Context: India is in talks with large domestic companies to invest in the regulated nuclear sector, including promoting clean power through generation of pink hydrogen.
Present Status:
- Restricted Private Ownership: The Atomic Energy Act, 1962 restricts private companies from owning and operating nuclear power plants in India.
- Central Government Control: The central government, currently through public sector corporations like Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL), holds the authority for activities related to nuclear energy, including its production, development, use, and disposal.
- Amended Act (2015): The 2015 amendment to the Atomic Energy Act, allows NPCIL to form joint ventures with other public sector units to secure funding for new projects. However, this does not extend to private or foreign companies.
- Private Sector Participation: Currently, private companies can participate in specific areas like supplying components and reactors, but not owning or operating plants.
- Future Considerations: Discussions are ongoing about allowing more private sector involvement, potentially through Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs). This would likely require further amendments to the Act.
Types of Hydrogen:
- Hydrogen can be produced from a variety of resources, such as natural gas, nuclear power, biomass, and renewable power like solar and wind.
- Hydrogen is an invisible gas. Depending on the type of production used, different colour names are assigned to the hydrogen.
Some common types of Hydrogen:
- Grey hydrogen: Grey hydrogen is produced using fossil fuels such as natural gas or coal. Grey hydrogen accounts for roughly 95% of the hydrogen produced in the world today.
- The two main production methods are steam methane reforming and coal gasification. Both of these processes release carbon dioxide (CO2).
- If the carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere, then the hydrogen produced is referred to as grey hydrogen.
- Blue Hydrogen: Blue hydrogen is similar to grey hydrogen, except that most of the CO2 emissions are sequestered (stored in the ground) using carbon capture and storage (CCS).
- Capturing and storing the carbon dioxide instead of releasing it into the atmosphere allows blue hydrogen to be a low-carbon fuel.
- Blue hydrogen is a cleaner alternative to grey hydrogen but is expensive since carbon capture technology is used.
- Green Hydrogen: Green hydrogen is hydrogen produced using electricity from clean energy sources, such as wind and solar energy, which do not release greenhouse gases when generating electricity.
- Green hydrogen is made when water (H2O) is split into hydrogen (H2) and oxygen (O2) via a process known as electrolysis.
- Pink Hydrogen: Pink hydrogen is produced through electrolysis of water but using energy from nuclear power, which does not produce any carbon dioxide emissions.
- Pink hydrogen facilities can achieve a high-capacity factor due to the steady base-load profile of nuclear power (involving both stability and density), as compared to the intermittent supply from renewable sources (solar, wind).
- Turquoise Hydrogen: Turquoise hydrogen is made using a process called methane pyrolysis. In this process methane is split into hydrogen and solid carbon with heating in reactors or blast furnaces.