Synthetic diesel may be produced from coal or natural gas through the Fischer Tropsch process. The Fischer Tropsch reaction converts syngas, hydrogen, and carbon dioxide to a liquid fuel by using iron or cobalt-based catalysts. The processes for coal-to-diesel and natural gas-to-diesel differ both in syngas production and diesel production.

For the nuclear integrated cases, nuclear-generated heat and electricity are applied to the HTSE process to produce hydrogen for the coal case. Nuclear heat is applied to the reforming, CO2 and sulfur removal, hydrotreating, and product upgrading processes for the natural gas case. Nuclear integration provides significant reduction in coal consumption and CO2 emissions and modest decreases in natural gas consumption [3, 21].