There are serious gaps in safety, regulations, and standards in hydrogen when it comes to rapid expansion of the industry and the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories are hoping to address those issues.
On April 25, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) announced a conceptual development for a Canadian Hydrogen Safety Centre during the Canadian Hydrogen Convention with a possibility for the concept to be operational in June.
The centre would not be a regulatory body but would act as a “company of knowledge” for the benefit of industry, regulators, Canada, and the public at large, said Ian Castillo, head of directorate for hydrogen and tritium technologies at the CNL in a presentation at the Canadian Hydrogen Convention (CHC) on April 26.
The concept was fleshed out in November 2022, at a workshop hosted in Ottawa by CNL and Atomic Energy Canada Limited (AECL). The hydrogen safety workshop was attended by 68 Canadian and international people.
“This workshop was intended to provide a bit of a reference point, legal framework in turn to take the pulse of the nation in terms of where safety was at the time,” he said.
Castillo said there are existing codes and regulations for hiring, handling, and production of hydrogen and that those were not issues, the issue is the regulations and codes are not “mature enough for rapid expansion.”
The objective of the workshop was to investigate issues such as gaps in safety that need to be addressed, acknowledge opportunities in hydrogen and “collaboration between organizations,” and funding mechanisms.
Issues Castillo spoke about during his presentation on the Canadian Hydrogen Safety Centre included regulations, codes and standards for hydrogen and the use of materials for transportation.
“Transporting liquefied hydrogen over long distance, it seems to be more like, let's just try to figure out how it goes…and hopefully everything goes well,” he said.
Transporting large amounts of hydrogen in cylinders is not well understood.
“As the number of events get higher, as the number of routes get higher, as the transportation gets more and more in terms of volume, the chances of having a little bit of an accident dramatically increase,” he said.
Transfer of knowledge is a key foundation in nuclear technology, and it could have implications for hydrogen production as well, Castillo continued
“A nuclear installation could use electricity and heat to produce hydrogen, which is a good idea. The problem though, is it hasn't been done,” Castillo said.
Castillo also touched on the fact that hydrogen could be a “potent greenhouse gas.”
“We're trying to almost decarbonize, but there could be a potential where hydrogen could be a little bit of a deleterious effect to the atmosphere, but it's not really well understood,” he said.
Clarity on regulations codes and standards on provincial and municipal levels are not entirely clear either, he said.
There also needs to be hydrogen training for first responders, and a consolidation of knowledge.
“Safety issues are not consolidated, they seem to be scattered, fragmented all over Canada, and all over the world, to be honest,” he said.
One thing that was obvious to Castillo during the workshop was that hydrogen education is “embedded into certain industry and kept very confined to that industry.”
However, the hydrogen industry is a “cross sectional discipline” and a lot of work can be done “across provinces and nations” and there is a need to educate people, he continued.
Castillo acknowledged the regulatory gaps in resource and development when it comes to hydrogen permeation, leak detection, and end to end materials understanding.
“What are we trying to do here is go back a step just for a second and say, once we did the roll up of all the findings, we recognize that there is an opportunity here to solve or provide these concepts that will help us address all of these challenges at once,” he said.
In response to an audience question about the need for collaboration in the industry and incentives for industry to collaborate, Castillo said this is an opportunity for the industry to maintain the narrative and give a solution to the regulator ahead of time.
“In the nuclear industry, we have a lot of experience with accidents, let put it that way, we learned the hard way… by sharing that information, then you are in a better position to prevent accidents from happening.
“We all know that one big accident kind of kills industries,” he said
