Ambient office = 125 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 162 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 157 nanosieverts per hour

Tomato from Central Market = 70 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 74 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient office = 108 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 104 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 93 nanosieverts per hour

Red bell pepper from Central Market = 92 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 94 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 84 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 123 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 123 nanosieverts per hour

English cucumbers  from Central Market = 104 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 114 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 95 nanosieverts per hour

Dover Sole from Central = 110 nanosieverts per hour

     Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) has just signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Kyoto Fusioneering Ltd (KF) to collaborate on the delivery of technical services to support the growing international fusion reactor market. The collaborators will have a key focus on testing related to tritium.
     Under the MoU, the CNL will work with KF to help accelerate the progression of fusion as a source of clean energy. The MoU covers cooperation in areas including the exchange of scientific information, the shared use of technical equipment and facilities, the delivery of joint research projects, and the exchange of technical personnel. The collaboration aims to provide fusion developers with better access to testing and demonstration equipment. 
     KF was spun out of Kyoto University in 2019 as Japan’s first fusion start-up company. Their goal is to develop advanced technologies for commercial fusion reactors building on decades of research at the university. One of the advanced technologies the company is developing for commercial fusion is tritium fuel cycle technologies and breeding blankets for tritium production and power generation.
     Tritium is an isotope of hydrogen that will provide the fuel for many fusion reactor designs under development. CNL has a long and extensive history in the development of technologies and systems to safely manage tritium. It operates a dedicated, state-of-the-art Tritium Facility (TF) at its Chalk River Laboratories site in Ontario. The TF was originally constructed to support the tritium technology needs for Candu reactors and to support the Canadian fusion program. The facility is able to handle significant amounts of tritium for research and development.
     Jeff Griffin is the CNL Vice-President of Science and Technology. He said, “CNL is currently exploring plans to establish an internationally unique fusion fuel cycle and demonstration loop at the Chalk River Laboratories campus. This partnership with Kyoto Fusioneering could build on this work and contribute to the setup of a demonstration-scale test loop, which would combine elements of Kyoto Fusioneering’s Unique Integrated Testing Facility (UNITY) concept with CNL’s expertise in the fusion fuel cycle.”
     Taka Nagao is the CEO of KF. He said, “Kyoto Fusioneering is providing solutions for fusion energy based on innovative and unique research from Kyoto University and high quality Japanese industrial technology. The cooperation with CNL will provide a very strong and important contribution to the international development of fusion energy, which has the potential to solve key energy and environmental problems on this planet.”
     Earlier this month, KF signed an agreement with the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority to develop fusion-related technologies. There are also plans to develop a fusion-grade silicon carbide composite material.
     The agreement is the latest in a series of fusion-related projects recently announced by CNL. These include working with private fusion developer General Fusion on joint projects to accelerate the deployment of commercial fusion power in Canada as well as an agreement with U.K.-based First Light Fusion to design a system for extracting tritium from a planned sixty megawatt pilot power plant reactor.
     Joe McBrearty is the President and CEO of CNL. He said, “Our best approach to confront climate change here in Canada and around the world is by working together, and sharing our technical knowledge and resources in the pursuit of next-generation clean energy solutions. That is at the heart of this agreement with Kyoto Fusioneering, an incredibly talented and ambitious company which shares our optimism in fusion power. Working together, we hope to accelerate this promising new technology, by providing fusion vendors with access to the products and services they need to develop, qualify and deploy their technologies.”

Ambient office = 85 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 113 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 118 nanosieverts per hour

Blueberry from Central Market = 115 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 111 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 85 nanosieverts per hour

     EDF is the French utility which builds, operates and sell nuclear fission power reactors. They just announced that they will create a wholly-owned subsidiary which will market their Nuward small modular reactor (SMR). The purpose of this action is to allow the Nuward reactor to meet its “next key milestones” on the way to first pouring of concrete for an power plant in 2030.
     Following the conceptual design phase, EDF said that “Nuward will now proceed with the basic design activities to progress design maturity, leveraging the expertise and experience of EDF Group’s nuclear engineering teams, while also benefiting from the support of an international network of industrial partners”.
     A Design and Safety options file must be submitted to the French Nuclear Safety Authority in July. Discussion and engagement will also take place to assess and select possible sites for the first plant in France.
     The Nuward SMR project was launched in September of 2019 by the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), EDF, Naval Group and TechnicAtome. The first Nuward project consists of a three hundred and forty megawatt SMR plant with two pressurized water reactors (PWR) of one hundred and seventy megawatts each. It has been jointly developed using France’s long-term experience with PWRs. The new SMR technology is expected to replace old high CO2-emitting coal, oil and gas power plants around the world. Other applications such as hydrogen production, urban and district heating or desalinization will also be supported.
     Nuward company will continue to work with its long-time partners as well as new partners following its establishment. Its workforce is expected to expand to about one hundred and fifty workers in its core team by 2024. More than six hundred workers in total including partners’ staff will be contributing to the project.
      Renaud Crassous is Nuward’s President. He said the aim was to “fully integrate the SMR catalysts for success, i.e. innovation, modularization, standardization and series production. We are committed to increasing the speed of execution to deliver the Nuward SMR design on time to meet market expectations for first nuclear concrete as early as 2030.”
     Xavier Ursat is the EDF Group Senior Executive in charge of Engineering and New Nuclear Projects Division. He said that as a subsidiary embedded within the EDF Group, Nuward will be “a key enabler for a time-to-market product, providing the agility and speed required to meet the next key milestones”.
     The Nuward is one of a variety of SMRs in development at the moment in different countries and the company hopes to eventually become the European leader in SMR technology. It has already attracted interest elsewhere in Europe. A regulatory agreement was reached last year. This means that the French nuclear safety regulator and Czech and Finnish regulators are collaborating for a pilot European early joining regulatory review.
     According to EDF’s SMR roadmap, the phase involving the detailed design and formal application for a new nuclear facility is scheduled to begin in 2026. This will be followed by pouring the first concrete in France in 2030 with the construction of that first unit anticipate to take about three years.