Ambient office  = 138 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 84 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 82 nanosieverts per hour

Avocado from Central Market = 83 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 145 nanosieverts per hour

Filtered water = 119 nanosieverts per hour

Dover sole – Caught in USA = 89 nanosieverts per hour

Part 3 of 3 Parts (Please read Parts 1 and 2 first)
Desalinization:
    Many nuclear power advocates have suggested that SMRs and other next generation reactors could be used to provide the high energy requirements that are need to removed salt from sea water to meet the growing global need for clean water. According to the UN, about twenty percent of the population of the world does not have access to clearn drinking water. Climate change will reduce water availability in many areas and deploying desalination facilities may be part of the solution. Nuclear power generation could utilize its carbon-free energy production and excess heat to condense seawater into potable water vapor.
     John Hopkins is the NuScale Chairman and CEO. He said in an interview, “For me, I think the energy for desalination is going to be big.  You take a town like Cape Town, South Africa, 3.7 million people, they don’t have any water. One 12-pack [of small modular reactors] could provide the energy requirements for the potable water for a city of that size.” Nuclear energy will have to compete with other power sources such as solar power which has been widely deployed for desalinization.
Advanced manufacturing:
   Some reactor developers are considering the use of their technology to make raw materials for use in advanced manufacturing. For some applications, manufactures might need a lot of high-quality steam which the nuclear industry can offer. Kosnick said, “All of a sudden the product that you’re making — it’s not just the electrons.”
    The DoE recently awarded a one-million-dollar grant to a partnership between the Bill Gates-backed advanced nuclear company named TerraPower and Ramaco Carbon based in Wyoming to research the use of coal to produce carbon fibers which can provide light weight but strong materials for a variety of uses. The researchers will consider how the extreme heat from nuclear reactors could be used to change coal into products such as carbon fibers that could give coal an important application beyond using it for power generation.
    Most carbon fiber today is produced from polyacrylonitrile which is a petrochemical product. This new process being researched could bring down the cost of production of carbon fibers which would make carbon fiber more available for use in the transportation sector. The material’s high strength and high heat resistance could be used to make vehicles safer and more fuel-efficient by reducing weight.
     Josh Walter is the project manager for integrated energy systems and innovation manager at TerraPower. He said, “We believe we can create carbon fiber precursor using elements of coal instead [of petrochemicals], extracted by heating it with a non-CO2-emitting form of energy. In the future, that might be nuclear energy.”
     While these four novel applications for nuclear energy look promising, they do not address some of the major problems with nuclear energy production. We still have to deal with huge amounts of spent nuclear fuel. Nuclear power plants are still vulnerable to terrorist attacks to steal nuclear materials or to destroy the facility distributing nuclear materials over the nearby environment. Shoddy manufacturing and lacks adherence to nuclear regulations can still lead to nuclear accidents which could endanger millions of people.

Ambient office  = 149 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 88 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 91 nanosieverts per hour

Blueberry from Central Market = 85 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 119 nanosieverts per hour

Filtered water = 104 nanosieverts per hour

Part 2 of 3 Parts (Pease read Part 1 first)
Hydrogen production:
   Hydrogen gas for use as a fuel has been touted as a possible game changer with respect to clean energy. It could help reduce the generation of carbon dioxide in industrial sectors from agriculture to transportation. It has also been mentioned in conjunction with next generation reactors because hydrogen can be extracted from their steam via their high temperatures and available energy.
    Jose Reyes is a founder of the SMR company, NuScale. He said in a recent interview, “Where you can really affect carbon reduction is not just providing electricity, which will help with the grid, but now you can start affecting the transportation sector. There is big interest there.”
    Just one of NuScale six-module small reactor designs could produce about two hundred metric tons of hydrogen per day. This would be enough to provide fuel for sixty thousand hydrogen powered cars. However, in order for hydrogen production to produce steady revenue, there would need to be massive investment in money and time to build a hydrogen transportation sector. The DoE has already started to spend research funds to investigate what capabilities the existing nuclear power reactor fleet could have for hydrogen production.
    In September, the DoE announced that it was providing eleven million dollars to fund three demonstration projects for hydrogen production at three nuclear power plants. Those three plants are: FirstEnergy Solutions Corp.’s Davis-Besse plant in Ohio, Arizona Public Service Co.’s Palo Verde plant in Arizona, and one of Xcel Energy Inc.’s two nuclear plants in Minnesota.
     Bruce Hallbert is the director of the DoE light Water Reactor Sustainability Program. In announcing the demonstration projects, he said, “These first-of-a-kind projects represent significant advances for improving the long-term economic competitiveness of the light water reactor industry.”
Pairing Up:
    Xcel Energy is carrying out one of the DoE hydrogen fuel production demonstration projects. They are also going to investigate the feasibility of having their nuclear plants switch to hydrogen fuel production when Xcel’s renewable assets such as solar and wind energy are more in use. If such a system were in place, nuclear power plants could switch back to producing electricity when renewable sources are not producing as much electricity as needed. This flexible interplay of energy sources is one vision of how the next generation of reactors could be used. In this case, nuclear power would be working in tandem with renewables instead of competing with them.
    Kosnic of the NEI said, “You can imagine this nuclear asset of the future: that it can be all-in to the grid if that’s what the grid needs. Let’s say it’s a windy, sunny day and you need a little bit less right now; you can be then diverting and saying, ‘Well, I’m going to make hydrogen then for a while’ or ‘I’m going to send my steam over to someplace else,’ you know, or ‘I’ll run a desalinization plant for a while,’ and then all of a sudden the sun goes down and all of a sudden the wind stops blowing and all of a sudden the grid needs that support, and then you can shift back.”
    That shifting back and forth is already being explored as utilities attempt to combine intermittent resources such as wind and solar with natural gas plants or battery storage to increase production of clean energy and meet climate change mitigation goals.
     Supporters of SMRs say that they could provide the same sort of backup power when the wind is not blowing and/or the sun is not shining. They point out that an added benefit would be additional carbon reduction by not burning natural gas. This is an attractive proposition for some states which have a goal of net-zero carbon emission by 2050.
Please read Part 3

Ambient office  = 133 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 115 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 117 nanosieverts per hour

Red bell pepper from Central Market = 85 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 110 nanosieverts per hour

Filtered water = 97 nanosieverts per hour

Part 1 of 3 Parts
      Most of my posts about nuclear energy concern the generation of electricity. Other uses such as creation of isotopes used in medical diagnosis and treatment or for the generation of heat for residential and business buildings. Today I am going to talk about several other possible uses of nuclear energy.
    Nuclear developers across the world are hoping that the development and deployment of small modular reactors (SMRs) which generation three hundred million megawatts or less will help the industry that suffered plant closures, cost overruns, cancelled projects, and stiff competition from renewable sources during the last ten years. There are plans to seek new markets that will generate new revenue streams for nuclear energy production. Such new markets may help the nuclear industry survive the next ten years as renewable energy and natural gas prices continue to drop, especially if flat demand for electricity continues.
    Maria Korsnick is the CEO of the Nuclear Energy Institute. She said in an interview, “With each of these new things that are brought to the marketplace for nuclear, I think it’s just a wonderful opportunity to see that innovation.” 
    The success of the penetration of nuclear energy into new markets in the U.S. depends on whether or not SMRs and other advanced reactor designs can obtain the approval of federal agencies during the next twenty years. One of the reasons that nuclear energy production has struggled to expand in the U.S. is the fact that the price for construction of new conventional reactors in the U.S. is very high and there are serious regulatory challenges to licensing new reactor builds. Most nuclear reactor construction projects have gone beyond their original schedules.
    NuScale Power is based in Oregon. It is the first company to seek approval for its SMR design from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It has taken a difficult decade of negotiation between NuScale and the NRC to get this far. They hope to have the NRC issue a decision within the next year.
    At the federal level, the Department of Energy (DoE) has just launched a National Reactor Innovation Center to assist companies in the further development of new reactor designs to improve their capabilities for future deployment.
    Rita Baranwal is the DoE Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy. In an interview, she said, “All of this really shows that DOE is certainly dedicated to demonstrating new nuclear technology in the United States by offering a space, land and facilities, as well as expertise, to ensure that private developers can do so in the United States.”
    Senators Jim Risch (R-Idaho) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) introduced a bill earlier this year that would help expand the DoE nuclear research initiatives to include ways that the next generation of reactors might be used for purposes beyond the generation of electricity. The bill, S.2702, was voted out of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last month. It would authorize fifty million dollars annually in support of these research directives. Risch said, “Nuclear energy holds incredible potential beyond its traditional uses.”
Please read Part 2