Moltex Energy 13, the Courtyard Timothys Bridge Road Stratford Upon Avon CV37 9NP UK

Moltex Energy 13, The Courtyard Timothys Bridge Road Stratford Upon Avon CV37 9NP UK

5th September 2019

Dear Sirs

Inquiry into the prerequisites for nuclear energy in Australia

Moltex Energy is developing a new form of fission technology which will have very significant safety, cost and environmental advantages when compared to the current generation of nuclear reactors. It is inherently very much safer, and therefore the plants are much smaller and much cheaper. The reactors can use nuclear waste as fuel. In our view, this is an opportunity for Australia to take a global lead in new fission technologies rather than coming somewhat late to the current generation of hazardous and expensive reactors.

The current generation of pressurised water reactors are large and expensive because they have to contain a fundamentally hazardous process: ﬁssion reactions in these reactors take place at enormous pressures and have highly radioactive gases as their by-products. The avoidance or containment of an explosive release of radioactive gas is the primary root cause of the huge cost of nuclear power. Other very substantial costs include security around fuel and waste (non- proliferation) and the management of the waste itself.

Inherent safety

Moltex Energy has a molten salt reactor design, called the Stable Salt Reactor (SSR) in which the ﬁssion reaction takes place at atmospheric pressure and the by-products are salts rather than gases. Furthermore the reaction slows as temperature increases, and so the plant is self-regulating too. There can be no explosive release of gas and there can be no meltdown. As a result, the SSR reactor will be 1/20 the size of an equivalent pressurised water reactor with the same power output. The Moltex Energy SSR is one of a number of new nuclear designs, often referred to collectively as 4th Generation or Advanced Modular Reactors (AMRs). There is a distinction between these and Small Modular Reactors (SMRs): SMRs are typically based on current technologies and/or have a small output. The Moltex Energy SSR reactor will deliver power from 300MW upwards, and can load-follow using its patented GridReserve heat storage, so that a 1,000MW reactor might drive 3,000MW of turbines for 8 hours per day for instance.

Costs lower than fossil fuels

In the UK today, the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant has a guaranteed and index-linked strike price of A$195 per MWh. For comparison, offshore wind in the UK is A$103 and gas around A$72. The Moltex SSR will deliver electricity at a cost of A$60, so lower than the costs of fossil fuels.

Using nuclear waste as fuel

There are three variants of the SSR reactor. The ﬁrst is the SSR-W, a waste burner which uses existing high level nuclear waste as its fuel. Current spent nuclear fuel is radioactive for 300,000 years and enormously expensive to manage. The SSR-W can convert and burn this spent fuel, reducing its volume to 1% of the original and reducing its radioactive life to just 300 years. This reactor is of interest to those countries with stockpiles of nuclear waste and a project is underway to construct the ﬁrst of a kind reactor (FOAK) in New Brunswick in Canada.

For countries without nuclear waste, the next variant is the SSR-U, fuelled with uranium. There is no firm project yet in place to build the first of a kind uranium burner, though it is likely to be of primary interest to non-nuclear nations with uranium reserves. A fleet of SSR-U reactors would generate nuclear waste which could be consumed in an SSR-W reactor.

Thereafter there is a Thorium burning variant, the SSR-Th. Uranium is an abundant resource, but thorium is even more abundant. There is enough Thorium in the world to meet our energy needs for tens of thousands of years.

Partnering with renewables

It is important to consider nuclear power’s role in an energy system that includes renewable sources. Wind and solar power are intermittent, and so every national grid will need a variable or load-following source of power. Today that source is gas. As the percentage of renewables in the system increases, the load-following demands on the whole system become substantial.

One option is to pair renewables with battery storage. The long term goal in battery storage is to reduce the costs from the current A$440 per kilowatt-hour to A$220. Australia consumes 627 Gigawatt hours of electricity per day, and so the battery storage required to cover just one 24 hour period would cost A$138 billion. Such a system would also require a substantial over-capacity in renewables too, increasing the cost of electricity even further. The Moltex Energy SSR is a load-following system and so addresses the problem at a lower cost than gas and without the associated carbon emissions.

In summary, and based on some of your terms of reference: a. waste management, transport and storage

A combination of uranium and waste-burning variants of the Moltex SSR technology could generate very small amounts of waste with a short radioactive lifetime. Co-location of the reactors, the fuel production and the waste storage facilities would minimise transport risks. b. health and safety

The Moltex Energy SSR is inherently safe. In even the most severe accident scenarios, which have been independently modelled, there is no possible release of radioactivity beyond the site boundary. c. environmental impacts

Nuclear power is carbon free. The SSR reactors are physically small and largely housed underground. The load following capability of the reactors allows the construction of a zero- carbon national grid, based on a combination of renewables and nuclear. d. energy affordability and reliability

A common perception is that carbon-free electricity must necessarily be more expensive than that generated from fossil fuels and that some form of market interference (such as carbon taxes) will be required. The Moltex Energy SSR will generate electricity that is cheaper than that from gas or coal, unsubsidised in any way. It is a route to lower electricity prices to consumers. In the UK, the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) estimates that a broad roll out of SSR reactors could reduce consumer electricity bills by 27%, or an average of A$350. The potential savings to the UK economy as a whole are estimated as A$29 billion per year, which has a material effect on energy poverty as well as on industrial productivity and GDP.

Nuclear power is “always on”, operating with capacity factors in the high 90% range. The Moltex Energy SSR can be refuelled in operation, and so doesn’t require any down periods in its 60 year life. e. economic feasibility

Licensing and building the ﬁrst of a kind reactor is a substantial undertaking, which is likely to take 8-10 years and require considerable backing. A mixture of government and private sector investment would be required. For those investors, the returns will be enormous: these reactors are likely to become the default choice for power generation all over the world. h. security implications

In current nuclear plants, the waste contains high levels of plutonium and gives rise to security concerns and non-proliferation obligations. The output from the SSR-W is not suited to further enrichment and so doesn’t carry the same level of risk. I trust that this information is useful to your inquiry and I would be delighted to provide further detail.

Yours faithfully,

Simon Newton Business Development Director Moltex Energy