The US will work with Ukraine to build a nuclear hydrogen demonstration project in the war-torn nation, the White House revealed on Friday.

The pilot scheme will “efficiently produce clean hydrogen fuels from SMR [small modular reactor technology] and cutting-edge electrolysis technologies and to establish new avenues to achieve food security through production of clean ammonia for fertilizer production”, it said, as part of a long statement on new initiatives at the COP27 conference in Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt.

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Further details emerged on Saturday, when the office of the US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, John Kerry, explained that the “Ukraine Clean Fuels from SMRs Pilot” had been agreed with Ukrainian energy minister German Galuschenko, and that it would utilise solid-oxide electrolysers (SOEs).

SOEs are well suited to producing “pink” hydrogen from nuclear power, because they can utilise high-temperature waste heat from reactors to significantly increase their operating efficiency, and thus produce more H2 per MWh than alkaline or PEM technology. Round-the-clock operation of electrolysers also reduces the levelised cost of hydrogen.

“The project seeks to support Ukraine’s energy security goals, enable decarbonization of hard-to-abate energy sectors through clean hydrogen generation, and improve long-term food security through clean ammonia-produced fertilizers,” said a statement from Kerry’s office.

No further details of the project, such as the size, location or a construction timeline, have yet been revealed.

The H2 produced at the pilot project would be combined with nitrogen (N) from the air to produce clean ammonia (NH3), which is used directly as a fertiliser, or combined with other chemicals to produce fertilisers such as ammonium nitrate and ammonium sulphate.

Before attacking Ukraine, Russia had been the world’s second-largest supplier of ammonia, accounting for 23% of the global supply — and much of its output had been shipped via Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Pivdennyi, near Odesa, thanks to an ammonia pipeline from Russia that was quickly shut off following the invasion.

And due to Europe’s shift away from Russian gas, and the subsequent high market price of fossil gas — which is almost exclusively used to produce hydrogen today — up to 70% of Europe’s ammonia plants are said to have reduced or suspended production this year.

As so much of the world relies on ammonia fertiliser, the shortage of NH3 has led to concerns about the global food supply, prompting the UN to try to negotiate a deal to enable Russian ammonia to reach global markets via Ukraine.

A host of partners have already been signed up for the SMR hydrogen pilot scheme, including Korean construction giant Samsung C&T, Ukrainian state-owned nuclear power company Energoatom, US fuel-cell marker FuelCell Energy (which is developing solid-oxide electrolysers), Korean conglomerate Doosan, Japanese engineering companies IHI Corporation and JGC Corporation, US SMR designer NuScale Power, and US modular ammonia equipment provider Starfire Energy.

SMRs are generally defined as being smaller than 300MW and are said to be easier to build and more affordable than the familiar gigawatt-scale nuclear power plants in use around the world.

Only one SMR power plant is currently in operation — the 70MW Akademik Lomonosov floating facility anchored off Russia’s Arctic coast — but others are under construction or applying for licences in Argentina, Canada, China, Russia, South Korea and the US, according to the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency.