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Whatsapp A worker labels yellow barrels containing potentially radioactive material at the former Rheinsberg nuclear power plant.

Australia has a unique opportunity to change the way we generate electricity. Chemist Dr Oscar Archer argues we should set up an international nuclear waste repository to be used as a source of fuel for next-generation nuclear technology.

Energy: I’m a big fan of it. I was taught not to waste it and to save it where possible.

Don't waste electricity, don't waste petrol—it seems obvious.

Here’s a simple experiment for you. Go through your house and turn every light on. Turn on the TVs, the oven, the kettle. Set a jug of water in the microwave on high. Load the toaster and make an espresso. Crank up the air conditioning and the radio. Put your phone and tablet on to charge. Go into the laundry and put a quarter load on hot, and also switch the dryer on. Get in your car and just go for a drive.

The transition to PRISM worldwide would take place on the back of Australia’s pioneering embrace of the technology. Eventually, Australia would export starter bundles of metal fuel from our own PRISM fleet while continuing to derive revenue from the multi-national repository and uranium exports.

You might not feel very comfortable doing all this. After all, it’s obviously an expensive waste of power.

All those extra kilowatt hours also represent carbon going into the atmosphere, which the best science tells us is going to have a big cumulative effect. It will impact the way we live in the long- to medium-term, and maybe even in the short-term.

Does all that make using power something we should actually avoid? Apart from the somewhat higher power bill, that it would make more sense to avoid emitting that carbon. Then we could use all the power we were comfortable paying for. After all, we can't avoid using some power every day, and businesses and factories have to have access to reliable, affordable power or they can't do what they're set up to.

Imagine if when you drove your car, the engine only transformed one percent of the chemical energy from the petrol into power and the remainder was blown out with the exhaust. That'd be crazy, right? We'd want to catch all that waste and recycle it for the remaining energy.

That’s more or less what nuclear power is like today, which brings me to my main point: Australia needs a new, clean, economical form of power. More than that, with the challenges of greenhouse gas emissions, petroleum dependence and the necessity to reduce our use of coal—the single most polluting fuel—we need a revolutionary way of creating energy.

That way is IFS+IFR: Intermediate Fuel Storage and Integral Fast Reactor, namely the commercially offered PRISM breeder reactor from General Electric Hitachi.

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The PRISM plan

The concept was brought to my attention by my friend Ben Heard, and it would work like this: Australia establishes the world’s first multinational repository for used fuel—what's often called nuclear waste. We would do only with an ironclad guarantee our international partners would help us to develop a fleet of integral fast reactors, which would allow us to recycle the used nuclear fuel for another 99 times more zero-carbon energy.

The commitment to PRISM development would negate the need for geological repository on a science fiction timescale. The 30-year half-life of the eventual waste products would allow for far simpler storage solutions on an intermediate time scale. Unblocking the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle for our international partners and customers would boost our uranium exports as nuclear power would pull share from coal in global energy growth.

Each PRISM ‘power block’ set of twin reactors would add 622 megawatts of saleable zero-carbon generation to Australia, which would further improve our revenue position and drive down our domestic energy footprint.

At maturity, Australia would be running on PRISM reactors fuelled by the used fuel we would be receiving, while the world would running on a much larger number of Generation III+ reactors, which we would supply with uranium under a fuel leasing model. The transition to PRISM worldwide would take place on the back of Australia’s pioneering embrace of the technology. Eventually, Australia would export starter bundles of metal fuel from our own PRISM fleet while continuing to derive revenue from the multi-national repository and uranium exports.

All those lights and appliances would no longer be wasting power, but would be contributing to solving global nuclear waste.

Is PRISM safe?

In the context of not just energy production but industrial activity in general, conventional nuclear power is relatively safe and mature. PRISM offers further safety advantages thanks to its liquid sodium metal coolant and metal fuel, which permit the reactor to remove decay heat passively and operate at atmospheric pressure.

EBR-II, the forerunner to PRISM at Argonne National Labs in Idaho, ran for 30 years, during which time entirely passive shutdown due to coolant pump deactivation was thoroughly demonstrated. Heat removal failure was the principle cause of the accidents at the Three Mile Island and Fukushima Daiichi conventional plants, and it is solved in the PRISM design.

In similar scenarios tested with the EBR-II reactor, the sodium coolant and the metallic nature of the nuclear fuel led to thermal expansion, heat removal by natural convection and shutdown of fission in a mere five minutes. Sodium metal is an ideal choice as a coolant as it does not corrode steel or reactor fuel. A number of liquid metal-cooled fast reactors are in operation around the world today, according to the World Nuclear Association, and they have clocked up some four 400 reactor years of operational experience.

What about all the nuclear radiation?

It must be stressed that PRISM's liquid metal-cooled design works at atmospheric pressure; the danger of explosive release of radionuclides or irradiated coolant is negligible. PRISM consumes the remaining uranium, plutonium and other elements in nuclear waste and decommissioned weapons material which are responsible for long-lived radioactivity. The eventual leftovers are just fission products, and their radioactivity will be as low as natural background in just 300 years.

Moreover, the medical effects of radiation attract unwarranted attention and are rarely considered in context. We don't think twice about grilling our food over open flames, but the resulting chemicals are most definitely implicated in a range of cancers. When radioactive materials are kept at some distance and sealed within appropriate containment, we can relax. Such containment has proven successful and safe for decades.

What about solar, wind and other renewables?

Let them compete! Let's not waste the energy that's there for the collecting. I'm in favour of renewables and certainly have no wish to see them restricted for spurious, politically opportunistic reasons. Their fossil fuel-replacing potential is utterly specious, however.

A recent survey of over 1,200 South Australians revealed only 20 percent of people are actually opposed to nuclear power, so those who believe in a 100 per cent renewable future would seem to belong to a vocal minority.

The next steps

The technology and the market are there to be seized, but for Australia to have a shot at being part of the PRISM revolution, we must remove restrictions on the establishment of nuclear installations and set effective regulations under the expanded auspices of our internationally recognised regulatory body, ARPANSA.

We must also level the clean energy playing field. Australia finds itself in the unique position of possessing an abundance of ultra-low emissions fuel—uranium—ideally suited to an energy technology that will directly replace stationary fossil fuel generation, and the safety and design issues have already been worked out.

IFS+IFR won't be without technical challenges, but I believe that all it needs to proceed is popular and political support. Popular support can be built through continued outreach and education; the internet provides universal access to accurate nuclear information and professional analysis which can counter the repetitive messages of fear, uncertainty and doubt. Political support can be expected follow accordingly, but will ideally come from all major parties through sober consideration of the vast suite of benefits relative to the risks.

More countries in our region are considering nuclear power as economic development enhances their standard of living. Australia will appear more regressive for each additional year we shun nuclear, especially as the only OECD country to do so in legislation. We also risk relinquishing any stabilising and guiding influence we might have among our neighbours. We have a window of opportunity to be the leaders in an endeavour that will decarbonise our electricity supply and power our future.

For now, though, you'd better turn all that stuff back off.

Energy and nuclear power Listen to Dr Oscar Archer's full talk on using nuclear waste to generate power at Ockham's Razor.

Ockham’s Razor is a soap box for all things scientific, with short talks about research, industry and policy from people with something thoughtful to say about science.

