COSTA MESA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--A new chapter in nuclear fission and fusion R&D may have been opened up today with the invitation by California Science & Engineering Corporation dba CALSEC of Costa Mesa CA., to the energy community to join a Consortium for EXYDER, an invention by the late J.P. Blewett, leading particle accelerators physicist. Exyder is a compact electric breeder of uranium-233 from thorium, powered in part (15%-45%) by energy released in fusion of deuterium, heavy hydrogen, extracted from water. Breeding is done by irradiation of Thorium with fusion neutrons. Unlike natural U-238, U-233 is proliferation proof and nearly totally free of long lived radioactive waste.
Potential of Exyder to solve the energy problem of uranium-poor countries was pointed out 20 years ago by Dr. P.K. Iyengar, then Chairman of India’s Atomic Energy Commission and Dr. M. Srinivasan, director of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. Their paper, “Feasibility of breeding-233 using D+D EXYDER fusion neutron source”, presented at “50 Years with Fission” Symposium, National Academy of Sciences, Washington (1989) reads:
”India has 360,000 tons of thorium against only 45,000 tons of natural uranium… Installing one or two exyder type mini breeders to serve each nuclear power plant operating on Thorium/U-233 cycle would eventually render the power station self sufficient…” Computer simulation indicated that one Exyder module could economically produce 100grams/day, 35 kg/year of U-233, at electric energy cost of $50/Kg vs. $300/Kg for U-238. CANDU type reactor of 235 megawatt burns 10 Kg of U-233/year. “Even sub-engineering’ energy breakeven fusion systems which consume a net amount of electric energy to generate fissile U-233, can play a critical role in cutting the production cost.”
Technically, Exyder is a ‘strong-focusing auto-collider’ whose predecessors, ‘weak-focusing auto-colliders’, a.k.a. migma-cells, had operated at a deuterium beam-beam colliding energy of 1 MeV (equivalent to 17 billion degrees C if accelerated by plasma heating) for 23 seconds (Phys. Rev. Lett. 54, 796 (1985)).
EXYDER concept was strongly supported by Glenn T. Seaborg, Nobel laureate and nuclear issues advisor to 7 US Presidents, who negotiated EXYDER cooperation with Russian research centers. USDOE repeatedly refused its funding on grounds that all fusion funds and collaborations are mandated only for Tokamak (“Energy Supply Research and Development”, US DOE, FY 1996 Congressional Report, Vol. 2, Feb. 1995, p. 468).
Latest design of Exyder, a disc 20 inches in diameter in a 10 Tesla magnet, that can be built in 18 months, was disclosed today by Dr. Bogdan Maglich, CALSEC’s CTO, the inventor and builder of migma-cells, who said, “it is an idea whose time has come.”