primary focus of nuclear power has been on electricity generation. But as early as 1956, the Calder Hall nuclear power plant in the UK provided both electricity and process heat to site facilities. There are examples in several other countries of district heating, industrial process heat and seawater desalination. Despite these examples, nuclear cogeneration systems never really took off, for various economic and regulatory reasons as well as for lack of public support. With changes in technology and the regulatory environment in many countries, the conditions for cogenerations have improved substantially.