Accelerator Driven Thorium Reactor power station

Professor Carlo Rubbia, seated left with members of Aker Solutions ADTR™ team: Victoria Ashley seated right and standing (L- R) John Earp, Colin Fuller and Roger Ashworth

Development project with Professor Carlo Rubbia

Aker, the major shareholder of Aker Solutions, first became interested in the use of thorium following an investment study into the viability of a thorium mine in Norway.

In parallel to the mine consideration, Aker Solutions investigated the potential exploitation of thorium. This led to the identification of the work done by Professor Carlo Rubbia in the 1990’s on Accelerator Driven Systems. Subsequent meetings resulted in the engagement of Professor Rubbia to advise in the engineering development of his ideas, leading to the potential commercialisation of the technology as a power producer. The name given to this thorium-fuelled nuclear power station is the Accelerator Driven Thorium Reactor (ADTR™).

Carlo Rubbia graduated in Physics at Scuola Normale of Pisa. In 1959 he obtained his PhD from Columbia University (USA). Since 1961 he has been working at CERN, Geneva, becoming its Director General from 1989 and 1994.

From 1972 to 1989, he has held the Higgins Professorship of Physics at Harvard University. From 1999 to 2005, he was the President of the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and the Environment (ENEA). During his term as President of ENEA, he developed a novel method for concentrating solar power at high temperatures for energy production, known as the Archimedes Project, which is presently being developed by industry for commercial use. He is currently pursuing his solar programmes at CIEMAT in Spain.

In 1984, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Simon van der Meer "for their decisive contributions to the large project, which led to the discovery of the field particles W and Z, communicators of weak interaction". He has also been one of the leaders in a collaboration effort deep in the Gran Sasso Laboratory, designed to detect any sign of decay of the proton, where an innovative detector has been installed to explore neutrino signals of cosmic nature.

During the 1990s Rubbia proposed the concept of an energy amplifier (ADS) – a novel and safe way of producing practically unlimited nuclear energy exploiting present-day accelerator technologies from natural thorium and depleted uranium. Rubbia is noted for his work in high-energy physics using the considerable accelerator capacity of CERN.

He is currently principal Scientific Adviser of the Spanish Research Centre for Energy, Environment and Technology (CIEMAT), and a member of the high-level Advisory Group on Energy and Climate Change set up by EU's President Barroso in 2007. In March 2009, he was appointed as Special Adviser for Energy to the Secretary General of ECLAC, the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, based in Santiago (Chile). Contact Aker Solutions Phoenix House, Surtees Business Park Stockton on Tees TS18 3HR Victoria Ashley, Project Manager victoria.ashley@akersolutions.com 2010 Aker Solutions © All rights reserved www.akersolutions.com/nuclear June 2010 +44 (0) 1642 334000 +44 (0) 1642 334001 +44 (0) 1642 334072 Phone: +44 (0) 1642 334001 Phone: Fax: Fax: