Ambient office = 92 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 143 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 142 nanosieverts per hour

Tomato from Central Market = 70 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 73 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 62 nanosieverts per hour

Dover Sole from Central = 112 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 108 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 108 nanosieverts per hour

Red bell pepper from Central Market = 77 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 115 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 107 nanosieverts per hour

Dover Sole from Central = 112 nanosieverts per hour

     The South Oxfordshire District Council Planning Committee has just granted planning permission for the construction of General Fusion’s Demonstration Plant (GFPD) at the UK Atomic Energy Authority’s (UKAEA’s) Culham Campus near Oxford. Construction is expected to start later this year. The UKAEA website says that it “researches fusion energy and related technologies, with the aim of positioning the UK as a leader in sustainable nuclear energy.”
     General Fusion is based in Canada. Its Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF) approach involves the injection of hydrogen plasma into a sphere of liquid metal. The plasma is compressed and heated so that fusion can occur. The heat from the fusion of the hydrogen atoms is transferred into the liquid metal. Then that heat is used to generate steam to drive turbines to generate electricity. The company intends to construct a commercial nuclear fusion energy plant by the late 2020s.
     The demonstration plant will be used to verify the viability of the MTF technology. The demonstration plant will be a seventy percent-scaled version of the commercial pilot plant. It will create fusion conditions in a “power-plant relevant” environment. Temperatures of more than a hundred and eighty million degrees Fahrenheit will be achieved. However, the plant will not be used to actually produce power. The GFPD will cycle one plasma pulse per day. It will use deuterium fuel. The commercial pilot plant will use deuterium-tritium fuel and will cycle up to one plasma pulse per second.
    When construction of the one hundred and thirteen thousand square feet building is complete, General fusion will rent the building from UKAEA. The company’s fusion reactor is expected to be commissioned in 2026 and fully operational by early 2027.
     General Fusion said that siting the facility at the UKAEA’s Culham Campus allows it to “access world-leading science and engineering capabilities, such as knowledge and experience in designing, constructing and operating the record-breaking Joint European Torus”. In addition, the company expects to benefit from the U.K.’s existing fusion energy supply chains.
     Greg Twinney is the CEO of General Fusion. He said, “We are thrilled to join the Culham Campus and the UK’s Fusion Cluster and anticipate creating 60 long-term jobs at the site. In addition, we expect the project will generate approximately 200 jobs during construction.”
      Ian Chapman is the CEO of UKAEA. He said, “The UKAEA welcomes this milestone as it aligns with our strategy to create clusters that accelerate innovation in fusion and related technologies, and support public-private partnerships to thrive. It also builds upon our heritage of hosting major fusion facilities here at our Culham Campus.”
     The UKAEA carries out fusion energy research on behalf of the U.K.  government. It oversees the country’s fusion program. This included the Mega Amp Spherical Tokamak (MAST) Upgrade experiment. They also host the Joint European Torus at Culham, which is operated for scientists from around Europe.
     UKAEA is developing its own fusion power plant design. It plans to build a prototype known as the Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) at West Burton in Nottinghamshire. The STEP is due to begin operating by 2040.

Ambient office = 85 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 110 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 4 nanosieverts per hour

Iceberg lettuce from Central Market = 98 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 81 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 70 nanosieverts per hour

     Last week, the news was full of announcements that an MIT startup had successfully tested a massive magnet that could allow them to achieve “net energy” with their nuclear fusion reactor. This week, scientists at the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) being constructed in France announced that they have received the first part of another giant magnet. The magnet is so powerful that its U.S. manufacturer claims that it could lift an aircraft carrier. When the new magnet is fully assembled, it will be almost sixty feet tall and fourteen feet in diameter. Experts say that it could be the key to providing practically limitless energy via nuclear fusion.
     Nuclear fusion utilizes the same reaction seen in the Sun and other stars to produce energy. Current cutting-edge technology is being developed to allow scientist to safely collide light atoms together to form a heavier atomic nucleus while also releasing huge amounts of energy. The main problem faced by today’s researchers is that fusion reactors expend much more energy controlling and stabilizing the burning plasma required for the reaction than the energy it produces.
     That is the reason why scientists are developing incredibly power-efficient and powerful magnets. The less power these magnets require, the closer scientist will be to achieving the “net energy” they seek from nuclear fusion. U.S.-based General Atomics shipped a component of its “central solenoid” superconducting magnet from San Diego to France this summer. Laban Coblentz is a spokesman for ITER. He said, “Each completion of a major first-of-a-kind component — such as the central solenoid’s first module — increases our confidence that we can complete the complex engineering of the full machine.” The magnet includes huge coils that weigh over two hundred and fifty thousand pounds.
     ITER is now about seventy five percent complete. Scientists behind the project have established a goal for starting the reactor by 2026. Ultimately, the scientists intend to produce ten times more energy by 2035 than is required to power the fusion reactor.
     ITER scientists are involved in an international race against other research organizations, both public and private, to develop commercial nuclear fusion. The MIT and Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) mentioned above have stated that they might have their first functional fusion power plant, called ARC, operating in the early 2030s. First they will have to use their new magnet in an experimental Tokamak fusion reactor called SPARC. Neither ITER nor SPARC will be used commercially. Instead, they will serve as experimental platforms aimed at proving the viability of commercial nuclear fusion.
     The ITER project is an international collaboration which is funded by the governments of most of the countries in Europe, as well as the U.S., Russia, China, Japan, India and South Korea. If ITER is successful, all of these participating countries will benefit from the intellectual property generated by the experiments. ITER’s success would greatly enhance the global community’s ability to reduce carbon emissions. This is a necessary requirement if we wish to turn the tide on the ongoing climate change crisis.

Ambient office = 798 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 116 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 116 nanosieverts per hour

Grape from Central Market = 121 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 90 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 66 nanosieverts per hour

      Doosan Enerbility of South Korea and NAC International of the U.S. have designed a new metal cask for storing spent nuclear fuel that has received design certification from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
      The new cask is called the Metal Storage Overpack (MSO)-37. It can hold thirty-seven pressurized water reactor (PWR) spent nuclear fuel assemblies. A ceremony was held to mark NRC approval at NAC’s corporate headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.  Changyeol Cho, Vice President of Doosan Enerbility’s Nuclear Business Group, and Kent Cole, President and CEO of NAC International were among the attendees.
      The MSO was conceptualized by the NAC and Doosan Enerbility for international applications. It is an alternative to concrete storage systems for the Korea Dry Cask Storage industry. The Doosan Enerbility and NAC teams cooperatively designed and engineered the new cask. In December 2019, NAC filed an amendment application with NRC for design certification. It is the world’s first metal storage cask to have obtained design certification from the NRC.
     NAC said that the NRC approval is an MSO option of its Magnastor dry cask storage system technology. It is “the first and most widely deployed ultra-high-capacity canister system installed at US PWR commercial nuclear power plants”. To date, two hundred and eleven Magnastor systems have been loaded and are in service to safely store spent nuclear fuel at operating and shutdown sites.
     NAC said, “Compared with conventional concrete storage casks, this newly-developed metal storage cask provides robust radiation shielding and structural integrity, significantly reduces the diameter of the cask, thereby optimizing the storage cask’s footprint in dry storage facilities, which in turn allows storage of more casks in the same locality.”
      Doosan Enerbility said that the MSO-37 was developed to take into account “the characteristics of spent nuclear fuel, facility operation environments, and public demand for rigorous safety and radiation protection standards in Korea”.
      Jongdoo Kim is the Head of Doosan Energility’s Nuclear Business Group. He said, “With the technical capabilities recently acquired from the development and licensing experience of the metal storage cask, we plan to actively participate in spent nuclear fuel dry storage projects in the domestic market and to also contribute to the future development of casks designed for permanent disposal of spent nuclear fuel.”
      Jongdoo added that “Based on our supply chain built with the leading local manufacturers, we are set to actively target the global nuclear cask market and will do our utmost to promote growth of the nuclear energy ecosystem and overseas exports.” 
     In October 2015, Doosan and NAC announced that they were signing a cooperation agreement for the joint development of a spent nuclear fuel storage system to be deployed in Korea.
     In 2017, Doosan completed development of the DSS-21. It is a dry storage system that has the capacity to safely store as many as twenty one spent nuclear fuel assemblies. Since then, the DSS-24 and DSS-32 with larger storage capacities were developed. The DPC-24 was also developed. It is a cask that can be used for both storage and transportation of spent nuclear fuel.
     In 2021, Doosan became the first Korean company to export spent nuclear fuel storage casks to the U.S. They supplied five sets of a vertical concrete cask to the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania.