>> >>ALISON: The san Onofre nuclear power station 50 miles north of San Diego was built
in the 1980s, based on technology developed in the 1960s.
Doctor Dr.ﾊJoan farman tells us there are better ways to harness nuclear pour.
>> >>: The paradigm we're advocating is a completely different than how you would biltd
build reactors.
>> >>ALISON: One of the problemsis the amount of spent nuclear fuel stored on site.
Generate energy more safely.
>> >>: In the startling thing that we uncovered was the amount of energy thatle that still
exists in the waste at nuclear reactor sites around the country.
If you add up all of that, energy that's in all that stuff it's 40 times the oil reserves
of Saudi Arabia.
It's equivalent to 9ﾊtrillion barrels of oil and energy.
Thaghts an enormous amount of energy, and of course it begs the question: Can we do
something with it.
>> >>ALISON: General atomics answer to this is EM squared.
It's a new kind of reactor that would run on the spent fuel.
Christian deck is on the project team.
He's developing a new kind of material to insulate the fuel rods.
>> >>: Inside here is a smaller work area, where we fabricate the kum posits.
>> >>ALISON: The insulation is important because this reactor is neul not refueled every 18
months like current nuclear power plants.
The same fuel rods would stay in a reactor for 30 years without ever being removed.
>> >>: We need this material, the safety contained throughout the entire life of the react, under
normal and potential accident condition.
>> >>ALISON: This new insulation could have prevented the hydrogen explosion that happened
at FUKOSH IM A.
The EM squared reactor would ultimately leave very little waste.
>> >>: Spend fuel, the radio activity can last hundreds of thousands of years.
The waste I'm talking about will last hundreds of years.
>> >>ALISON: One big objection to reactors burn spent nuclear fuel could create materials
that could be turned into bombs.
The EM squared would not produce products that could increase the nuclearﾊ
>> >>: Nobody would want to use them to make a bomb because you can't make a bomb out of
them.
>> >>ALISON: Generating energy using nuclear fusion rather than nuclear fission would have
other dangers.
General atomics has a few prototypes.
In spite of nas massive investments that technology is still in its infancy.
Bob coinvented EM squared.
>> >>: It's a big fusion of reality.
There still has to be inventions that have not been invented.
I think with EM squared we have all the inventions now that we need, and just have to do the
engineering and do the proof research that confirms or projects our calculations.
>> >>ALISON: Murray is a nuclear engineer who used to work at san Onofre.
After FUKOSH IM A he regularly took a guyinger counter to
the beach.
He's not convinced it's as safe as general atomics claims.
>> >>: This rerecter is still subject to melt down.
>> >>ALISON: He's worried about the digital controls GA promises to use on the design
less reliable than analog controls.
>> >>: New technology is going to bring in inherently new risks we haven't really thought
through yet.
>> >>ALISON: When dealing with nuclear power, the technology must be try and true.
The challenge for general u atomics is to keep generating the billions of dollars it
will need to build prototypes to prove EM technology is tried and true, cost effective
and safe.