ML19208D286
| ML19208D286 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 12/07/1978 |
| From: | Gilinsky V, Hendrie J, Kennedy R NRC COMMISSION (OCM) |
| To: | |
| References | |
| REF-10CFR9.7 NUDOCS 7909280197 | |
| Download: ML19208D286 (68) | |
Text
fa nrog'o
'g UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
$.g h -($' n r
3 E
V.'ASHIN GTON, D.C. 20555 5
August 17, 1979 OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY COMMISSION DETERMINATION REGARDING PUBLIC DISCLOSURE UNDER THE GOVERNMENT IN THE SUNSHINE ACT OF:
Briefing by Exxon Nuclear on Its Laser Isotope Separation Process December 7, 1978 Pursuant to 10 CFR 9.10 8 (c), the Commission has determined that the attached portions of the subject transcript should be released to the public.
The remaining portions of the transcript have been withheld from public disclosure pursuant to 10 CFR 9.104 as noted below:
Page/Line through Page/Line Exemption 3/18 3/20 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 4/17 4/20 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 9/5 9/9 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 12/9 12/10 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 17/9 17/12 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 17/18 17/19 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 18/6 18/14 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4)
Ic/16 19/25 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 20/1 20/3 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 22/3 22/5 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 22/16 22/16 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 23/8 23/11 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 23/15 23/17 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 24/20 24/25 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 25/1 25/3 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 25/9 25/10 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 26/13 26/14 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 26/21 26/25 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 27/1 27/18 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 27/23 1
27/25 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 28/l i
28/21 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 28/24 28/25 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 29/1 29/4 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 29/12 29/13 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 30/8 30/22 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 30/25 30/25 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4)
~)?612Wc}qq"499,
r k
j Page/Line through Page/Line Exemption 31/1 31/6 10 CFR 9.10 4 (a) (4) 31/11 31/12 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 32/11 32/14 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 33/5 33/13 10 CFR 9.10 4 (a) (1) and 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 33/14 33/25 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 34/1 34/22 10 CFR 9.10 4 (a) (4) 35/1 35/3 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 35/9 35/15 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (1) and 10 CFR ?.104 (a) (4) 35/16 35/18 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 35/19 35/22 10 CFR 9 104 (a) (1) and 10 CFR 9.10 4 (a) (4) 35/23 35/25 10 CFR 9 104 (a) (4) 36/1 36/6 10 CFR 9 104 (a) (4) 37/4 37/7 10 CFR 5t 104 (a) (4) 37/21 37/25 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 38/6 38/14 10 CFR 9 104 (a) (4) 39/13 39/18 10 CFR 9.10 4 (a) (4) 40/1 40/25 10 CPR 9 104 (a) (4) 41/1 41/3 10 CFR 3 104 (a) (4) 41/10 41/13 10 CFR 9 104 (a) (4) 42/3 42/6 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 44/17 44/20 10 CFR 9.10 4 (a) (4) 45/3 45/12 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 46/7 46/25 10 CFR 9 lG4 (a) (4) 47/1 47/25 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 48/l 48/25 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 49/1 49/20 10 CFR 9 104 (a) (4) 50/6 50/18 10 CFR 9 104 a) F) 51/18 51/23 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 53/1 53/25 10 CFR 9.10 4 (a)(4) 54/1 54/25 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 55/1 55/4 10 CFR 9.10 4 (a) (4) 55/12 L5/13 10 CFR 9.10 4 (a) (4) 56/18 56/20 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 57/1 57/16 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 57A/6 57A/25 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 58/l 58/8 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 58/20 58/25 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (')
59/1 59/5 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 61/7 61/25 10 CFR 9.10 4 (a) (4) 62/1 62/25 10 CFR 9.10 4 (a) (4) 63/1 63/25 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) 64/1 64/6 10 CFR 9.104 (a) (4) n
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1044 083 g
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BRIEFING'BY EXXON NUCLEAR ON 'ITS ~ LASER.._.
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..s ISOTOPE SEPARATION PROCESS (Closed; to Public Attendance)
Thursday, Dscember 7, 1978
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- x 2 Paoes 1-65 Prepared by:
C. H. Brown Office of the Secretary A.
9 1044 084
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'lu 1 li UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
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NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
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BRIEFING BY EXXON NUCLEAR ON ITS LASFR 4
ISOTOPE SEPARATION PROCESS 5
6 Commissioners' Conference Room 1717 H Street, N.W.
7 Washington, D.
C.
8 i
Thursday, Dec'mber 7, 1978 e
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l 1
10 The Commission met, pursuant to notice, at 1:10 p.m.,
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11 J seph Hendrie, Chairman of the' Commission, presiding.
12
',P?2SENT:
14 I
i Chairman Headrie i
15
,,l Commissionet Gilinsky Cc=missioner Kennedy h,!
Commissioner'Bradford
^6 Commissioner Ahearne 1 7,:
ALSO PRESENT:
.g yg ;,
William England (Exx,on )
. Harold Forsen (Exxon) g 20 N ra N N'
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J.
Kelley OGC 21 ll
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f 1044 085 i
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a P00R018NR PROCEEDTNGS
, !l CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
We are here for a briefing by
- i th Exxon Nuclear on its laser isotope separation process.
The 4 i:
ll meeting has been closed under Exemption 4 of the Sunshine 'Act c
on the basis of the expectation that the material we will be
,o e
j hearing will be properly labeled proprietary and withholdable 7t V] under the Act.
1 I bid you welcome, and ask you to'go ahead.
MR. ENGNAND: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Members of
,,_m the Commission, my name is Bill England and I'm d'Vice President and General Counsel of Exxon Muclear.
'_1.
Harold Forsen is Vice President of Exxon Nuclear,in 13
- if e <., vnpq lM M L4 charga of our Laser Enrichment program,and.j{,eonarf Trosten,
-our Washington licensing counsel.
- c. _ _ a We appreciate the opportunity to brief the Commissioners o.5 our laser enrichment program.aed-I hope you will take no ch]ection to my simply informal apparel.
I wore a winter.ee -
15 wcolen su t back here to Washington thinking-it you d be v ry d
_9 sM Mo 39
- cocl, I found that it is comparable to our Seatt.le weathe k.
4 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE: We are still in the midst of
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Indian Summer, I'm happy to say.
I don't want to scare it off.
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MR. ENGLAND:
Exxon Nuclear and AVCO have been actively pursuing the develcpment of laser enrichment technology o
14 since the early 1970's, under the aegis of a jointly owned 3
i 1044 086
P el 3
e s
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company, Jersey Nuclear Avco Isotopes Incorporated, which is ll
-4
- apprcximately 80 percent owned by Exxon Nuclear and 20 c.aud
-3 percent by the Avco 1""^-'
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Research Laboratory.
4 j,
During the intervening years, we have ret. from, time-to -
t 7
5 l time with the cognizant executive branch, agencies and l dep1rtments and the Congress and congressional committees to 6. ;
7 up-date then generally on our activities and em-car progress.
I E
t In the latest round of such briefings we have met with
'6 e
y a number of interested esecuti.u 1re=esh agencies and dep~ artments
?r 10 L and committees, and some weeks ago we met'with the principal l' i 11 [ NRC staff to brief them, and it was agreed at that time that it 12 [ would be in order for us to brief the Commissioners.
H 13 j, We believe this is an opportune time for the review..
t,,-
14 We are now approaching a major decision point.
The next step in
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_a ; our program would be to construct an experimental test facility h
15 [ which would de=cnstrate the proto-typical components and sub-h.
17 systems cf a pilot scale laser enrichment facility.
s v
21 Before embarking on our next major step, we have taken it cpen ourselves to visit with inteiested Washington quarters 22 c)
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to hopefully reassure them and interest others and hopefully 22 j
i 24 to cbtain some reassurance ourselves, that our plans are t
- 25 consistent with current U.S.
policy.
We believe they are, as best 1
1044 087
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O.
P00R BR W lI dwecanperceivethatevolvingpolic?,,aes/ndeed, we believe that 1
.Z what we are doing could very well be eith:r supporte-t-tve of A
3 current policy and we will attempt to demonstrate that in our 4
discussion today.
~3 Our presentation is in two segments, but please feel 6
free to ask questions at any point.
I would like to introduce 7
the s.ubject by giving you some background, and then Harpld Forsen Yow &wy B
we:-it go iny the technology, 7 :ne, our progress with particular 1
3 4
lemphasisontheproliferationaspectswhichweknowareof 9
li 10 p considerable interest to this group.
i i
11jj Could we have the first slide, please?
12 (Slide) 13 As I mentioned, Exxon Nuclear and Avco, through its te 14 j subsidiaryp or short we call it JNAIg have, we be,lievej pioneered f
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15 the development of laser technology, since early 1971 when our 16 ; original experiments established the scientific grcu, of 1:
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2; y I might mention, incidentally, that we embark,ed in -
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4 22 th e f a c e o f a ----c t th:t time, classified ABC report,,that d/
I 23 4 concluded, in essence, that laser enrichmgnt was neither i
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, technically nor economically fea.sible.
N Elue Ribbon Panel hand 4w
- was chaired by
- *att'cr Benedict of MIT, with whcm I'm sure most of 1044 088
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l ggg U
- [ you are familiar.
'h report was J e ter released in 1972 in 4
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2
{anunclassifiedversion.
11 g-3 The program has beenJ olly privately funded.
It is i
4 independent of any government-sponsored programs, but we have 3
cooperated and communicated throughout this time with the 6
cognizant executive and legislative agencies to. apprise them 7
i of our lans, nd progress.
AW S
ld
.-k:' the arlier daysg t = cd to be e sier to identify i
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- )fle-a M rks+
y lj who those agencies.or committees were,4there has been something 9
10 ' cf a proliferation,fd'butwehavebeendoingourbest.
d n
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11 i Major strides have been made with the technology since h
12 y that initial scientific break-through.
The technology is 13 pl highly promising; 8~
p there are no g no-go technical obstacles.
14 p remaining, although there are dif ficult engineering problems j
- 5. and the economics remain to be fully established.
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- 6{
Other nations including particularly the Russians,
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l 17 :' the I'rench, the Japanese, Germans and Israelis are actively
,;g pursuing the development of laser enrichment.
We have reason 19 to believe that we have a world-wide leadership position, 20 although it is cifficult to tell in the case of the Russians.
4 It is clear, in any event, that we have a very strcng patent -
i 22 pcsition, at least in the free world.
23 The Exxon-Avco process and designs lend themse1ves
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24 to enriching depleted tails, and that has been the program
- 5 emphasis.
The obj.ective is to complement the gaseous diffusion O
1044 089
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i O
P00RORGint i:
1 and centifuge enrichment #acilities~by mining the tail d ystockpile, a.s 2
so to speak,4 converting the tails to low-enriched 3
uranium useful in light-water reactors.
4 Next slide, please.
5 (Slide) 6.,
Obviously this technology is not without national l
7
, security implications, so I thought it might be worth while to 8
spendjustafewminutestellingyouofour,information//
UII 9
- security p ogram..It has bee a hig ly successful one to date.
L 10 N q first and foremostg has been s " M y a corporate n.
13 ii policy of protecting this highly valuable proprietary information.
12 l The program has been stringent it has been highly effective, h G
4 d [w$.t D
e have been complimented repeatedly by the security and 13 f
14 l6 classification people at the Depa&rtment of Energy,and its C>p6100 M O %
f
- 15. g predecessor agencyg fc th-e program.
16 [,
Among other things, the information is made available I:
tc employees of the corporationf only on a need-to-know basis.
17
.lg It is not otherwise disseminated.
The company has been very 9
careful in terms of allowing any of the employees 'to pu:slish n,
papers or to give lectures, sometimes to the chagrin-of the 2;
employees, but that has been the policy, and even.where they -
22 have been permitted, we have reviewec the lecture or the paper i
i 23 in advance with the security and g],assification people at DOE l
as a matter of courtesy anc c m...N
. de-m 24
...m About two years agc, the Department of Energy concluded l
e 1044 090
3 7
4 P00R ORGNAL that we had made sufficient progress with this technology
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2 !! that it should be classified as restricted data under the D
3 a Atomic Enercv Act.
As vou may know, there is some question Y Chw lJ.fS S A V n -bo 4
jrf w ether wholly privately-generated information is usce,ptible 4
i I
3 i
to classification and control by the government under the k
6 Atomic Energy Act as restricted data. Rather than arguing that 4
7 h cut, we entered into a cooperative agreement with DOE which 1:
8 h does call for the treatment of certain of the more sensitive
'9 infermation as-if it were restricted data, aes he agre'ement, 10 -
I might add, has worked very well from both the standpoint of 11 DOE and JNA3f in the -4we years that we have had the agreement.
e 12 (,
Recently, we gave a briefing along the lines of the n
13, briefing we are giving you this afternoon to Mr. Spurgeon Keenv, l
14 y' Deputy Director of the Arms Control and Disarmameat Agency and 15 certain of his principal staff, at which time they expressed 16 an interes in working out a cooperative arrangement between 17 JNAI and ACDA. We have expressed our willingness to do so.
ga,Cn(Y+ j!
.1E Juch'discussicns are now active, and in the meantime, we heve-l i.
19 h
"W an interim M m -
ccu 11L. confidentiality
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22 arrangement whereby ACDA is being allowed access to eur facilities 21 and :: cur technology The longer term arrangement, which I g & cw., c, 22 expect we wall conclude, will be, I 'think, principally designed A
2; fer,us to work with them whereby the proliferation resistance 24 cf laser enrichment facilities can be enhanced, and also,
- I can be designed in such a.tay as to permit, for example, IAEA e
1044 091
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l inspectors to do their job and do it ef fectively, but without 40$.4P h 100.
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necessarily going inside the fency, in cc_ --_..grespects.
- h h
When we met with the NRC staff bn October 20th, we a
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indicated our interest and our willingness to enter into an
' u k-JNN1 a$reement with the NRC, somewhat complfmentary G*4h-the agreement 5
4 6
with the Department of Energy, but coverning not only classificatio i
n
.,. i G,ul svbu
- security 4which, of course, NRC also has jurisdiction oves,
/
but also covering various other matters that are of particular c
interest and c6ncern to,the Commission; such as materia'1s 10 accountability, acces sa eguards, inspection, including resident c
11, inspection, et ce'_ era.
Our belief is that we if we had such an 12 arrangement and the NRC becomes more familiar with the technology o
1:
s 13 !. and what our plans are, that you will be in a better position to i
14 do your job, and hopefully, we will be in a better position to
_a f.now wnat is expected of us as we go along.
16 3eyond the classified aspects and beyond' the proprietary 17 aspects, obviously there are other legal inhibitions on the l
P 1-:
.disseminaticn of the sensitive technology, eie.vusty gart 810 of 1E the DOE regulations is cne, and of course, the Nuclear Non-2:
Proliferation Act of 1978 Ece narcT VK
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1
~1 Slide No. 3,please[<
8 j
22 (Slide)
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COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Presumably you h ve a
- 4 T.aterial's license for the material that you are using, from
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NRC, so you are a licensee in that sense?
1 e
1044 092
9 A
e P00R BRGM 1
L'R. E5 GLAND:
that's right.
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Yes, b e w H
,4 MR.
FORSEN:
We also SNM license for activities for
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4 the R&D at one of our facilities to provide R&D for that 3
6::
4
. facility.
l MR. ENGLAND:
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Unfortunately, there are other consid,erations.
There e
11 [ are a number of uncertainties obvious to everyone in the nuclear 12 ! area, but one that has been of particular concern to us, and one
'. 3 ', th a t l.
we are trying to do something abou} tis the fairly prevalent geb 14, riscenception in certain orJ.uu, particularly in Mnis town, as 4
15,
c the alleged proliferation implications of laser enrichment.
15 Scre earlier rash statements by some, including certain of the 17 cid AEC National Laboratories in t e 1973-1974 time period, led y
M *
- f " en*ichment the mistake #
.lE in notion that lase is a veritable d
-fd.[b b. Jap 1:-
" :e's garage" type of operationq $asy, unsophist'icited,
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su ject to sgall-sp e clandestine,oper tion.
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fotsd-w.Stie
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- n rary c,gth; f:v. the technology 4is extremely difficult,
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22 diterse, complex exceedingly sophis'icated E.; ac t incce it is i
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inheentlyproliferation-risklimitec) bs the Congressional Office of Technclocc Assessment.,
2.;
2N c>t-(2' S A m u d AAgb ub.V 3
- rre::1y point,out about a year ago in their repcrt only th.
f 1044 093
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P00R ORMG
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industrially advanced naticns could conceivably hope to U.
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- , accomplish this technology.
th-
<.se 3 v..m-11; o p s:... 3, and 3 P tiwrmo specifically with respect to the process and designs I
U u L>
4 L which we are werking on, we y that they are not adaptable to
! small-scale clandestine operations,d d
-3 ens Harold Forsen will discuss
_ %_.P" W M i.Sv" e
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h We believe that laser enrichment development can help 7
i 2
effectuate current U.S.
nonproliferation poJ. icy.
o
'9 May I have Slide 4, please? -
It 1 0 :'
(Slide)
~
1 As you know, there are serious questions as to the i
1 2.., adequacy of uranium supplies on a longer-term, world-wide basis, i,
u 13 ' and the ccacerns in this reg *ard have been accentuated by the 1
s 8
14!. Administration'sdecisiontodefertheplutoniumecon%my, 15 so called.
n 16,
We believe that successful development of the laser n
-v 17 enrichment tailstripping technology would help relieve the 1-
. pressures on U-308 supply and tend to mitigate the consequences l
19 cf deferring pluto.3 um utilization.
In gapticular, we feel that i
wA C ap
_o 20 tn.s tecnnelogy,, t#-e-tails, tripping 3 poet, could transform the GN P'*M se presently useless tail,sst ckpile into a va-luable.
21 nation,s etnerw.
22
~
naricnal energy asset, the equivalent of the world's largest singlei i
23 2ranium mine.
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COMMISSIO:iER AEIAR::E:
Would it be fair to then say 23 that with regard to the firs two points, that if the decision W
1044 094
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1 p, were made to go ahead with reproces' sing and the b eeder, that s
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{ r.2.is technology would not have a place?
t 3
l MR. ENGLAND:
No.
It,would not be fair to say that, a
I 4
and I think Harold Forsen will cover that in one of his vugraphs.
.h COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
It just seemed to me that _ the 6
way the first two bullets were written, could lead to that.
g cflitab M (E g {L g/6uw'"* g 7
MR. FORSEN:
We will come to that "Y,
8 MR. ENGLAND: -But f jt4 tis e ra to harp e, obviousi.
[.pZ.h.mu u~an di A
,ss
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- ere are certain i a c' c tha-t would all "
' rom, that, I
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few-of the h' N I have 10 p; would tend to emphasize just as a 4m caz. 5a t'L--Z Y d 11 g there4 would lessen U.S. dependence on foreign energy suppliesf 12 h, help restore our technological leadership in nuclear energyf ll i
13 :ik, enhance our credibility as a reliable supplier,' and also provide 14 f increased U.S.
leverage in obtaining foreign adherence to our i
t 15 j: nonproliferation policy.
l
.i 16 [l For these reasons, we feel that what we are doing is I
d
. -m 17 consistent with, and indeedy supportartive of U.S.
nonproliferation l j
,1s policy,' it is consistent with the emerging conservation ethief 9
and it is consistent also with the national need t'c foster nore I
20 ], efficient,, economical, and enviddnmental[ improved energy x
21 ' technology.
gj 12 I might point out, as you may b6 aware,4 we hwe i
23 jrecentlyconvenedacross-sectionofrecognizedindependent i
3,;
experts gpeople from outside of. Exxon and outside cf Avco, from
~5 academic co::.munit:.es anc. elsewhere to come in an'). in ef f ect, look d
r1 1044 095
o 12 P00R ORGINAL c.er our shoulders, lock at our technology, have access to our s
li h fad '"-'es and plans, and to provide us with a report as to whether 4
o 3
cr not, from a proliferation standpoint, they believe what we are i.
4
- i. doing is consistent with the aims of U.S.
nonprolif eration policy.-
b 3
We would hope that
- report may be available in the February 6 - j time frame, and it would be our expectation to submit a copy of' s
that-report to the Nuclear Regulatory Co; mission.
/
E In conclusion, I would just mention again, that this 5
10,
s.
11 we are not looking for commercial guarantees & the b 4
12 [. f of* u l r,'
F rj A
m ; ad Auclear fuel jfssurance Act.
We are looking for a H
13 reascnable opportunity to commercialize the technology, subject, l.
14, of course, to appropriate safeguards and subject to more or less 15. nernal regulatory requirements.
16..
CO'"IISSIO:;ER AEIAR'sE:
In your last sub-bullet there, n
ptwd v
17
" defer or eliminate additional enrichment facilities."
Is that l
A
._E meant :c imply that although you would be working the tails,
- ?
-h a t 70 would conclude that the centrifuge facility'would not
'YOf'
- ***5**?
'y ](l1Nuwa i m' 1;
- 1,R.. E!?GLA';D :
- c. We are talking about post-Portsmouth j
22 add-cn
.11 8.8 million swsop.
A n
- aikk. d ad Sh'uP 3
1
.i CO 2CSSIO::ER GILI:: SKY:
Are you going to say anything l
abcut the government's o.:n progra::.?
l
- 5
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Tc the extent that we car.
Harold.70rsen 1044 096
13 I
~
is in the best position to do that,'and I would think it is s
o e
his turn to go to bat.
Harold.
- i-L' MR. "ORSEN:
Bill did,not mention, but he did indicate (V
F that this is a privately funded program, and as tas result we have h; kept it separate'from the government program.
Consequently (,
c
- p we do not have access to what they have done in. terms of any agreements, contracts or right to that technology.
I r
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY: Do you have any sense of where T
cr how ycu compare.with them or ---
10 MR. FORSEN:
We have our biases, and when I come to ab out the 3rd vugraph or 4th vugraph, I'd like to comment on that, 12 because we got started, as Bill said, when it was suggested that
"""=
echnology would not work, and the gove nment programs were not very far into it, in fact, there was notaing that.vna know I
3 of.
16 In 1973, af ter we had separated isotopes in 1971, it i
l 17 '
then announced by the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, the as j
i
.lE
.s:stements about how easy it was.
And I think a scale factor 13 that cne might put on that is that it was suggested at that' time 2
that by Christmas, the then Chairman Ray would have 'it bottle of
~
4 i
El enriched uraniam out of the Los Alamos process.
Well, tha' i
4-22 h ::le of enriched uranium has been'very ;s>rlusive for Los Alamos 22 and, in fact, the results of that program have been, classified 14 as :
wha: they have been able.to do or not been able to do,
!?
but the general consensus is, is that the bottle 7.ight have been e
1044 097
14 f.
O 9
- 3..} (.
t.-
W, n g
{ W i d G a h d e M.t
'u" a.ai_able sometime the latter part 6f last year.
s
- i I'd like to scend the time I have ---
i.
J COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Let me ask you a little further t
- i..
s.
p. on this point.
You said that you had a very strong patent position i
.5 I wouldn't the government also have patents in this area?
I O
MR. FORSEN:
Well, the government may or may not have 7 ], patents in this area.
The Los Alamos program was born'classifi d, ll t$tc& Z w F and everything that was in the Los Alamos program that may4 be-9 et fss process -or whatever, presumably is classified.
10 The Liveranre program which, in fact, competes with 11 as en a sort of cne-tu-one basis was not classified by DOE at 12 the time.
There were some arguments that what Livermore was doing 13 l was clearly as good as whr t Los Alamos was doing, and if Los Alamos I
14,6 was classified, Livermore ought to be classified,,o Livermore s
1 15, classified its own program as it can.
i 16 Then the argument was made that we ought to be classified, 17 and finally, the whole thing became classified and this happened,
._1
.as 3:11 has said, last year.
i 19 Scw, Livermore and we each have the same kind of I
classification guide that says what specific element's in our
'l program is classified, bu; wPplc. the patent on the Livermore
--t)db.(Lc.W w process is owned by us,4
.u c
c.J _nitia4-patent 4 there are cam I
. ray e to take the basic idea and go in dif f erent approache.s, i
namely, what does the basic 1<. s e r look like, hcw de ycu make
- raniam caper, and we will ccme tc these things.
And as bcs: we 4
1044 098
15 P00R BREM
.n c..
heir approach in the specifics of the engineering of a s
2 system j different than ours.
I' 3
We know of no patents,
they.have, none have issued s
that lj, to Los Alamos or Livermore that are in the open literature.
4 We 5
l have 30 U.S.
patents and 187 foreign counter-parts on those, l
I 6.
and something like 400 pending ---
7
{
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Now, when you get -- this i
8 I is taking you a little bit off your subject,, but when you get 9
9 a foreign patent, do y disclose the information that would n
1C c otherwise be classified?
11 -
MR. FORSEN:
No, we can't.
12 ',
Now, the way this is -- I'm sure you are aware -- when n
13 we file a patent in the United States there are two things that 14, have to happen.
We are requirec within 180 days of an invention, P
l
- 5 ei-her to disclose under 151(c) of the Atomic Energy Act, to the
- 6 appropriate authorities that this may have classified information, I
17 cr we are required to file a patent application.
We can't always
-i
,;g ge: pa:ent memoranda in to form for filing in 180 days, so it is i
- p a principle with us to indica.te to the cognizant authorities i
within the 180 day period what patent memoranda have'.been de eloped.
i Now, prior to our date of blassification, there have been none of those memoranda which were classified.. Since that date there have been two that were classified. Se two things
& ch3,4 happen, cne is the.y make an early determinatier under.f,teet 151(c),
1044 099
b, 16 h
i 1
the second is af ter the application has been filed, if no action li s
2 ;; 1s ta<.en within six months one is 9'n'able to file those patent j
Y'i 3
i applications overseas.
So all overseas filings have resulted I
[fromU.S. applications which have been filed.and no action taken 4
l
~
o by the cognizant authorities and then filed overseas.
So there 6. larenooverseasapplicationswhichare, in fact, classified.
I 7
h, The specifics of the patent law, which I'm not an 2
attorney, says it has to be practiced by one skilled in the art.
o i
Well, happily ther,e -are no people skilled in the art except i
10 ourselves and perhaps the government laboratories.
It is a very 11, scphisticated technology that is not easy to take the patents 12 l which stand there, and really do the kinds of tnings that one-I.ti 13 would have to do to make this technology work.
There is an 14 j awful lot of know-how that is required by the applicant, if you I
15. will.
And I think you will start to see some of that as I go 16 through this.
17 (Slide) i I
15 If you will pardon the next vugraph, it is a little l
19 bit crass in the sense that i,t has a headline -- if we coul'd 2;
have the next vugraph, please? -- shows where we thi',nk this I
echnclocv fits.
22 Now, this is a normal fuel cycle that one talks about, I
- 3 and please forgive me for that any way.
We would be.looking at
- z taking UF gas out of the stoc},jiles which are now
- stcred, 6
25 cr owned by the utilities until they give up that opticn to the 1044 100
17 P00R OR E L g:cernment, to use their own tails which are scmething at point s
2 I. twc tenths or above, uranium 235, our process deals with metal --
- h J. and we will come back to that -,we would then have to make a r
- metal conversion facility to convert that to uranium metal.
3 That would then be fed to the laser enrichment plant with the I
, product as twc or three percent uranium 235 and could be in the 1
7 f,cxide form, beck to the fuel fabricator.for making lightwater i, :
E D fuel elements.
l' 9
l 10 '
t.
_ _I i. :,
e
,_e se.
- n.,
1 3
~! do that, but the reason we can do it is the specific selectivity e
H 14,; cf this process is so high that you essentially don't drag any i
from the spectroscopf,(fu)<4 15 p _ranium 238 along with it j
will show a
16, you that you get uranium 238 with it and this is about the limit 17 cf assay one can get when feeding this kind of material.
i
- 2 COMMISSIONER AHEARE :
20 MR. FURSEN:pwren tnecc technologies.
21 CThe centrifuge can get down to about point one seven-22
.ithout a penalty in the economics - ~-
23 COFMISSIONER AHEARNE:
Okay ---
t 24 MR. FORSEN:
-- and when it starts to go below that 1: starts to be tougher.
1044 101
18 s
P00R ORGINAl.
i l
CO:O:ISSIONER AHEARNE:
Yes, yes.
s b
2 i' MR. FORSEN: Could I have the next vugraph, please?
ji (Slide) si ti COS2{ISSIONER GILINSKY: Could you indicate as you go 5
along what is proprietary and what is not?
E MR. FORSEN:
g i
h ii
-c i:
11 V
y zi
_1 9 !
i i.
4 :.
1 3.'!
1:
-'h 1
i i.
1 I
15,; clearer of what is proprietary and what isn't.
_E CO.0:ISSIONER GILINSKY:
The f act that you deal with metal, is that ---
I i
MR. FORSEN:
NC, it is not.
i.
CO:O.'ISSIONER GILINSh7 :
-- And the tails'and the other?
(
l MR. FORSEN: The tails assay, the.way we ~get-to that is in a vugraph, and I'll show you that, and that would be l
i l
.Orcerietar '.
.h 1
In this tails stri ing idea, one has to look at.
.= hat does the customer really have to pay in order to get there,
- 5 hecause that sets the econcmics of this process, namely, the 1044 102
1 19
(
e00ncr.ics you have to compete with, s
9 2 l If a utility owner wants to obtain 100 metric tons
- h, Of three percent material, and o.f course that would be enough 4
fcr from 3 to 4 reloads, but it is a reasonable number.
Let's
~;.
talk about 100 metric tons of 3 percent material.
It takes about i'
l 6 lI one and a half million pounds of yellow cake to provide that.
il 0[ That's the feed part of it, 7
and at S40 a pound that corresponds 8
to around S60 million.
9 In taking that natural uranium up to that and having 10 tails at about point two tenths, it consumes around 440 metric 11 tons of separative work.
That ammnt of separative work at $90 12 ' a separative work unit corresponds to another S40 million, giving 13 ! rise to about $100 million for that 100 metric tons, or S1,000
,j 14 i a kilogram.
That's what the utility has to pay for it today if in this route.
- f 1 E '.
E J.
- 21 I
_n _,
.i i
=,.
l 1044 103
t' 20 P00R ORIGINil s
b i
ii i.
2 l ',
II 4
Clearly, that difference of 70 percent is the margin l
5 with which we hope to be able to work.
6 The next vugraph, please?
7
'i (Slide)
I' 2
ll Here we show approximately what the residual stockpile
!)
?
of tails might be.. We do not have good. data on what the 10 stockpiles of tails are.
Am I standing in front of everybody?
11, 3ut anyway, --
1 2,,
As of September 1976 the information we had said there li 13 4 were around 230,000 metric tons of tails sitting at the various I,.
14,; three sites that the government has, whose assay was about h
15 j point two-three percent uranium 23 5.
If we were to take this 16 '. tail stripping process, which I will describe in a.little bit,
- 7 and use the same logic that the previous vugraph showed, that wculd scrrespond to a natural uranium substitute of around 120
- p millien pounds.
And so Bill Angland's statement that this '
2; corresponds to the largest known stockpile of uraniu@ is, in fact, true if the-process works.
That represents 120 million pounds of natural uranium.
r i
As i
2-The rate of growth Jef that -tr~ you get about one kilogram !
- 4 cf rails'for each unit of separa.tive work that is produced, or
-h: : a half a ecur.d of natural uraniu a. So if we take the t
1044 104
,,in ini.n..in-.
i--
i!
21 i
P001 GEML
~
l C:?-CUP programs for the DOE on its gasecus diffusion it al-s 2 h plants which would correspond to around M'000 metric tons of I-3 separative work a year, the Portsmouth add-on is around 8800 4
and we round it to 9,000 giving rise to around 36,000 metric 5
tons a year of separative work, the tails out of those plants 6.
would represent around 20 million pounds of yellow cake equivaler4c 7 jperyearavailableforenrichment.
8 Now the storage cost of that is around 50 cents a 9
kilogram or S18millionforthecy/lindersjust to store that, o
10 y and of course, that's one of the reasons why the utilities It 11 p aren't taking these tails back and there is no demand for it.
h 1 2 /, I t is expensive to do, consequently there is negligable demand.
n 11 13 D There is some demand for the military penetrator program for
- e6 14,,dishipping casks and things 3ike that, but there is no major H
15 g demand for this material, at the time.
16 Could we havs the next vugraph, please?.
o H
17 [
(Slide)
W. s;.
.18 Well, this is kind of a schedule of where our 19 program has been, and it was originally broken dow.3 n the '
1 Q.
20 ' contract where Exxon and Avco got together,irIto fou'r phases.
bNck 21 The first phase, of course, was proof of principle,-
e 22 as Bill England has already explained.
That laboratory scale, 5 ';;
3
,.y 23 and we talk about scale here is how big is it compared to the
"; f
<m, smalles: scale production f acility a-r+ ths ene/ -ce talk abou 2.;
- 5 Zer scale, in essence, it was a spectroscope experiment, and t..at
~
1044 105
,g 22 P00R ORGIN3
- , is, cf course, where our part 70 license is.
That work is li 2
I[. done in '.assachusetts and it continues, however, this phase 7
I.
i 5
6 I
We then went on to recognize that while anyone can j do spectroscop,e' there are a lot of things that happen in this e
t 8
- ! process'when you go to high densities, namely, collisional l1 h1 effects, a whol'e bunch of collective effects and I'll come e:
10 back to those.
So we built in 1972, an experiment, our so-called g
i.
11 li high density experiment whereby we could do all of those things I
12 !l! at the density of a full commercial process, but clearly ~ without 13 } the lasers and without ths ability to make uranium vapor.
Md 4
We -
. )q
' i' call this a laboratory-scale feasibility demonstration', those
~,
exceriments also continue and that is also with a part 70 license,'
, _.?
i t'.'
10 j i
ji 7
c.e are currently in a so-called phase three whereby j
w I
15 we wc_id plan tc build the next logical experiment beyond-these l
i 19 experiments whereby one could-really do an integrated proce,ss lAs)-
1 20 i demonstration.
These are only scientific proof.of principats, n
4 this might be, in an engineering sense, an engineering proof 6f i
principal, but there is still a lot of physics to come out of
- 3 chis. facility.
We don't understand a whole bunch of things about a
this process, and we can go on to that if you want to.
This wculd be abou ten percent scale in the sense that
4 104410h
23 P00R RGE
- .f it were to be run 24 hcurs a day, seven davs a week, it is
~ YemU do 2
tha
- ind of a scale, but clearly an R&D facility.is not that.
g q
3 We wou'ld hope to be able
=_e gm and I think this date is sliding
'I J
i.
4 ts Lc Eble-to go af ter that f acility to the first lsomewhat, 5
I smallest scale commercial facility one would know h'ow to build.
I 6
d In all of the discussion I will have from here on out, talking I.
7
[ abcut. s cale, says this is what you would have to do to build a E
H i
c i
10.1 11 0 12 !!sometimes the hardware and other things cause this to slide.
h
'l 13 h COMMISSIONER GILINSKY: What is the capacity in terms 14 j' of separative work?
j
,,'l
.. 5, -
t'R. FORSEN:
~
i
- g CO.v3!ISSIONER GILINSKY
- But you don't have to just strip l
l
- p tails, do you?
7; MR. FORSEN: This is the business that we anticipate i
3; going in to, and I would like to then tell you why we are talking
- 2. a t w a v..
n May I have the next vugraph, please?
(Slide) 5 Let me g,0 now, into the technology and it will become O
0 1044 107
e, 24 I
P00RBRIGIWuI
~
apparen: why -his lends itself to tailstripping, and of course, s
- l. /o_ can make the ar~ument it would work with natural uranium, 2
w n
o
- h hu one needs the ability to take the tail.s out of a natural 4
'. uranium feed plant and further strip those.
3 Easically, the process works because the isotop.e shifts 6
of uranium 235 and uranium 238 are sufficient for a number of j
j!
!; transitions -hat one can do something about it, 7bnanely, this 7
'ih kind of' data was known since the Manhattan Broject, it is well E
o S
published, but he -kind of things that tren' t known is the fact
~
~
a 13 : that this absorption band for uranium 235, while it looks like 11 Gaussian /Lawrenceian profile pere, is in fact, much i a nice 12 ', dif ferent than that, because of the odd-even structure of the
~
r 13 nucleus, this a'. sorption band is an enormously wide thing with.
I.
14 y structure in it, and of course, that's the reason the process --
t 15, one of the reasons why the process gets very sophisticated.
16 o On the other hand, with this kind of separation in o
17
.hese'twc, if one can, in fact, make a laser that can fill that
{
l li absorption band and do something about it, you have the potential for a n_rocess.
-e e e j
e.eo I
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&=
- r e
f l
1044 108
a 0
25
\\
I
?
I I
l.
I I
e i
1 2
3 4
Bill did not mention, but we are trying to work with S
the Department of Energy in their NASAP str. ly and have tried 6
to go through the scenarios for stolen designs in foreign plants 7
and things like that.
And I will allude to some of the 8
conclusions of that study as we go through here, but part of 9
10 i
l 11 1 garage-scale operation that would be thrown together just doesn't 12 work at all.
13 Tne next vugraph, please?
t 14 (Slide) 15 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
What kind of lines are these?
16 MR. FORSEN:
These are the emission or absorption lines 17 that you would have, out of the ground state from normal uranium, 18 [andofcourse, this shows what the rest of the picture is.
What 19 I have shown you in that one was this is what the absorption band lwould look like if I could blow this up several th'ousand fold 20 I
21 ; in energy.
This is energy going up that was wave length before i
11 i
22.; which is also energy, and so we are looking at the difference I
't 23 0 of absorption between uranium 235 and uranium 238. So here is 1
24 another way of showing it.
Here is the absorp tion band f or 25 uranium 235 and it is slighly different for uranium 23S.
e 1044 109
i
!I a
l!
26 d
a
.i 1 "
On an energy scale instead of a wave length scale, it corresponds 2
to around three microvolts of energy.
3 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
That's the peak-to-peak?
4 MR. FORSEN:
That is the peak-to-peak dif ference 5
l corresponding to about a tenth of an angstrom, not all ---
6 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
Is the absorption band on 238 7
similarly broad?
8 MR. FORSEN:
No it is not, because it is an even-even 9
l nucleus and it doesn' t have that fine structure of splitting, 10 and I wish I'd brought a vugraph showing that, but those things 11 get to be sensitive and I didn't think they were germane.
The 12 sensitive in a sense are classified, not that the absorption band 13 14 6
i 15 Okay, well, what you do then is you are talking about 16 lasers that can go in one or three steps as we have shown here, 17 up the excitation ladder to ionization, namely, if I can knock 18 i an electron off of this uranium 235, I can put presumably an i
19 l electric field on it or something else and apply energy to it 20 and make, in effect, a separation.
I 21 l
22 l
h
,i 23 !!
24 g n
25 :
'l 1044 110
'I Il 27 i
l!
r I
1 i
2 3
4 5
6 7
8 9
10 I
11
{l 12 13 14 15 i
16 l
7 l
18 19 The next vugraph then shows how in fact you do l
lsomethingwiththatandifweget it set in there right, why, 20 i
21 i it gives you some idea of the scale.
li 22 ;
(Slid *)
i.
1 je 23.i
~
1; ll 24 25 t
1044 111
a ti i
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il 28 e
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6 7
8 9
10 11 l
12 I 13 14 i
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16 I'
17 I
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18 19 l
20 l
21 i,
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22 Because f this high temperature, though, these atoms i
23 !: are not in the ground state and some of them, in fe.ct, are is
]..
24 25 p
o i
29 l
3 lt 1
2 1
3 4
5 All right, as the vapor expands through these regions 01 6
here,j would normally go up and land on the tails collector unless 7
some thing was done to it. It would also land on the leading 8
edges of all of these so-called product collectors because they 9
appear as a surface.
Uranium, unlike a gas has a very high 10 accommodation coefficient.
If it touches any surface it freezes 11 there.
So as the vapor then passes through this zone, we shine 12 -
13 14 illuminate each slug of vapor that flows through this so-called 15 red zone here.
16 As it is ionized one then can apply electric fields to 17
. pull those ions out on to these product collector plates.
So that i
t 18 i the product collector places, of course, know that it sees ions 19 i produced by the laser beam, but it also sees the ions produced i
20 here, and we will come back to that later.
21 g In terms of other things that are collected on it, ilil 22 i;one has to put so-called shadow shields across here, because the i
U i
23 ll internal energy of-this vapor is not zero, namely, it is not l
__/
2.: ',; frozen.fhese vectors which are sort of almec from the surface 25 really aren't that way.
Some of them are' skewed, that is, a: cms l'
1044 113
1 30 il i
- 1.,I li I
i:
i:] can scatter on to these plates directly, and since that is 1
2 really 238 coming out of this source, principally one has to 3
worry about how much scattering gets on that plate.
And if 4
you are trying then to make three percent enriched uranium out 5
of two-tenths feed, one can't allow very much 235 to get -- 238 to 6
get on that plate from other means or this process won't be able 7
to do that on a single pass.
i 8
I 9
l,'il 10 i i
i I
11 12 -
i 13 I 14 j
15 16 17 l I"
18 i i,
19 !
20' i
i, i
21 I.
i 1
22 ii 8!
23 The other thing we need to worry about is that the 24 i cross section for absorption into thosc various transitions are 25 1044 114 i
S
i 31 1
2 3
4 5
l 6
7 Okay, but that's the number of mili-Joules per square 8
centimeter that are required and the repetition rate, and once 9
you establish the number of square centimeters and the repetition 10 rate that sort of sets a power that is required, namely, this 11 12 l
13 that in a little bit.
14 Okay, then what are the process parameters, and if we 15 can have the next vugraph it goes in to that.
16 (Slide) 17 One would like to know for this single-step process, 18 lhowmuchofthe235that I'm feeding am I able to get out.
And 19
,it is really made up of about four factors and they are all 20 products of each other.
Namely, what are the state populations?
21
,That is, what states are these atoms in that I'm trying to shine 22 light at such that I can get a hold of them.
Well, if they ll i
i I are all in one state that is a number like 100, but they are not i
23
,1 U
24 ' all in one state, obviously, with the source being something i
K 0 li h 3,000-plus degrees.
h
-7 25 f.
A 1044 115 t
d k
l 1
32 l,
r I
b t
II 1
Beyond that, what efficiency can I ionize those that 2
are in the states that I can get to, and that is a function of 3
how energetic my lasers are, what form of line coverage do I 4
have in order to excite the full width of the absorption band, 5
because if I don't excite them or ionize them will they go on 6
through the system and I miss them.
7 After they are ionized how well can I extract them, 1
S namely, how well can I apply an electric field to this new medium 9
which is a plasma, and if you understand plasma physics you know 10 that we can' t get electric field to penetrate high density plasmas.,
11 12 13 i
I' 14 i
15 There are other factors that give rise to this and 16 there are some loss f actors.
One has to do with charge exchange, 17 and I'm sure you don't want to hear a lot of details about that, i
18 but if I've got an ion in there and I try and deflect it over 19 1 on to one of these plates, if I don't do it rather quickly, the
/
20 238 that is flowing by can exchange the electron and I have a 21 problem.
Namely, I've got a 238 ion rather than a 235 ion.
I 22 :
Other factors which come in to this are the fact that l' one has to focus these light beams as you propagate them back and 23
,j Il 24 j forth in this channel.
You also would like to have a square wave II 25 ;:cf light filling that channel, and of course, lasers like to II;i f,
1044 116
\\
33 1
run in low order modes which says that they are Gaussian profiles 2
over that channel and not a square wave.
So there are a number 3
of factors which get into the geometric and physical optics 4
which cut that back.
5 6
7 8
9 10
,1 11 12 s 13 14 15 16 I
17 38 19 j
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COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
9 MR. FORSEN:
j 10 l
11 12
- COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
13 -
14 MR. FORSEN:
15 l
f 16 l I
17 I
I i
I 18 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
19 20
~MR.
FORSEN:
21.
I I
I 22,j
- li l
COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
I know we have got feed in that i
23
!i 24 range, and that's why I was asking.
i:
25 '. !
MR. [ORSEN:
Oh, I'r3 glad to hear that.
l s
1044 118
35 1
1 i
2 3
j Okay, then what is the product collected?
Well, the l
4 5
product collected, instead of being products like this, they are 6
sums of numbers, because the 235 concentration is so low in either 7
natural or tails feed, there is this direct scattered material, j
8 namely, the aerodynamics scattering scatters material onto these l
9 to lh 10ij j
11 I'
12 !
h 13 II 14,!
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ij i
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9 A
2 1
3 4
5 6
7 of course, in the process, if the customer needs one 8
point seven percent, you blend that with either natural uranium 9
or depleted uranium, depending how you optimize your output to 10 give it to him, but that's the only thing that the plant produces, 11 that is, the process produces.
12 Now, if that, of course, were natural uranium you can 13 see, I could raise this to a somewhat higher scatter and allow i
i i
i 14 ! tha t, because I would -- I've got a greater number here to work i
15 with, and that increases the throughputs of these plants, but i
16 I still have this problem of these high tails assay that I have 17 to deal with somehow.
l t,
18 l
Next vugraph, please?
19
( S'lide )
~
20 I have told you a little bit about the laser part of 21 the process, but if you are going to be in a business there is a
22 lialotmoretoit th an th a t, as we have just locked at this little
- I 23 llbcxhere.
Remember this process feeds metal. There is insufficient' f*
24 yprivately produced metal capacity in the United States or anywhere 25
!, cise in the world, for that matter, to feed metal to cr.e of these II L
1044 120 8
I f
37 I
i i
l plants. The government produced metal for the metal production 2
reactors and for a few other things, and so we know how to make 3
metal, but there are no private commercial plants of any 4
o I
6 I
7 I
i 8
Of course, that is an advantage from a safeguards point 9
of view because one may not colocate these plants.
And if in fact, 10 I you are going to try and worry about the proliferation implications 11 I of making high enrichments of this, as I think you saw in the I
12 last slide, this has to be a high feed assay in order to get 13 anything cut of this, of above 20 percent.
14 So monitoring that stream, and of course monitoring 35 this stream, because the plants have no flexibility.
What comes 16 out of here is directly related to what that is and what that 17 is and monitoring those two streams, I think, will allow effective ;
I 18 jsafeguards. But there is more work to be done there.
I 19' l
The other side of that is that there is a laser system l
20
'here which turns out not to be small.
It turns out to be 21
.i l
22 ;
e 23 g o
24 ll I
25
i 1044 l21
p 0'
38 l
I h,
o 6
o 1
These lasers then would have flow streams,chereby one 2
takes the dyes which get destroyed in this process, namely the 3
dyes have a finite lifetime, and so I have to have a circulating 4
waste stream to recover the dyes, get rid of them in an 5
environmentally accepted manner and recover the solvent which 6
7 8
9 10 11 l
12 13 14 si li
$thb 15 to take this out under an entered atmosphere and get it into
/
v > w-16 solution and nitric acid as carefully as possible.
One cannot 17 possibly handle all of tne vapor that is produced, because it i
l 18 ; doesn't all go where you would like it to go, and we will come 19 back to that, but that's highly reactive material.
One of the I
20 nice things about this process if it can be made to go is that i
6 21 one could go from metal to o:ide, which is what the lightwater 3
22 reactor industry would need, that is, keeping the fluoride cut
~
'i 23 :}of it.
24 y The deplete metal that comes a
'gcin, ic indicative 25 y of what went on in here, because it is a single-step process,
/
1044 122
39 i
t f
I
+ 12-c i,Gt<v y:' these tails which looks like dense deposits en a sub {'= ;rai..-
i 3
2 can be retained as metal and, of course, can go to storage 3
for future breeder use if that's what is in the cards.
4 Next vugraph, please?
5 (Slide) 6 I want to show you now some pieces of the equipment, 7
and they are kind of cartoons, but they are proprietary, because 8
they show the kind of scale we are dealing with.
9 Here is a picture of the -- this was made from an 10 engineering drawing, but it is the conceptual designs that are 11 going in to our thinking on the experimental test facility, and 12 of course, we do conceptual designs of the demonstration plant t
13 14 I
15 1
16 l
i 17
', l i
18 j
i 19 So while this doesn't show the details of where the lasers go, 20 i there are channels along here, the laser beams then prcpagate llbackandforth, i
illuminating these channels with ootics on each 21 H
!i
'l 22 j end in order to do that, and we will come back to that in a 23 'llittle bit.
1 2e COMMISSIC':ER GILIUShi:
M c.,, what does ene cf these t
25 units produce?
P 1044 123 1
I 40 ll l
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8
{!
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MR. FORSEN:
2 l
3 4
I 5
6 7
8 i
9 CO?OIISSIONER GILINSKY:
l 10 i
11 MR. FORSEN:
12 CO?GIISSIONER GILINSKY:
13 MR. FORSEN:
14 I
I
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i 16 '
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18 19 :'
l 20 i
21 22 iii f
23 j' COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
MR. FORSEN:
3.>,
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t' 1044 124
l 41 1
J 100R ORBINAL d
1 H 2
3 4
The point we are talking -- would like to make here, 5
and I'm getting a little long on time -- is that this can be 6
a vault-type room if one wants to, such that the only uranium 7
that is in here is something that has been assayed and inspected.
tGw"Y 8
And if this uranium is known, from what I have shown you before 4
9 I
and.ee can go in to more detail as your time or interests allows 10 i
11 12 13 14 If that, in fact, that assay is something like one 15 lpercentenricheduranium, then one has to slow down the through-I 16 iput of this device because there are a number of saturation effects!
17 ;i takes place in this system and they have to do with two that g
i is }l; principal things.
One has to do with the plasma physics of u
h
{' extraction.
Ef I have too many ions, namely, the 235 that I'm 19 i
il 20 going'to get out of whatever that feed is high, I'm not able to I
I 21 extract those ions quite so well. The second point is that this l
22 cclumn, as I take the atoms up the levels to ionization, really 23 is an inverted population, and maybe that means something to you 2z
- and mayae it doesn't.
What it really means is that this column out of the. ground state 25
..ill lase, that.Su, I have taken atoms a
1044 125
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f i
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l U and put them into excited levels and if I don't get them on up 2
quickly they will lase to down transistions.
3 4
5 6
7 l
It also provides a problem for, if one were, in terms 8
of this NASAP study, were to try and clandestinely feed enriched 9
You would have to cut down the through-puts of these a
10 plants to keep the 235 concentration down in this zone or, in q' w.
11 fact,A ould lase.
12 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
I guess I still don't understand i
13 why you have restricted yourself to the depleted uranium. Is that I
14 partly to avoid the problems that you might have of paying a
'S higher enrichment or is there a real economic reason?
16 MR. FORSEN:
No, there is an economic driving force, 17 depending upon what the tails value is.
I 18 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE. The market is certainly in the i
19 cails.
I 20 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY: Well, I mean, no one else would 21,, feed on the tails is what vou are saving, yes, but are you saying l
22 that vou could not comoete with other methods ---
23 MR. FORSEN:
Not unless I had a tail stripping plant I:
2, F, sitting some place that could take the tails cut of that process n
25 " and do something with them.
g 1044 126
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43 i
i h,
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1,i COMMISSIONER EEhSEDY:
Tails out of this process?
2 7
MR. FORSEN:
If I'm feeding natural and I have this h, b 3
.ui-c' a s s ay, I have to have a plant like this that can take tails 4
and feed to it.
5 COMMISSIONER EENNEDY:
You are going to get such a high 6
assay of tails coming out of this plant that you are losing.
7 MR. FORSEN: That's right, it's not economic.
8 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
Your conclusion is that it would 9
not be economic to run an LIS plant on natural uranium ---
lI 10 '
MR. FORSEN:
-- With high assay tails.
11 1 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
getting the normal three 12 ! percent out?
13 MR. FORSEN: Right.
14 I'm not willing to say it is totally uneconomic, but I
15 there is a penalty that I have to give back to the customer 16 in terms of uranium difference, which I don't have control over 17 i, to provide this.
h j
18[
COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
They may not have this view, but j
11 19 'I my view would also be that at least currently the government has ltaken a very strong stand that the major enrichment plant and 20 i
i diffusion plants and centifuge plants, they have made a major 21 i 22
'cctmitment to build all of those, and the available market for
[at least the U.S. enrichment services is in the tails.
23 24 COMMISSIONER EEhSEDI:
-:hich nobody is really attacking.
3,c COMMISSIONER AHEAESE:
nat's right.
I l'
1044 127
h:
44 o
i i
'i 4
1 MR. FORSEN :
We see, and as you saw (g%: the $60 million 2
leading up uc the $100 million cost per hundred tons, we are 3
really competing principally with a miner.
Two thirds of the 4
cost there was in yellow cake.
Sc if this process can do that 5
you are competing on a ratio basis, two thirds with the miner 6
and one third with the enricher.
There is no way to get around 7
the fact that you are substituting some enrichment, and it is 8
a big number for this even small-scale plant.
It is a big number slJLJ r/
9 in the sense of the number of. -
that you are producing, I
l 10 but a very small number in terms of tons of product that is coming 11 out.
12 Well, I wanted to show you this to give you some idea 13 of the scale of this thing.
This operates ---
14 1s there a question?
15 COMMISSIONER KENNEDY. Again, what's the Lutc1 dimensions 16 of that picture?
17 MR. FORSEN:
l t
l i
19 i
i a
4 20 l
l 21 We are not close to this level yet.
We are building
{
l.
c; this piece of apparatus and these items to find out -- we call it 22 23 0ourdoor-slammer.
It is equivalent of the General Motors things I:
24 h that slams the door to find out what is gcing to brea:.. in this ti i
i: svstem and what won't work..
It will not have uranium ir it.
We os i
e 1044 128
45 l
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t i
1
,have other experiments to do uranium, but nothing quite that 2
scale.
3 5
6 7
8 9
10 11 12 13 The point I want to make here is that it gives you some 14 ' idea of the scale, and of course, as Bill has said, we are tr.vinc l
l 15 ~ to disspell the idea of garage-scale. This thing is just not like t
6 i
16 th a t.
It is an enormously big thing, the materials handling probled 17,, is big and the equipment is big.
And we will come back to more h,
18 of that on the laser side.
t 19 COMMISSIOhER AHEn.RNE: It is a very small plant compared i
20 jto diffusion plant.
11 21 l-MR. FORSEN:
It is a iery small plant cc= pared to a
\\;
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22 jdiffusionplant, but it is not garage-scale.
23 ?
COMMISSIONER AHEARhE:
It could be hidden.
2/
MR. FORSE5:
Well, I don't k n r.-
7hether it can be 45 hadden or not, we will ccmc to that.
i e
a 1044 129
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1 CO.GISSIONER AHEAR::E:
It could be..idden in a diffusion 2
plant and you wouldn't even see it.
3 MR. FORSEN:
You can detect it, though. And I'll come 4
to that.
5 Can we have the ne>:t vugraph.
6 (Slide) 7 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 I
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s All right, on the proliferation considerations, which 21 22 are she,n a little bit on the next couple of slides, and that 23 brings us to a close.
Can I have the next slice, plcase?
2 (Slide)
'e 5 h'e believe that the dollar and tecF.ical ccr:s are ver-;
1044 133 I
1 4-
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h.
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Il 1 1 high.
We believe we have put together one of the best teams in 2
the world to do this kind of work.
We have spent $40 plus million 3
just to get to the point where we think we are ready to make 4
a step to do a process demonstration.
Not a commercial facility, 5
but a process demonstration.
6 7
8 9
10 11 12 O.
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- i 16
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i The technology is very complex and we think very j
19 i
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sophisticated.
We believe major scale-down is impossible, because i 21 l4 if you don' t l
illuminate all of that uranium that you produce li 22 jyou are still going to get the scattered material, consequently the assay will drop.
So that a plant needs a full set of light 23 '
24 jto illuminate these channels z.nd if icu dor't h a s e_
it you won't 25 get the assay you are talking about.
i-1044 134
ij li 51 i
li I f Tne cemanc :or c1 verse stu22 has bee.-
ccry high. We 2
have been able to benefit not only from the U.S. accelerator 3
program and we have used modulator technology out of Stanford, 4
Stanford Linear Accelerator, plus our own developments.
We 5
cerely look at the components that they have.
Plasma physics L16 6
out of 4&ffusion program, which is my own background, but the 4
7 laser physics out of almost no place, because nobody has required the spectroscopic sophistication that these plants require.
9 There are some unique components in this, and I think le 1 0 'l that provides an opporunity for monitoring both on an international 11 basis, and we can come back to that.
12 We believe that construction ana operation are I
13 !! detectible for a couple of reasons.
i One, of course, is thav i
t 14 the power that goes in to these plants, while it is considerably i
15 lecc than a gaseous diffusion planL, does consume about 10 i
16 percent.
You will notice that that's slightly more than a I
l 17 gaseous centifuge in which we talked about four percent.
i i
18 ij
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We alto believe that effective safeguarde can be 1_.
_rpic.mented because of the lack cf flexibilit2 of the desiens and f*
1044 135
it
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32 i
I ev ll 1 li the lack of staging says that if I can monitor cht feed or 2
the tails that come out of these plants, I should be effectively 3
able to tell what the product was and if I can do a mass balance, 4
I know how much was there.
5 As Mr. England said, we are working with the Arms 6
Control and Disarmament Agency to try and effect some of these L+v 7
kinds of things 2nwr designs, conceptual designs of possible future 8
plants, and we would hope to be able to work with you to in this 9
regard.
I 1 0 'l The next vugraph, please?
11 (Slide) 12 ;
In terms of components that can be monitored, unlike the t
I 13 centrifuge process which perhaps is the -- if you will pardon me --
14 the weapons available technical choice, that is replication of 15 small centrifuges is probably the way tu 90. There are e number 16 of flow streams of sophisticated equipment that goes in to this 17 ;
plant which is not just a centrifuge, and of course, part of the Il 18 p criving force of being in the business of centrifuge enrichment j
- I
~
19 y from a commercial point of view is supplying centrifuges, and ij E
20 1we have yet to understand what [URANCOmaywellbedcingin l
21 that regarc.
I i
22 tron this point of view I show on the icfthand side 23 !{the number of components that are required on an annual -- to 24 start the plant, and on the righhand side these that are required 25 en an annual basis.
1044 136
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1044 137
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I 55 P00R BRBR 1 i! 2 3 4 5 There are other things like that that are in this 6 NASAP study that we are doing, and are being made available. 7 (Slide) 8 Well, the last vugraph is kind of a summary of our 9 conclusions of this. We believe that tails stripping opportunity il 10 I really does effectively increase the U.S. uranium reserves. It is 11 about a 20 percent effect, if you will. It clearly helps us, 12 13 i i 14 i has got to think, and for this forum you might say the French l 15 i:culd curely reconsider building Coredif if the United States 16 was able to take tails that far. On the other hand, one might. I l 17 also argue that the French are likely to sr.y that laser enrich-e t I i i T.ent is a real proliferation risk and try and dissuade us from j 18 i 19 Iworking on it. l! 20 ij It does show technological leadership and I think we i l i 21 l' c o u l d u s e c o m e g a i n s in that area. It is very sophisticated s 22 as all advanced tecrnai.ogies are. I think it coes 71.e nome 23 Nsupplyoptions, the U S., if needed, but that firct snalles: P b plant wt would know to bu21d reall3 coesn't provide much. Cne 'a 23 .culd have to expand that capability, .f in fact, it was dcsirable. 1044 139
O. a s i fl 't lI, i !l On the proliferation side, .e cel_- 2 these things 1 imy '.:wthf 2 also contribute to proliferation, but the technology is very 4 3 sophisticated. The designs cannot directly produce high-enriched 4 uranium. We can go in to more detail if you want to on the 5 process, but it just can't in a one-step process. 6 We believe that clandestine activity is detectible 7 from the build-up of people and components and the radiation 8 signal. We believe that safeguards, by monitoring either the 9 product or'the feed stream or both can effecti'.aly tell what is l t 10 going on in the plant, and of course, the technology has been l l 11 very tightly held and I anticipate it would remain so. 1 1 12 That's all for the vugraphs, and I have run over my i 13 q time and my colleagues are going to be mad at me, but if you 14 have got cuestions, we would try and answer them. t 15 COMMISSIONER AHEARKE: I assume you have made an l l 16 estimate of if for your out-year forecast on what the cost 17 per SWU would be out of this plant? n i 18 i MR. FORSEN: 1 I 19 ! i 20 !! i t 21 But again, you have to unders"""- -cat this is in d. i 'the early R&D stages of the program and those numbers tend to jigo up, and if the margin wasn't that big, you probabli wouldn'_ 23 24 :,be allowe* o go forward with it, but in does look 11:;e that ,t 25 'the window it fits. 1044 140
I' t l I, ao 'l I, Il 4 h n f i '4 1 rr,'AMTSSIO:;ER AHEAR::E : 2 i 3 MR. FORSEN: l Dv1 p t? ggr Y X;'a n~, a ; g ln g' 1 *;,-JU a { %4 )\\ L' 1 ' h: c. 3' n rt 'Y 5 6 7 8 i 5' COMMISSIONER AHEAR: E: I f 10 MR. FORSEN: I l 1 12 j 6 i ,J 1 4 .li 1 1 p i , l I. 15 I i 1 e f lo-l l j 17 CO:O:ISSIONER GILINSKY: Well, it would have to be that i I t il 'l i 18 j; to make economic sense, because even if you have got the l l: 19 p materials free, you would have to be in that range. .t ll l 20 '! MR.FORSEN: Well, as you saw, from the other way of j
- 1 21 F going one only has about a 70 percent differential frc= where i
22 the customer can get that today, based on yellow c a';e and the 1. t csz w :-- !, SKU 'l so that's the margin you nave got to work in. 23 e CHAIR'Q: HE:;DRIE : Euppose you tr;, to drive -- can you .3
- cep getting an enricnT.ent ratio cf about?
Ec;.. ace :c '. ace 1044 141
.l g i 57-7 l i i l i i !J l s' I 1 i d ern-ing plant designs as von co on up tnc lacaer --- 2 MR. FORSEN: For the NASAP study we have assumed you 3 could do that and then said, how would you operate the plant? 4 This would be an existing plant on a foreign soil that you are 5 trying to safeguard. 6 7 8 9 I 10 11 12
- 13 i
i 14 l CHAIRMAN HENDRIE: 15 MR. FORSEN: 16 17 I I 18 t; 'i l1 19 20 ?, e I i 21 r 22 q ll 23 !! i 2, 25 1044 142
i i 6 I' 58 1-I t I l i J t t F i I' U \\ l 2 3 I 4 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY: 5 6 MR. FORSEN: 7 l 8 9 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY: Do you run in to criticality 10 problems with the higher enr; chments? 11 MR. FORSEN: Sure you do. This is not a well moderated i 12 system, but if you were to take the plates which have to go I i \\ l 13
- into a dissolver, and that is a moderated system because it i-i
}a liquid system, you are trying to design it for critical safe j 14 I i l 15 operation at S percent assay. That would be the greatest you I 16 might ever have. Now,if somebody were to put 40 percent assay i 1 17 l; in there, because that's what it came out as -- excuse me -- 1 15 p60 percent assay that what it came out at the third stage, II, 19 1 that wculd be -- it could be critical there. j l'.! 1 20 !3 21 h 22 23 E c, _ i 4 4 4-1044 143
i d. 59 p H i il 1 o 2 i n - I' i 2 I l 3 l 4 5 6 CliAIRMAN HENDRIE : Very good. Other questions? 7 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: Yes. 8 Your current schedule, you said, was slipping a little 9 i, bit. What --- h 10 MR. FORSEN: Well, the experimental test facility we 11 would like to start construction the second half of next year. 12 It takes 12 months to get the facilities built and probably six 13 ;; months for start-up of any kind of experiments. We would need i .,I, i 1 4,l a t. least a year, perhaps two years of data out of Ina in oraer 4 15 p, to b'e able to 'put together all 'of the requirements for the il 16 !; safety analysis report for a license. So that's where the h u 17 ? schedule has slipped, to the point of when could we table a { 18, license application for a commercial step. That suggested that i I 19 h ' E l. I think we are now talking '82, but it of course, depends r f 20 h on what you run in to in this step. 4h 21 l! It also depends on if we have to develop these safe-
- i 22
~ guards requirements for an effective Rilograr feeding two-tenths 23 ;, material, which I alluded to earlier, and that's a real problem is for us. 13 COMMISSIO.iER AJE;.RNE : Sc ther the recL cf four t' 1044 144
3 li 60 i j 6 n. ,Y schedule, you would expect to have your 100 percent plant sort of 1 2 prcof-tested around '87? 3 MR. FORSEN: Around '87. 4 We have allowed in that scenario a three year start 5 up. Now, if we take longer during the development stages you l 6 might be able to compress the start up and still make the '86 '88 7 period, but that's the window we are talking about. 8 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY: At what point will you become 9 ', what is ca' led a production facility rather than just a mgEb) } l .1 i. 10 i licensee? i l 11 MR. FORSEN: I think the point where you have got enough 12 light in a facility that you can make a reasonable enrichment. 13 CO."MISSIONER GILINSF.Y : And ', hat is your --- l i 14 j MR. FORSEN: That bottom facility is clearly one. T', a l' 15 g smallest scale commercial facility would be a production - you I ,I t 16 would have output that would be of some value, and in our view, I i that's the point. 17,!! lE COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: Then if you took the f,ollowing j 19 step after that, you have tested everything out, it looks good f n n 20 a and you finally can do whatever contractural arrancements are i-
- i 21 l'necessary, are vou -- would that current schedule sev somewhere
- 2 around the early 1990's that you could have a full-scale er what?
23 MR. FORSEN: The construction of the second plant, and if 1: ware the same kind, but you would want to mar:e it higger, we are talking five years. 1044 145
- j 4
61 I i i i l i
- i i
t' f h i i i! COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: So the early 1990's? I 2 MR. FORSEN: Right. 3 COMMISSIONER GILIhSKY: Now, what do you know of the 4 work abroad, is it headed in this same direction? 5 MR. FORSEN: We monitor the patent literature very 6 , well abroad, and we, of course, keep our ears to the ground. 7 8 9 10 j 11 12 13 14 15 l l 16 1 17 i l \\ 18 d'
- I I!
I i 19 l i 20 i ,1 21 COMMISSIONER OILINSKY: i "e I 22 MR. FORSEN: ii 23 l-it 24 M P 4D ', i i! 1044 146
i 62 f l i 6I l t 9 11 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 i 1 0 !! l 11 i 12 'I i 13 - t i 14. ! ll 1 1 15 i 16 j ~ ~! 'l 17 l, li 15 li si b 19 lI l t i 11 1 20 ;; i 1. oi 't CO.'O1TSSICSER GILINSKY: 'i il., MR. FORSE::: .o e I
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64 1 1! I 'a Il '~ i e { s j + b t l i 2 3 4 5 6 7 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE: What sort of MUFs would you expect 8 to have in the demonstration plant? 9 MR. FORSEN: With existing technologies we think we can 10 do two and a half percent, but if we have got to get to a 11 statistical certainty for this tails feed of two tenths, which 12 comes.out of the plants at random at two-tenths, I don't know Tb 13 what tuo-tenths meansigget the statistical certainty that is i lrecuiredonthefeedassayof 14 . hat to make the LEMUF calculations I 15 i for the rest of the thing come out, we would have to develop i 16 new technologies to measure that assay, specifially since most 17,of them are gas phase mass spectrographs and this is all metal l i 18 l work. So to do contact ionization mass spectrographs are not I n 19 jl as sophisticated as gas phase,. and these kinds of problems have 'l '6 20 h let us kind of hope that an effective kilogram remains at l i 21 lwhat it has been and doesn't go to something w'nich is more
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