​On Monday 4 November 2024, NPHyCo partners Framatome and Energy Safety Group (ESG) organised the first of a series of webinars on hydrogen production from nuclear, focusing on the technical requirements relating to the coupling of an existing nuclear power plant with a hydrogen production plant.

On 9 & 10 October 2024, NPHyCo consortium partners met at the Framatome GmbH premises in Erlangen (Germany) for a Governance Board meeting. With just six months left in the project, this meeting focused on the outcomes of the different work packages (WP) and work began on how to best communicate the results.

On 27 & 28 June 2024, NPHyCo organised a national workshop in Ukraine to discuss the project, its outcomes and potential benefits for Ukrainian nuclear power plants (NPP). This workshop was led by project partner ESG  and was kindly hosted by the Rivne NPP.

As part of the NPHyCo project a survey has just been launched in order to identify citizens opinion towards nuclear and hydrogen. ​

On 10 June 2024, NPHyCo organised a meeting with its Advisory Board in order to share the latest project developments and receive their feedback. The meeting started off with a brief introduction of the goals of the project.  It was then noted that significant results stemming from this project are expected to become available in September 2024. 

On 23 May 2024, Martin Kykal, a representative from ES Group presented an open lecture to students and faculty at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the University of West Bohemia in Plzeň during the Nuclear Days 2024. Attendees were introduced to insights gained from the NPHyCo project, with the lecture focusing on utilising existing nuclear resources for hydrogen production. He indicated that the project explores the integration of hydrogen production equipment with resources that nuclear power plants can provide, such as electrical power, demineralised water, cooling water, and also addresses legislative, nuclear, and radiation safety issues.

The Spanish Nuclear Association (SNE) has recently organised a series of training sessions relating to hydrogen and nuclear energy on 16, 18 and 23 April 2024.  Cecilia Herrero (Tecnatom) was invited to present the NPHyCo projet during one of these webinars.

As part of her intervention she provided an overview of the project and outlined outcomes so far:

• Overview and objectives of the project.
• Need and benefits of hydrogen production
• Overview of existing hydrogen projects and other European initiatives (GEMINI 4.0 and TANDEM)
• Data collection process and interaction with nuclear power plants (NPPs) in Europe
• First economic results discussion

The session was very well received, with a record number of attendees at such a training. In addition, the feedback received was really positive with several interested parties have reaching out to NPHyCo for more information.

On 18 April 2024, Canet Serin (Framatome GmbH) attended the SNETP Forum in Rome (Italy) in order to present the NPHyCo project.

As part of her intervention, she gave an overview of the aims of NPHyCo. In this respect she drew attention to some of the challenges which the EU is fading in terms of decarbonising its economy and how hydrogen, produced from nuclear, can help tackle these challenges.  

Furthermore, she outlined the goals of the project, including:

• The potential for developing large scale, low-carbon, hydrogen production facilities linked to nuclear power plants.
  
• Assessment of the feasibility of producing hydrogen near an existing nuclear power plant as well as the added value of such project.
  
• Analysis of potential off-takers (e.g. steel, iron, fertilizer and petrochemical industry) and transportation routes.
  
• Overview of potential locations where a pilot project could be implemented.  ​​

In addition to this presentation, NPHyCo also had an exhibit in the coffee area, allowing participants to come and find out more about the project. 

On 5 April 2024, NPHyCo was invited to the TANDEM Industrial Users Group (IUG) meeting in order to provide an update on the project. A representative from a second EU Project,  GEMINI 4.0, was also invited to give a presentation and this gave an opportunity to discuss potential synergies between these three projects.   
 
In her presentation, Canet Serin (Framatome GMBH) presented the goals of the NPHyCo project and gave an overview of the 6 Work Packages and current status of the Deliverables.
 
In addition to these three EU Projects, GENVIA (a public / private joint venture between CEA, Schlumberger, Occitanie, Vinci, and Vicat) was invited to present the work it is undertaking in the field of hydrogen in order to help heavy industry achieve long-term decarbonisation goals.  Given the close interlink between the work of GENVIA and NPHyCo, it was agreed that continued engagement between the two would prove fruitful. 

In December, Technical Director of ES Group Oleksandr Mazurok spoke about the work on the NPHyCo project in an interview with the Ukrainian industry resource Uatom.org. The interview covered topics related to hydrogen energy, including prospects for hydrogen production at Ukrainian nuclear power plants (NPPs), and the introduction of hydrogen plants in Ukraine and the world. He provided an overview of the project’s goals and objectives, as well as the work performed and interim results achieved to date.

He highlighed that three types of electrolyzers have been selected for the project: two of them use hydrogen electrolysis and one uses steam electrolysis. At European plants, steam electrolysis may be the optimal solution, but the current results show that this option is not possible for Ukrainian NPPs.

Click here to view the interview in Ukrainian.