India has opened the world’s first nuclear plant that produces hydrogen fuel using a catalytic cycle based on copper and chlorine. The Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) inaugurated the facility on June 26 at the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research in Kalpakkam, Tamil Nadu. The Fast Breeder Test Reactor (FBTR) at the site supplies heat to power the thermochemical reaction that produces hydrogen.
“Hydrogen is widely regarded as the fuel of the future,” Ajit Kumar Mohanty, secretary of the DAE and chairman of India’s Atomic Energy Commission, says in a YouTube video announcing the achievement. “As nations drive to reduce carbon emissions . . . hydrogen will play a vital role in powering industries, transportation, and future energy systems.”
Most hydrogen today comes from steam reforming methane, which strips hydrogen from natural gas and releases carbon dioxide. A cleaner route, electrolysis, uses electricity to split water but demands large amounts of power. The plant at Kalpakkam takes a third path: using heat to drive the splitting of water directly. Skipping the step of converting the heat to electricity saves energy and increases production efficiency.
The cycle, developed at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre uses copper chloride as a catalyst. Solid copper(II) chloride reacts with steam at roughly 400 °C to form copper oxychloride and hydrogen chloride gas. The copper oxychloride then decomposes at about 500 °C, giving off oxygen and leaving behind molten copper(I) chloride. The copper(I) chloride dissolves in the acidic environment and enters an electrolysis cell, where a small electric current splits it and releases hydrogen gas. A final drying step recovers the starting copper(II) chloride, closing the loop so the process can begin again.
The copper-chlorine cycle generally runs at no higher than 500 °C. This temperature requirement is readily met by the FBTR. The facility is a technology demonstrator. It was built to prove the process works and to gather operating data rather than to make hydrogen at commercial scale.
“It is a shining example of how the Department of Atomic Energy is expanding the role of nuclear energy beyond the electricity generation” Mohanty says in the video.
“Thermochemical production of hydrogen using high-temperature heat is theoretically promising,” says Dirk Rabelink, CEO of ULC Energy, a nuclear development company in the Netherlands. But the chemical process is still quite experimental, and the FBTR is an advanced reactor that produces higher temperatures than commercial reactors, he says. “If you need both [the experimental process and reactor] you are compounding the risk, which means this needs a long time to mature before it can deploy commercially.”
