Thorium Energy Generation Pty Limited

(ACN 125319726 )

Consolidated Submission to the

Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission

Opening Remarks

Thorium Energy Generation (TEG) welcomes the opportunity to submit to this Royal Commission.

Although we have commented on some questions of all issues under consideration, our expertise and ambition lies particularly in the areas covered by Issues Papers 3 and 4.

We have directly answered many questions here, sometimes lengthily, but we urge the Commission to give attention to the appendices and background comments we supply for Issues Papers 3 and 4.

Three of our directors are highly qualified and experienced experts in several fields covered by this Commission and will be available for personal attendance to expand on the matters we present here.

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Issues Paper One

EXPLORATION, EXTRACTION AND MILLING

A . EXPLORATION

1.1. Are there opportunities for new or further exploration activities directed at locating new mineral deposits, or to better understand existing deposits containing economic concentrations of uranium or thorium in South Australia? What specifically are those opportunities? What might understanding those opportunities be reasonably expected to reveal? What needs to be done to understand their potential more clearly?

TEG:

Undoubtedly yes. Conventional exploration for heavy minerals such as that carried out by Iluka in the Eucla Basin will probably lead to additional successful discoveries like Immarna, Jacinth and Ambrosia. However Radiometric techniques could be extended inland in the search for “fossil” strand lines AND young intrusives such as the rare earth bearing trachyte at Dubbo NSW.

1.2. What are the economic conditions including those in resource markets that would be necessary for the financial viability of new exploration activities directed at locating uranium or thorium? Aside from economic conditions, how do factors such as access to investment, skills training, taxation, research and development, innovation and regulation, bear on decisions to invest in new activities? What is most important?

TEG:

We doubt that the Uranium price will provide much incentive and there is no market for Thorium. We believe that the latter requires government intervention to mandate the storage of monazite and other Thorium bearing minerals. There may need to be some financial incentive for this.

1.3. What might be necessary to encourage further exploration for uranium and thorium? What might be done to promote viability? Are existing government plans sufficient? Could support be provided in other ways and, if so, how could that be done most effectively? Is there a sufficient availability of information from exploration activities previously undertaken?

TEG: see our answer to 1.2. There is not enough geophysical data covering the State.

B. EXTRACTION AND MILLING

TEG has no input to this section

C. RISKS AND OPPORTUNITIES

TEG has no input to this section.

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Issues Paper Two

FURTHER PROCESSING OF MINERALS AND MANUFACTURE OF MATERIALS CONTAINING RADIOACTIVE AND NUCLEAR SUBSTANCES

Introduction

TEG believes difficult questions arise here: On the one hand a trade in enriched uranium must be highly regulated and controlled otherwise it is a dangerous spectre which should be avoided.

Australia has the world’s largest uranium reserves. This uranium is exported to different countries with the expectation that it will be used for electricity generation. So far all countries that were recipients of Australian uranium were signatories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), but there have always been concerns that the exported uranium could be used illegally for militarily applications and nuclear weapon production.

TEG believes that in future Australia should be involved in export of Low-enriched-uranium (LEU) in the form of manufactured fuel- elements/fuel-bundles. In such cases one needs to be certain that the exported LEU will not be illegally further enriched to the weapon grade level.

TEG has access to a technology (which has the IAEA approval) that could provide a solution to above mentioned problems. Such a solution will have international implications and will facilitate the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

It is possible to achieve these goals by denaturing the uranium. As a result the uranium will be traceable well beyond the enrichment and reactor fuel fabrication stages. Such denaturing will prevent further enrichment of the exported LEU.

A. FURTHER PROCESSING

2.1. Could the activities of conversion, enrichment, fabrication or reprocessing (or an aspect of those activities) feasibly be undertaken in South Australia? What technologies, capabilities or infrastructure would be necessary for their feasible establishment? How could any shortcomings be addressed?

TEG:

We believe that there should be a reprocessing industry in South Australia. Provided massive security provisions could be guaranteed throughout the transport routes, a viable enrichment capability, using modern methods such as the Australian developed SILEX laser is quite feasible.

In this case local fabrication would be an important value adder to South Australia's Uranium industry.

From our company's point of view we know that we could install a viable high level waste destruction facility that would serve customers worldwide. We see this as a unique opportunity to create enormous wealth for South Australia. Details of our actinide transmuting accelerator driven Thorium reactor proposal are provided elsewhere in this submission.

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B. MANUFACTURE

2.2. Would it be feasible for South Australia to assume a greater role in manufacturing materials containing radioactive and nuclear substances? What factors need to be taken into account in making that determination? Which factors are most important and why?

TEG: Clearly the answer is yes. For many of the medical products a cyclotron would be effective. One factor though is the demand vs. half-life time factor, and many larger hospitals have their own linear accelerator or cyclotron. However for higher energy beams and much essential fundamental and industrial research, the accelerator component of our proposed Thorium reactor would receive worldwide custom complementing the important role of Victoria's Australian Synchrotron.

2.3. What legislative and regulatory arrangements would need to be in place to facilitate further processing and further manufacturing activities, including the transport of the products which they generate? How could these arrangements be developed so that they are most effective?

TEG: Firstly many Federal and State laws must be changed, as the Commission already knows. There must be a genuine political will to encourage a modern, safe and viable nuclear science industry in Australia. TEG has progressed its programme in the Czech Republic, Ukraine and Russia because it was discouraged in Australia by some very senior State and Federal politicians.

Secondly Australia (including South Australia) must take a much more active role within the International Atomic Energy Agency. We see this as an urgently needed shift in current political attitudes.

C. VIABILITY

2.4. What are the projections for future supply and demand for conversion, enrichment, fuel fabrication or reprocessing activities? What is the evidence to support those projections? Might it be viable for one or more of those activities, or an aspect of them, to be established in South Australia in the medium or long term? What is the reason for thinking that would be so? What conditions would be necessary for that to be viable?

TEG: We do not believe projections in this business can be as meaningful as they might be in some commodity trades or manufacturing industries (Automotive, e.g. ?). Feasibility and viability of such enterprises as fuel fabrication or waste destruction will inevitably involve top level bilateral government involvement and will be assured of commercial sustainability.

We feel confident that a South Australian enterprise could attract customers from India, China, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia etc.

2.5. Could South Australia viably increase its participation in manufacturing materials containing radioactive and nuclear substances? Why or why not? What evidence is there about this issue? What new or emerging technologies are being developed which might impact this decision?

TEG: Our answer to 2.2 applies.

D. RISKS AND OPPORTUNITIES

TEG has no input to this section.

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Issues Paper Three

ELECTRICITY GENERATION FROM NUCLEAR FUELS

Introduction: These issues are considered in the following context

1. Proposed installations can be completed by 2030 and be adequate to serve their intended purpose for 40 years thereafter.

2. TEG has world leading expertise in the Thorium fuel cycle and appends a detailed description of accelerator driven Thorium reactors – with particular reference to “incineration” or destruction by transmutation of high level radionuclide wastes that otherwise remain an unsolved global scourge for the Uranium industry.

3. There are actually two principle power systems in Australia :

a. the electricity generation and reticulation installations. Power stations and “poles and wires”. This supplied 210.5 Twh in 2008-9 and is decreasing [ABS]

b. the vehicular fuel system. Large storage terminals and very numerous retail outlets fed by road or rail tankers. This supplied 300.7 Twh in 2010 [ABS]

In the future the NEM must accommodate a swing from petroleum fuelled transport to electric vehicles. Starting at about 10% in 2030, this will eventually require duplication of the national Grid

Please take note of Appendices 3.1 and 3.2

A. NUCLEAR FUELS AND ELECTRICITY GENERATION

3.1. Are there suitable areas in South Australia for the establishment of a nuclear reactor for generating electricity? What is the basis for that assessment?

TEG: Yes. The two coal fired power stations near Port Augusta should be replaced as soon as possible by 2 -3 GigaWatts of Nuclear power.

This is because the necessary infrastructure for cooling and reticulation is already there to accommodate more than 1 GW and is connected to the National Grid.

NB Major risk! Although underlain by late proterozoic sediments on an ancient crystalline craton, this region has suffered 3 major earthquakes within a hundred year period [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List of earthquakes in Australia] and if Uranium reactors are employed a major and expensive containment structure is required. This is the largest capital item, which is why the generating capacity must be large base-load. No such problem arises with accelerator driven Thorium reactors, but the installation would ideally be a mix of complementary Uranium and Thorium facilities.

3.2. Are there commercial reactor technologies (or emerging technologies which may be commercially available in the next two decades) that can be installed and connected to the NEM? If so, what are those technologies, and what are the characteristics that make them technically suitable? What are the characteristics of the NEM that determine the suitability of a reactor for connection?

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TEG: Yes. Modern safe Uranium fuelled plants are almost “off the shelf” from a variety of manufacturers. One of these should be chosen to be large base load connection to the NEM. Such a nuclear power plant requires a waste disposal facility for which the only safe option is a thorium fuelled Accelerator Driven System (please see the Appendix 3.1)

3.3. Are there commercial reactor technologies (or emerging technologies which may be commercially available in the next two decades) that can be installed and connected in an off-grid setting? If so, what are those technologies, and what are the characteristics that make them technically suitable? What are the characteristics of any particular off-grid setting that determine the suitability of a reactor for connection?

TEG: Yes. The accelerator driven Thorium reactor (ADS) we describe in Appendix 3.1 is scalable from 10 MegaWatts to more than 1 Gigawatt and can be built for about the same cost as a gas-fired installation of similar power, but will be much cheaper to run.

B. VIABILITY OF ELECTRICITY GENERATION IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA

3.4. What factors affect the assessment of viability for installing any facility to generate electricity in the NEM? How might those factors be quantified and assessed? What are the factors in an off-grid setting exclusively? How might they be quantified and assessed?

TEG: The World price of energy, almost exclusively. Community pressures and environmental concerns and the emergence of the real costs of coal mine rehabilitation will tend to align this to the world price for LNG. This should result in community reassessment of the nuclear options.

In the off-grid setting the comparative factor will be the cost of delivery of fuel oil or natural gas. In many cases a small ADT reactor will be the cheapest option.

3.6. What are the specific models and case studies that demonstrate the best practice for the establishment and operation of new facilities for the generation of electricity from nuclear fuels?What are the less successful examples? Where have they been implemented in practice? What relevant lessons can be drawn from them if such facilities were established in South Australia?

TEG: There is no better example than Norway, which leads the world in Wind Farm Technology, yet must buy electricity from France. France, China and India are all successfully dependent on nuclear technology in various stages of maturity

3.7. What place is there in the generation market, if any, for electricity generated from nuclear fuels to play in the medium or long term? Why? What is the basis for that prediction including the relevant demand scenarios?

TEG: Over the longer term we expect electricity generated from nuclear fuels to be cheaper than that from natural gas. However the importance of natural gas as the best transition energy source should not be overlooked. But the UK NorthSea Gas experience should be a salutary lesson to Australian planners. Not only that, but emerging experience from so-called unconventional gas (coal seam gas and shale gas) indicates that there are severe environmental problems, delivery problems and cost blow-outs.

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In these circumstances the nuclear option must be attractive.

C. ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF DIFFERENT TECHNOLOGIES AND FUEL SOURCES; RISKS AND OPPORTUNITIES

Please refer to Appendix 3.1 for coverage of questions 3.8 – 3.13

APPENDIX 3. 1

ELECTRICITY GENERATION FROM NUCLEAR FUELS

Climate change and global warming are related to the increase of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere produced from massive consumption of fossil fuel all over the world, dominated by industrial countries (including Australia). This issue clearly noted and acknowledged in the page 15 of the submission guide line of the Royal Commission.

Besides the greenhouse effect, resulting from the massive consumption of fossil fuels, it is now well established that within the first half of the current century there will be a shortage of fossil fuel (mainly oil and natural gas). Such a fossil fuel shortage will be accelerated because of improvement in the living standard of the so-called “Third World” countries and the heavy industrialization of the “emerging countries” such as China, India and some Latin American countries.

Due to the greenhouse gas induced global warming and the exhaustion of fossil fuel, nuclear energy provides an attractive and logical solution for the world energy problem. However the worldwide public and specifically Australian public concerns on the safety of the nuclear power plants impose a precondition on any decision on the nuclear energy production. The public as well as politicians and scientists concerns on the safety of the nuclear energy generation, has been significantly intensified after very serious nuclear accidents in Chernobyl (Ukraine) and Fukushima (Japan). Therefore in order to have public acceptance of Nuclear Energy the new generation of nuclear power plants in South Australia and any other state of Australia must be dramatically safer than current reactors and at the same time they must be highly environmentally friendly.

Although designs of the Generation III and generation IV nuclear reactors have several redundant safety barriers and failure of one trigger the activation of a new safety barrier, but none of these barriers can eliminate by 100% the possibility of criticality accidents. Moreover the new generation of the uranium burning critical reactors do not provide any solution to the problems associated with the nuclear waste.

For many years, there have been investigations on the possibility of obtaining nuclear energy using a different method from that of the conventional nuclear reactors and which is safer and less expensive. Now such method is available.

A NEW METHOD OF NUCLEAR ENERGY PRODUCTION

The conventional nuclear reactors operate at critical condition. The criticality of a nuclear assembly is determined by the effective neutron multiplication coefficient keff .

When keff =1, the number of fissions in each succeeding generation is a constant and the chain fission reaction initiated in the system will continue at a constant rate. Such a

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system is said to be at a critical conditions. If keff > 1 the number of fission in the system increases with each succeeding generation and the chain reaction diverges; the corresponding condition is referred to as supercritical. On the other hand, if keff < 1 the number of fission in the system decreases with each succeeding generation and as a result the chain reaction will eventually die out. Such nuclear system is called subcritical.

All of the conventional nuclear reactors operate in critical conditions and in a very narrow range of the neutron multiplication coefficient. Outside of this range either the reactor fades out or becomes supercritical and overheats.

In a subcritical reactor, the number of neutrons originating from fission is not sufficient to overcome the neutron losses (due to leaks and absorption by materials within the reactor). Therefore, under no circumstances in a subcritical nuclear assembly a chain reaction can be self-sustaining. In order for the fission reaction to proceed, a subcritical system must be fed continuously with neutrons from an external source.

Irradiation of a heavy metallic target (such as lead) with relativistic ions (such as proton, deuteron, ...) produces copious amount of neutrons by spallation of the target nuclei, see e.g. Refs.[1-3]. For example 30 neutrons are produced by irradiation of a sufficiently large lead target with 1 GeV protons.

The idea of constructing a subcritical nuclear reactor (keff < 1) and introducing externally produced neutrons into the subcritical assembly in order to maintain a chain reaction is sometimes attributed to Tolstov from the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, JINR, Dubna, Russia [4,5], although his works were published only as JINR preprints. Bowman et al, (Los Alamos National Laboratory, LANL, USA) [6,7], suggested using neutrons produced in the interaction of high energy protons with a lead target to transmute long-lived radioactive waste nuclei into short-lived or into stable isotopes. Carlo Rubbia [8,9], the joint winner of the 1984 physics Noble prize introduced this idea more openly into the public forum in scientific publications and public lectures.

Our research on accelerator driven subcritical nuclear reactors has started around 1993 and still is on-going. The material and statements given in this submission (although too brief and in rather general terms) are based on more than 20 years of theoretical and experimental work in the world’s best known nuclear laboratories.

A nuclear reactor operating under subcritical conditions and driven by an accelerator is generally referred to as an Accelerator Driven System (ADS). The CERN group (Carlo Rubbia’s group [8,9]) uses the term Energy Amplifier (EA) for this type of reactor.

In an Accelerator Driven System, external source consists of neutrons created by spallation process when a beam of protons of intermediate energy interacts with a heavy metal target. The multiplicity of neutrons depends on the incident ion beam type, ion energy, target material type and size [10]. For a given ion beam energy and target, the supply of neutrons is proportional to the ion beam intensity.

Although the idea of using an external source of neutrons to sustain chain reaction in a subcritical nuclear assembly is a few decades old, it has become a realistic option due to recent massive progress in accelerator and computer technologies. After about seventy years of experience in accelerator technology the energy efficiency and reliability of these machines have reached an industrial level. Also progress in computing power as well as development of computer codes for study and simulations of particle and radiation production in nuclear interactions and their transport in complex systems, material behaviour under different and extreme conditions, thermodynamics of the complex thermal systems, nuclear material burn-

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up and production in the system etc allowed simulating in detail the behaviour of the Accelerator Driven Systems under different realistic conditions [see 11,12].

PROBLEMS ASSOCIATED WITH CONVENTIONAL CRITICAL NUCLEAR REACTORS

There are four major problems associated with the current conventional nuclear reactors such as pressurized water reactors (PWR) or light water reactors (LWR) in general;

1) Inefficient use of the nuclear fuel in the current thermal reactors. The abundance of 235U, which is the main fuel of these reactors, has only ~1/140th of the abundance of the natural uranium. The remaining ~99.3% of the mined uranium is not used in the fuel cycle.

Table 1 gives the inventory of a 1 GWe PWR at loading and discharge [13]. At loading the uranium is 3.5% enriched. However at the discharge 1.03% of the 235U has not been used for energy generation. This implies that from natural uranium only 0.5% is consumed in the PWR. It should be noted that a significant amount of 235U is converted to 236U via (n, ) reactions and have not contributed to energy production.

Table 1. Inventory of 1GWe PWR at loading and discharge using 3.5% enriched uranium fuel

Nuclides Loading (kg) Discharge (kg)

235U 954 280

236U 111

238U 26328 25655

U total 27282 26047

239Pu 56

Pu total 266

Minor actinides 20

90Sr 13

137Cs 30

Long-lived fission products 63

Fission products total 946

Total mass 27282 27279

2) Production of long lived (in geological scale) nuclear waste (one of main concerns of the public).

3) Safety issues and possibilities of nuclear accidents, however remote in new generation of critical reactors (another main concern of the public).

4) Unavoidable production of fissile material (239Pu), (Table 1) which can be diverted to military applications (yet another concern of the public as well as governments).

In the 21st century the new generation of nuclear power plants must have solutions for all of these problems.

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At present only thorium fuelled Accelerator Driven subcritical reactors provide such solutions (as very briefly given below)-

SOLUTIONS TO THE PROBLEMS ASSOCIATED WITH CURRENT CRITICAL REACTORS

Solution to the inefficient use of the nuclear fuel

The fuel of accelerator driven subcritical reactor (233U or 239Pu) is bred from natural thorium or uranium (238U) via the following reactions:

)2(

)1(

239)32(

239)523(

239238

233)27(

233)422(

233232

2/12/1

2/12/1

PuNpUnU

andUPaThnThmtmt

dtmt

==

==

−−

−−

→→→+

→→→+ββ

ββ

The end product of both reactions is fissile material that can be used as fuel in ADS. Both of these elements (uranium and thorium) are abundantly available in Australia. Australia has the world's largest RAR of uranium recoverable at costs of less than US$80 a kilogram, with more than 40 per cent of world resources in this category [14]. Australia also has the world’s largest Thorium resources (485,000 tones, 21.4% of the world total) [15].

In both of the above fuel breeding processes almost 100% of mined uranium or thorium can be converted to fissile material and burnt in the ADS. It should be noted that fuel breeding happens within ADS while it is producing energy.

The 232Th option is preferred to 238U because, thorium is more abundant than uranium in the earth’s crust (by a factor of 3-4), and because of other reasons given in the following.

Solution to the nuclear waste problem

The issue of nuclear waste will be discussed in another section of this submission. Here we briefly mention that;

a) By using the more abundant fuel (thorium) very long-lived (geological scale) Plutonium and minor actinide radiotoxic waste (Table. 1) will not be produced. It must be noted that in a uranium burning reactor most of the radiotoxicity of the spent fuel results from plutonium isotopes.

b) As ADS operates in sub-critical conditions, there is a very large excess of neutrons in the system. The excess neutrons can be used to transmute long-lived radioactive waste (such as the fission products) to short-lived or even stable isotope species via neutron capture process (more details will be given in other parts of this submission).

In other words, an ADS produces its own fuel and incinerates its own long-lived nuclear wastes as well as the waste from existing conventional critical reactors.

Solution to the nuclear safety issue

An ADS will operate under sub-critical conditions (e.g , keff = 0.95-0.98) and the operation of the reactor is directly linked to the operation of the attached accelerator which provides a high energy ion beam to produce spallation neutrons within the ADS. These neutrons keep the ADS operational i.e. the system remains operational as long as the accelerator functions. The ion beam also plays the role of the control rods in the current reactors, with the difference that in the current reactors failure of the control rods leads to core overheat and possibly meltdown while in ADS if the ion beam fails, the fission reaction in the system will die out and it can never lead to supercriticality and overheating.

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Overall cost of electricity production via ADS

Although cost of energy production by means of uranium burning conventional reactors is comparable to that of coal powered power stations [16] it would be favourable if this cost is further reduced. The cost of energy productions by ADS using thorium will be less than that of the current nuclear reactors because:

1) Thorium is much more abundant than uranium in the Earth’s crust and therefore cheaper.

2) Almost all of the 232Th can be converted to ADS fuel without possibilities of its diversion to military applications.

3) No fuel enrichment and associated cost is required.

4) The control system of the ADS is much less sophisticated than that of the current reactors and therefore less expensive.

5) The nuclear waste handling and storage cost is far less than the conventional reactors.

OUTPUT POWER OF THE ADS

Energy gain in ADS depends on the multiplicity of the neutrons in spallation process and effective neutron multiplication factor of the subcritical nuclear assembly, both of which are adjustable and depends on overall design of the system. In principle one intends to obtain maximum gain for a given input power in a safe subcritical condition.

Understanding of the neutron yield and spectrum in the interaction of the relativistic ions with different target materials is of the utmost importance in the operation and power output of sub-critical accelerator driven systems. This is one of the parameters that have been investigated intensively by us [see e.g. 10, 17,18]. For this purpose different incident ions of different energies (up to 8 GeV) from Nuclotron accelerator of the JINR, on lead and uranium targets were used.

Figure 1 illustrates results of our calculations on the neutron yield per unit energy (1 GeV) for a lead target as a function of incident ion (proton and deuteron) energy. Lead target has a diameter of 20 cm and length greater than range of the ions in lead. From this figure it is obvious that neutron yield increases rapidly with increasing energy then flattens at ion energies greater than 1 GeV.

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Fig. 1. Spallation neutron yield per unit energy of the incident ion as a function of ion energy for a lead target of diameter 20 cm and length larger than the range of the ions in lead. [10]

Figure 2a illustrates the energy gain of an ADS with a lead target of diameter 20 cm and length greater than 60 cm as a function of effective neutron multiplication factor. Also shown in Figure 2a is the variation with keff of the fraction of ADS output power that is required to operate the driving accelerator. It can be seen that for the example given here, at keff values greater than 0.75 the output power of ADS is more than the power required to operate the driving accelerator.

From Figure 2a it is evident that at safe subcriticality of keff = 0.95 and keff = 0.98 energy gains of G = 37 (i.e 37 times the input energy) and G = 94 (i.e. 94 times the input energy) can be achieved, respectively. The fraction of ADS output power required to operate the accelerator for keff = 0.95 and keff = 0.98 is 15% and 6%, respectively. The overall power of the ADS depends on the energy gain and incident ion intensity (beam current).

Figure 2. (a) ADS energy gain as a function of effective neutron multiplication factor keff, when its lead target was irradiated with 1 GeV protons. Also shown in Fig. 2a is the variation with keff, of the fraction of ADS

output power required to operate the accelerator, (b) Energy gain as function of incident ion energy at two different neutron multiplication factors of 0.95 and 0.98. The diameter and length of the lead target was 20 cm

and 170 cm, respectively.

Figure 2b illustrates the energy gain of the ADS with a lead target of diameter 20 cm and length longer than the range of incident protons in lead as a function of the incident ion energy (proton in this case). Again one can see that above proton energy of 1 GeV the energy gain reaches to a plateau and no further energy gain achieved by increasing the incident ion energy (i.e. the accelerator power).

By adjusting above mentioned variables as well as the beam intensity it is possible to design and build accelerator driven systems with required output power in the range of as low as 5 MWth to 1000 MWe. This becomes a highly attractive option for regions which are far away from the main electricity grid as well as for industries which use very large amount of electricity e.g. mining companies or metallurgical factories.

WHAT TYPE OF ADS IS A PREFERRED OPTION?

Choice of moderator

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An accelerator driven subcritical reactor can be a thermal or fast system, depending on the type of neutron moderator material is used. In thermal ADS neutrons may be moderated by heavy water or graphite [19, 20]. However a preferred option is a fast ADS in which liquid metal (lead or lead-bismuth eutectic) is used as neutron moderator. In a liquid metal cooled ADS the characteristics of the neutron spectrum within ADS is more suitable for burn-up of the minor actinide.

A lead moderated and cooled ADS can be designed in a way that the heat transfer to be done by means of natural convection [9] without the use of electric pumps to circulate the moderator. This adds another safety barrier to the ADS and the problem of pump failure in the primary loop of the reactor is eliminated.

Choice of fuel type

Besides the moderator options in the ADS liquid or solid fuels may be used. The most well-known liquid fuel critical reactor is the Molten Salt Reactor (MSR). There is several safety issues associated with the critical MSR. However if MSR is designed to be subcritical and accelerated driven, then some of the safety issues will be resolved.

The second fuel type option is the solid fuel. This is our preferred choice because of safety and sustainability that come with it. There is plenty of experience in solid nuclear fuel manufacturing. Such a solid thorium fuelled in ADS will be much safer, stable than a Molten Salt fluoride fuel.

It is important to mention that, choice of thorium rather than uranium as ADS fuel is only to avoid production of plutonium and minor actinides which are the most troublesome nuclear waste materials. In other sections of this submission we will highlight how it is possible to use both of these fuel materials (which are abundantly available in Australia) and at the same time solve the nuclear waste problem.

Therefore we purpose that South Australia to be a pioneer in establishing ADS power plant system in Australia. This will place SA state and Australia among several developed and industrial countries which are moving in this direction.

ECONOMIC BENEFITS OF ADS AND THORIUM FUEL CYCLE TO AUSTRALIA

As already mentioned known thorium resources of Australia is 485,000 tones. If this amount of thorium is burnt in ADS it will produce energy equivalent of 6.9×1012 barrels of oil having a value of 345 trillion dollars at today’s oil price of $50 per barrel.

In the period of 2013 – 2014 National Electricity Market electricity consumption of Australia was 193.6 TWh. If the known thorium resources of Australia are used for electricity generation it will generate 1.16×107 TWh of electricity which is equivalent of 59,900 years (599 centuries) of electricity supply at the rate of 193.6 TWh per year.

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Appendix 3.2:The advent of Electric Vehicles: source RAC,UK.

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Motor Vehicles in Australia: source ABS

Power consumed by motor vehicles in Australia: source ABS.I Litre = 9.7 Kw.h.

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Issues Paper Four

MANAGEMENT, STORAGE AND DISPOSAL OF NUCLEAR AND RADIOACTIVE WASTE

A. NUCLEAR AND RADIOACTIVE WASTE NO QUESTIONS.

B. FACILITIES AND TECHNIQUES FOR THE MANAGEMENT, STORAGE AND DISPOSAL OF WASTE

4.1 Are the physical conditions in South Australia, including its geology, suitable for the establishment and operation of facilities to store or dispose of intermediate or high level waste either temporarily or permanently? What are the relevant conditions? What is the evidence that suggests those conditions are suitable or not? What requires further investigation now and in the future?

TEG: The environmental effects of permanent (~ 1 million years) storage of nuclear waste in geological repository presently are not known. With the current knowledge on the chemical and physical behaviour of the nuclear waste materials and their containers over time scales compared to the half-lives of the relevant nuclear waste materials such as Plutonium, minor actinides and fission products 129I, 99Tc, permanent storage of the nuclear waste is not recommended at any part of Australia including South Australia.

However Nuclear Waste Incineration facility based on thorium fuelled ADS (TADS) is highly recommended for following reasons:

i. Such facility will be a safe nuclear power plant (with the advantages as described in energy production section of this submission) which will burn fissionable nuclear waste to produce huge amount energy and will transmute long-lived fission products to stable spices or to nuclei with much shorter half-lives, i.e. TADS will;

a. Produce large amount of energy by burning transuranic waste nuclei.

b. Will eliminate the requirements for underground Geological Repository, for storage of high-level nuclear waste for a VERY long time of ~ one million years.

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ii. The cost of establishment of TADS will be far less than cost of establishing an underground geological repository and cost of MAINTANCE and SAFEGUARD of such repository for hundreds of thousands of years.

iii. A TADS will produce electricity which not only will compensate its establishment cost, it will be a highly profitable establishment.

iv. If a TADS established in South Australia then such a system can;

a. Process and incinerate nuclear waste of any NPP (uranium or thorium fuelled reactors) in South Australia and any other states of Australia.

b. Process and incinerate stock piles of nuclear waste around the world, produced by uranium burning NPP over several decades. Such an establishment can bring massive amount of foreign currency to South Australia.

c. A nuclear waste processing and incineration facility in South Australia (i.e. establishment of TADS) will reduce the cost of nuclear energy production dramatically due to the fact that expenses required for unsafe storage of the waste material will be eliminated and because of the wealth generated by the energy production from incineration of the nuclear waste.

d. Due to the fact that TADS requires fuel processing and handling of the fissile plutonium, not every country can have the permission from IAEA to establish TADS facilities, While Australia can.

v. We believe underground storage for low level and intermediate nuclear wastes is acceptable and further studies for its most suitable place in South Australia is required , especially the sites of the existing underground uranium mines need to be investigated.

4.2 Are there nuclear or radioactive wastes produced in Australia which could be stored at a facility in South Australia? In what circumstances would the holders of those wastes seek to store or dispose of that waste at facilities in South Australia?

TEG: Refer to above section.

4.3 Would the holders of nuclear or radioactive waste outside Australia seek to store or dispose of that waste in South Australia? Who holds that waste? What evidence is there that they are seeking options to store or dispose of wastes elsewhere including in locations like South Australia? If so, what kinds of waste and what volumes might be expected? What would the holders be willing to pay and under what arrangements?

TEG has no input to this section.

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4.4 What sorts of mechanisms would need to be established to fund the costs associated with the future storage or disposal of either Australian or international nuclear or radioactive wastes? Are there relevant models in operation which should be considered? What mechanisms need to be put in place to increase the likelihood that the South Australian community, and relevant parts of it, derive a benefit from that activity?

TEG: The cost of TADS will be same as the cost of establishment of a thorium burning ADS plus a fuel processing facility. Such fuel processing facility is needed regardless that South Australia wants its nuclear waste incineration facility to be national or international.

Private investors are more than happy to participate in the establishment of TADS if government of South Australia and federal government approve and support such an activity.

C. RISKS AND OPPORTUNITIES

4.5 What are the specific models and case studies that demonstrate the best practice for the establishment, operation and regulation of facilities for the storage or disposal of nuclear or radioactive waste? What are the less successful examples? Where have they been implemented in practice? What new methods have been proposed? What lessons can be drawn from them?

TEG: Currently no scientifically and technologically proven storage method exist to be reliable for hundreds of thousands of years which is required for waste material to decay and reach to the acceptable radioactivity level. No storage facility can be guaranteed for more than 1000 years. The storage time for nuclear waste of ADS is ~500 years which can be achieved safely with today’s technology.

4.6 What are the security implications created by the storage or disposal of intermediate or high level waste at a purpose-built facility? Could those risks be addressed? If so, by what means?

TEG: As the security issues related to a geological repository needs to be assessed for a period of hundreds of centuries, such estimation never can be reliable.

4.7 What are the processes that would need to be undertaken to build confidence in the community generally, or specific communities, in the design, establishment and operation of such facilities?

TEG: We believe and evidence proves it that the Australian public never will agree with the establishment of national and especially international high level nuclear waste storage facility in any part of Australia. For last fifty years due to public opposition it has not been possible to establish a permanent storage facility for small amount of nuclear waste produced by the research reactor(s) in ANSTO.

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However there is much more chance of public acceptance of a thorium based TADS nuclear waste incineration facility if the advantages of such facility professionally and clearly explained to the communities. As it is noted in the other parts of this submission, a TADS MUST be fuelled by thorium and not uranium, because in the latter case uranium fuel will result in production of transuranic nuclear waste isotopes and will neutralize the incineration process.

4.8 Bearing in mind the measures that would need to be taken in design and siting, what risks for health and safety would be created by establishing facilities to manage, store and dispose of nuclear or radioactive waste? What needs to be done to ensure that risks do not exceed safe levels? Can anything be done to better understand those risks?

TEG has no input to this section

4.9 Bearing in mind the measures that would need to be taken in design and siting, what environmental risks would the establishment of such facilities present? Are there strategies for managing those risks? If not, what strategies would need to be developed? How would any current approach to management need to be changed or adapted?

TEG has no input to this section

4.10 What are the risks associated with transportation of nuclear or radioactive wastes for storage or disposal in South Australia? Could existing arrangements for the transportation of such wastes be applied for this purpose? What additional measures might be necessary?

TEG has no input to this section

APPENDIX 4.1Nuclear waste processing and disposal

As already mentioned high power ion accelerators make it possible to use Accelerator Driven Systems (ADS) for energy production as well as for nuclear waste incineration. The sub-criticality is the key issue and is the main advantage of ADS over conventional nuclear systems that operate only in critical conditions. A sub-critical ADS provides the opportunity to use the excess neutrons available in the system, for other purposes such as nuclear waste transmutation as well as for breeding of fissile material from fertile isotopes such as 232Th and 238U (equations 1 and 2).

It is suggested that an effective method for nuclear waste transmutation is to use non-thermal neutron captures in the resonance regions of the absorption cross section of the waste isotopes [21, 22]. This method is known as Transmutation by Adiabatic Resonance Crossing (TARC). A neutron spectrum suitable for TARC can be obtained when spallation neutrons are moderated in lead. The transmutations of the long-lived nuclear waste isotopes such as 99Tc (t1/2 = 2.1 10 5 y) and 129I (t1/2 = 1.6 10 7 y) have been studied by this method [22]. It has

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been also shown that 129I, 237Np (t1/2 = 2.14 10 6 y) and 239Pu (t1/2 = 2.44 10 4 y) can be transmuted at quite acceptable rates in slow neutron dominated ADS as well [23,24].

Transmutation process

The aim of the nuclear waste incineration is to destroy or transmute a given long-lived nuclear waste isotope to a nuclear species that is either stable or has a half-life that is much shorter than that of the original waste isotope itself. For trans-uranic isotopes the fission process is a very effective way of incineration. However, some of these isotopes have very small fission cross-section (e.g. 237Np, f = 19 mb), but (n, ) and other nuclear processes on the waste isotopes may transfer them to nuclei that have much higher fission cross-section. Figure 3 shows some incineration channels for trans-uranic isotopes starting with 241Am [19, 25].

Figure 3. Transmutation and incineration of some trans-uranic waste isotopes. The cross-section values are for thermal neutrons [19].

Calculations show that even in a lead neutron-moderating environment where energetic neutrons are more abundant than say in a graphite moderator, the contribution of the (n, xn) reaction is 2-3 orders of magnitude less than those of fission and (n, ) reactions [[17,20]. Therefore, although -decay (Figure 3) and (n, xn) reactions can lead to the

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incineration of trans-uranic waste isotopes, contribution of these two phenomena will not be significant (due to very long half-lives of the - decaying nuclei and because of relatively low cross section for (n, xn) reactions). Therefore, for trans-uranic nuclei only the rates of fission and neutron capture reactions will be important.

For fission products (fission fragments, FF) neutron capture will be the main incineration channel. Among the most dangerous fission fragments are 99Tc and 129I which could be transmuted via (n, ) to stable isotopes of 100Ru and 130Xe, respectively.

(4) )()1057.1(

(3) )()1011.2(

130)5.12(

13072/1

129

100)15(

10052/1

99

2/1

2/1

stableXeInyearstI

stableRuTcnyearstTc

ht

st

=

=

−

−

→→+×=

→→+×=

β

β

The excess neutrons in suitably designed ADS can be used to transmute the stockpile of the nuclear waste that has been accumulated over the last 70 years of operation of the conventional critical nuclear reactors. The final nuclear waste of the ADS requires only ~500 years of storage time (which is safely manageable with today’s technology) to bring its activity to the level of coal ash [26]. This must be compared with the geological scale storage time required for the nuclear waste of current nuclear reactors.

Transmutation of transuranic elements present in nuclear waste by fission process within ADS, produce large amount of energy which is an added benefit. From now on we will refer to an accelerator driven system designed for transmutation purpose as Transmutation ADS (TADS).

A TADS facility requires a fuel processing facility as well. In order to avoid long distance inland transportation of nuclear waste material (including plutonium), such a processing unit is required to be in the vicinity of the TADS for safety, security and environmental reasons.

We re-emphasise that the transmutation and incineration of nuclear waste is not possible in critical reactors. Insertion of excess nuclear waste isotopes in the reactor core is equivalent of increasing reactor poison which destabilises the neutron balance in the reactor and therefore the criticality of the nuclear assembly.

There is a massive amount of nuclear waste around the world which has been produced by the operation of civil and non-civil critical uranium burning reactors. These nuclear waste stockpiles provide a serious environmental hazard to mankind and needs to be dealt with as soon as possible. Table 1 gives the spent fuel inventories in cooling ponds and dry-cask storage at the end of 2007 for 10 countries.

Table.1. Spent fuel inventories in cooling ponds and dry-cask storage at the end of 2007 for 10 countries.

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A more detailed example of nuclear waste stock pile is given in Table 2 for France which produces about 75% of its electricity from nuclear energy [27].

Table 2.

The composition of the spent fuel depends on the burn-up. For LWR of power 3000 MW thermal (equivalent to ~1000 MW electric) the burn-up will be ~50 GWd/tHM. The spent fuel of such reactor consists of about 93.4% uranium (~0.8% of which is U-235), 5.2% fission products, 1.2% plutonium and 0.2% minor actinides.

In the processing facility uranium is separated from spent fuel for further use especially U-235 which could be recycled into the LWR for energy production. Then in TADS the long-lived fission products such as 99Tc and 129I are transmuted to stable isotopes as shown by equations 3 and 4. Plutonium and other transuranic waste material are incinerated by fission process (and produce energy).

Initial activity of the radioactive fission fragments (5.2% of total mass of the spent fuel) is dominated by Strontium (with half-life of 29.1 years) and Cesium (with a half-life of 30.2 years). These can be stored in cooling ponds above ground or underground storage facilities until their activities reach to a manageable level (LLW).

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