Ambient office = 75 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 133 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 125 nanosieverts per hour

Mini cuke from Central Market = 154 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 104 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 96 nanosieverts per hour

Dover Sole from Central = 98 nanosieverts per hour

     Ontario Power Generation (OPG) subsidiary Laurentis Energy Partners (LEP) and Saskatchewan utility SaskPower have just announced details of their Master Services Agreement. The agreement is for collaboration to advance the deployment of small modular reactors (SMRs) in Saskatchewan.
     The LEP-SaskPower agreement will run for up to five years. It will serve as a foundation for a long-term strategic partnership to streamline SMR development in Saskatchewan. The agreement will see LEP focus on program management, licensing, and operational readiness activities. LEP has offices in New Brunswick and Saskatchewan as well as Ontario.
     The new agreement is the latest activity in the ongoing collaboration between Ontario Power Generation and SaskPower. In 2022, SaskPower selected GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy’s BWRX-300 SMR for potential deployment in Saskatchewan in the mid-2030s. This is the same technology that OPG has already selected for deployment at its Darlington New Nuclear Project. The first of four SMRs is to be completed by the end of 2028. It is scheduled to be online by the end of 2029.
     Earlier this year, SaskPower and OPG renewed an agreement to continue to collaborate on new nuclear development, including SMRs, in both provinces. They will provide mutual support by sharing lessons learned, technical resources and expertise, best practices, and operating experience. They will also consider opportunities for future collaboration in areas including project development and plant operations.  
     Ken Hartwick is the President and CEO of OPG. He said that the company’s long experience in building, operating and maintaining nuclear power plants will assist Saskatchewan in adding nuclear power to its own generation mix. He also said, “Through these agreements, we are using a fleet-style approach, which will increase efficiency and decrease costs as we deploy much-needed new nuclear generation in both provinces.”
     Rupen Pandya is the President and CEO of SaskPower.  He said that OPG and LEP’s decades of combined experience with be very valuable for SaskPower’s SMR project. He went on to say, “SaskPower’s clean energy transition is part of a global transformation to a sustainable future – and the best path forward on this journey is through collaboration.”
     Last year, Ontario, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick and Alberta released a joint strategic plan for the deployment of SMRs. The BWRX-300 is being advanced for deployment in other countries including Estonia, Polan and the Czech Republic.
     Todd Smith is the Minister of Energy for Ontario. He said that the world is watching Ontario as it works to deploy the world’s first grid-scale SMR. He added that “Ontario is ready to support partners across Canada – like Saskatchewan – and around the world, leveraging the expertise of our world-class nuclear operators and supply chain to support their deployment of small modular reactors as a clean and reliable source of electricity.”
     SaskPower is working to identify possible sites for the deployment of SMRs in the mid-2030s. This will be subject to a decision to build that is expected in 2029. Dustin Ducan is the Saskatchewan Minister Responsible for SaskPower. He said that the strategic partnership between SaskPower, OPG and Laurentis is an excellent example of ongoing collaboration between the two provinces across many sectors and industries. He added that “Today’s agreement is not only good for Saskatchewan and Ontario, but will protect sustainable energy security in Canada for decades to come.”

Ambient office = 65 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 86 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 89 nanosieverts per hour

Jalapeno from Central Market = 122 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 123 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 113 nanosieverts per hour

     Installation of solar panels and wind turbines is increasing around the globe. Critics claim that renewables alone are not enough to fully decarbonize the electrical grid because of the issue of intermittency.
     Natural gas plants are often used to deal with intermittency. Is it possible to decarbonize such plants?
     The Seattle firm Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation (USNC) is working on the possibility of replace gas fired furnaces with USNC’s micro modular reactors (MMRs) which are currently in development. MMRs are designed to deliver ‘safe, clean, and cost-effective’ electricity to urban areas, large industrial users, and off-grid locations.
     The MMR will utilized encapsulated Tristructural-isotropic (TRISO) nuclear particle fuel cooled by helium. It will be manufactured with a new 3D-printing method that uses binder jet printing as the additive manufacturing technique. A ceramic production process called chemical vapor infiltration will also be used. Together, the processes can print refractory materials into components with complex shapes which are highly resistant to extreme heat and degradation. The engineering multinational company Jacobs is supporting design and development of the new reactor. The MMR could begin demonstrating nuclear power in 2026.
     Professor Simon Middleburgh is at the Nuclear Futures Institute at Bangor University. He said, “People are converging on this Triso particle as the way forward, and Ultra Safe Nuclear are probably one of the leading companies doing that.”
     The TRISO particles have tiny uranium fuel kernels in their centers which are surrounded by layers of silicon carbide and graphite to contain radioactive fission products. The main reason they are used in the MMRs is that they can enable high reaction temperatures.
     Middleburgh said, “Even if you go to extremely high temperatures beyond your normal operating temperature, what happens is these little kernels just sit there and they absorb that heat, and they hold those fission products.  higher the temperature, the higher the temperature difference, which means you can get more effective energy out of your system.”
     Low uranium density in the TRISO particles means that they are not the most efficient nucleal fuel. However, this also means easier handling. They have potential applications in otherwise risky environments close to population centers. They may also be of use in rockets.
     Middleburgh added that, “For everything we’ve looked at, this is exactly how they perform, and this is why they’re so exciting. Not necessarily the most efficient in terms of volume, but the safest way to do it. That’s why we’re pushing quite hard on this now.”
     He went on to say that using gas plants will not be socially acceptable in the new future so replacing them with MMRs is an attractive proposition. “We need to take those off the grid as soon as possible, and having reactors that can essentially act as buffers to renewables, when you’ve got a high-renewable grid, is brilliant.”
     The most efficient way of generating electricity via nuclear power is using big reactors. However, they are more expensive than MMRs. MMRs are typically less efficient but they can be very cheap and easy to build quickly.
     The U.K. government hopes that the MMRs could be well-suited to production of hydrogen or sustainable aviation fuel. The U.K. Department for Energy Security and Net Zero granted the USNC up to 29 million dollars to develop MMRs for that purpose.

Ambient office = 52 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 136 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 142 nanosieverts per hour

Green onion from Central Market = 110 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 72 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 66 nanosieverts per hour

     The U.S. intends to outline the first global strategy for commercializing nuclear fusion power at this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) in Dubai. This could be a major milestone in scientists’ decades long quest to develop and deploy this carbon free source of electricity. The COP28 is being held from the 30th of November to the 12th of December at Expo City in Dubai. The conference has been held annually since the first U.N. climate agreement was signed in 1992. The COP conferences are intended for governments to reach agreement on policies to limit global temperature rises and adapt to impacts associated with climate change.
     John Kerry is the U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change. He plans to announce the news on Monday during a tour of the Commonwealth Fusion Systems facility near Boston. Sources say that the COP28 summit will serve as the “starting gun for international cooperation” on the commercialization of nuclear fusion.
He said, “I will have much more to say on the United States’s vision for international partnerships for an inclusive fusion energy future at COP28.” He went on to say that decades of U.S. investment in fusion research have been instrumental in transforming nuclear fusion from an experiment to “an emerging climate solution.”
     Kerry will be joined on his tour of the Commonwealth facility by Claudio Descalzi, the CEO of Italian energy giant Eni. Eni is pursuing four fusion power pilot projects of its own.
     The U.S. State Department did not respond to requests from the media for comments on Kerry’s announcement, or on the fusion commercialization strategy that will be outlined at this year’s COP28 summit.
     The U.S. effort comes less than a year after researchers at Department of Energy’s National Ignition Facility in California used fusion to achieve “net energy gain” for the first time. This is a major breakthrough that demonstrated that fusion ignition is attainable in a controlled environment.
     Existing nuclear fission technology splits heavy atoms apart to generate electricity. Nuclear fusion does just the opposite, merging light atoms together to generate energy. There are two main approaches to fusion production which are internal confinement and magnetic confinement technology. Commonwealth utilizes the magnetic confinement approach.
     Many challenges remain in the quest for fusion. To scale up the appropriate technology, scientists must be able to use fusion to generation more than one hundred percent of the energy required for the ignition reaction. This is a ratio known as the “Q” value.
     The DoE experiment carried out last year with laser energy generated one hundred and twenty percent of ignition reaction value which was a net gain. However, experts noted that it is not high enough to produce commercial fusion. Producing sufficient energy by fusion may take years as well as billions of dollars in international investment.
     Scientists have also achieved only a few instances of fusion ignition. They will need to generate many continuous ignitions per minute to generate enough energy for commercial-scale fusion power.
     The number of companies that received investments for fusion technology research has increased from thirty-three to forty-three in the last year. This is according to recent data from the Fusion Industry Association. Efforts span more than a dozen countries including Germany, Japan, China, and Australia.