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.

Ambient office = 46 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 127 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 126 nanosieverts per hour

Celery from Central Market = 143 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 108 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 102 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient office = 67 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 152 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 151 nanosieverts per hour

Avocado from Central Market = 137 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 103 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 90 nanosieverts per hour

Part 1 of 2 Parts    
     NearStar Fusion is a five-person startup in Chantilly,Virginia. They have a new energy-generating approach for creating nuclear fusion. The company is training plasma railguns to generate more power than is put in.
     Nuclear fusion is considered the holy grail of the energy sector that could solve the world’s energy needs once achieved. In nuclear fission reactors, heavy atoms are split to generate energy. In nuclear fusion reactors, very light atoms are fused together to generate energy.
     The major problem faced while replicating this on Earth is that, until recently, the energy output from the process has remained smaller than the energy put in to drive the process. It was only in December of 2022 that the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was able to produce more energy than a nuclear fusion reaction.
     Many of the attempts to create nuclear fusion reactor have relied on the Tokamak design. In a Tokamak, a hydrogen plasma is heated and compressed until fusion is triggered. Inside the donut-shaped vacuum chamber of the Tokamak, researchers try to recreate the conditions on the Sun.
     The NIF utilized what is called inertial confinement to achieve its breakthrough. One hundred and ninety-two lasers are focused on a pellet of hydrogen fuel to heat it to the necessary temperature. However, the lasers being used by the NIF are old and inefficient and the extra energy generated was very small.
     Startups which aim to replicate the NIF’s successes are using modern lasers that can fire more regularly and efficiently. However, in order for nuclear fusion to be economically viable, the output needs to be 15-20 times more than the energy put in to fire the lasers. This is where NearStar Fusion believes that its approach will be able to reach that goal.
     NearStar is a sister company to HyperJet Fusion which is also based in Chantilly. HyperJet is researching fusion energy using plasma jets. Instead of focusing on how to increase output from nuclear fusion reactors, NearStar’s team is working to reduce the energy input needed for ignition which is the beginning of nuclear fusion. According to the company this can be achieved by using plasma railguns because they are energy efficient.
     A railgun is a linear motor device, typically used as a weapon. It uses electromagnetic force to launch high-velocity projectiles which do not contain explosives. It relies on the projectile’s high kinetic energy to cause damage. The railgun uses a pair of parallel conductors referred to as rails. A sliding armature is accelerated along the rails driven by electromagnetic effects of a current that flows along one rail, into the armature, and then back down the other rail. The principle is related to that used in a conventional electric motor.
     A plasma railgun is a linear accelerator which, like a projectile railgun, uses two long parallel electrodes to accelerate a “sliding short” armature. However, in a plasma railgun, the armature and ejected projectile consists of plasma, a hot, ionized gas, instead of a solid slug of material such as those used in conventional railgun weapons.
Please read Part 2 next