University of Sydney
This week John Howard called for an expert review of Australia's nuclear future. Traditional nuclear power production has both advantages and major disadvantages, but whatever side of the fence you sit on the simple truth is that our reliance on fossil fuels must come to an end soon.
Nuclear physicist, Dr Reza Hashemi-Nezhad, a senior research fellow at the University's School of Physics believes that nuclear energy is the answer. However, in order to be sustainable he says we must grapple with the major waste issue imposed by traditional nuclear energy production. He thinks he has the answer in the form of a much greener type of nuclear power generation.
Dr Hashemi-Nezhad is the sole Australian scientist working as part of an international collaboration on Accelerator Driven Systems (ADS), a type of sub-critical fission reactor which harnesses the high energy ion beam generation of an accelerator and the plentiful, radioactive metal, thorium to generate power.
Originally proposed by Italian Nobel physics laureate Carlos Rubbia, the system uses thorium as a fuel and requires a particle beam to keep it running. 'One advantages of thorium over plutonium or uranium is that is that it cannot undergo nuclear fission by itself, and cannot sustain a nuclear chain reaction. If the particle beam is switched off, it is impossible for the fuel to enter a chain reaction and cause a meltdown, like that at Chernobyl,' said Dr Hashemi-Nezhad.
'There is no doubt that environmental and safety features will govern any new development in the field of nuclear energy. In other words the new generation of nuclear power stations must be safe and environmentally friendly,' said Dr Hashemi-Nezhad.
Most importantly thorium is a lighter element than uranium and produces far fewer long-lived radioactive by-products, as a result the waste produced from burning thorium in the reactor is far less radiotoxic with only around 500 years storage necessary until safe. In addition, as no plutonium is produced in the process, the waste cannot be used to produce nuclear weapons.
'An added bonus of the ADS reactor system that is of special interest to major nuclear powers such as the United States, is the ability of suitably designed ADS to incinerate the stockpile of nuclear waste, including the plutonium taken from decommissioned nuclear weapons,' he said
A recently released report by CERN European Organisation for Nuclear Research detailed the financial viability of the ADS system and found that it will be at least three times cheaper than coal and 4.8 times cheaper than natural gas, due to the long life of the reactor.
With around 25 per cent of the world's thorium deposits found in Australia, Dr Hashemi-Nezhad argues it is essential that we take the lead in this new technology. 'The Australian government must make a significant investment in this work. It is also essential for Australian universities to support the training of young scientists in the field of nuclear technology, at present there is an obvious shortage of applied nuclear science skills in Australia,' he said.
'Our calculations shows that the known thorium reserves of Australia are sufficient for clean nuclear energy production for six thousand years at a rate equivalent of two million barrels of oil per day,' said Dr Hashemi-Nezhad.
Dr Hashemi-Nezhad estimates that there should be an operation prototype of the ADS reactor within a couple of years. The next job will be scaling the technology up to the size of a commercial reactor.
Editor's Note: Original news release can be found here.
