TM&A has worked with a small team of scientists and social entrepreneurs since 2007 to develop a new heat and power generating technology called Accelerator Driven Sub-Critical Reactors, or more simply Energy Amplification (EA). EA was invented by Nobel Prize winning physicist Carlo Rubbia, and developed at CERN — the European particle physics research center that recently confirmed the existence of the Higgs boson or ‘God particle.’
The intention of Rubbia’s team was to develop an energy producing technology that is safer than conventional nuclear power and also eliminates high-level nuclear waste. The Energy Amplifier does this by transforming rad waste into inert substances, primarily the metal lead (Pb). The system uses a high-energy particle accelerator to speed up the natural radioactive decay of spent nuclear fuel, reducing it’s radioactive lifespan from up to a million years to a few hundred years, at which time it is estimated to be roughly as radio-toxic as coal ash. Tremendous amounts of heat are liberated in this process and can be converted into electricity through the use of conventional turbine technology. A prototype EA system was built and tested successfully at CERN in the 1980’s.
It is the intention of our team to research the feasibility of building an EA facility in southeastern Vermont to replace the aging Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant and dispose of its hundreds of spent fuel rods. Below are a series of papers that we have written for legislators and other prominent audiences on this promising technology.
-> Energy Amplifier – White Paper.pdf
-> Energy Amplifier – Talking Points.pdf
-> Nuclear Proliferation Resistance.pdf
-> Vermont Energy Amplifier.pdf
This YouTube video was produced in the U.K. in 2009 and is a good introduction to the Energy Amplification technology.