Ukraine’s counteroffensive in Kherson ‘gathering momentum’; UK advisor warns of nuclear risk cnbc.com

Bahraini official: Iran proxies ‘nothing new,’ nuclear deal ‘critical’ to combat ‘common threat’ foxnews.com

Ex-SpaceX Engineer Builds Martian Nuclear Reactor To Tackle Earth’s Power Crisis autoevolution.com

UK’s Gemini waste packages re-enter service world-nuclear-news.org

Ambient office = 96 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 124 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water =123 nanosieverts per hour

English cucumber from Central Market = 89 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 77 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water =60 nanosieverts per hour

Iran will keep IAEA cameras turned off until nuclear deal is restored reuters.com

Kim threatens to use nuclear weapons in any clash with the U.S. and South Korea npr.org

Nuclear threat higher now than in Cold War, British official warns washingtonpost.com

Preparations under way for refurb of Chinese Candus world-nuclear-news.org

 

 

 

 

 

Ambient office = 80 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 97 nanosieverts per hour

Broccoli from Central Market = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 119 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 103 nanosieverts per hour

Dover Sole from Central = 107 nanosieverts per hour

Part 3 of 3 Parts (Please read Part 2 first)
     Mark Herrmann is the LLNL’s deputy director for fundamental weapons physics. He said that the LLNL gets a lot of feedback from more than one hundred scientists involved in the NIF program. However, he emphasized that the long-term goal is to achieve yields that are at least two orders of magnitude above those that were managed last August. He added, “As long as we’re doing good, careful, systematic scientific study, that’s what’s most important from my perspective.”
      Riccardo Betti is the head of the laser-fusion center at the University of Rochester in New York. He provides independent assessments of the experiments at the NIF. He said that the failure of the NIF to replicate last August’s breakthrough experiment was to be expected because the lasers are now operating at the “ignition cliff”. He added that “If you are on one side of the cliff, you can get a lot of fusion output, and if you are on the other side of the cliff, you get very little.” He also said that the LLNL does not yet have the experimental accuracy to predict on which side a given experiment will land.
     Questions about fundamental science and the ability to accurately make predictions were at the center of a classified review of the NIF’s contributions to the U.S. nuclear weapons program were provided to the NNSA last year by JASON. JASON is an independent scientific panel that advises the U.S. government. In an unclassified executive summary of the report that was obtained under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, the panel acknowledged the abilities of the NIF. However, they stated that the facility is unlikely to achieve “predictable, reproducible ignition” in the next several years.
     The report was completed and released to NNSA four months before the August shot. Hurricane and others have argued that the report was ill-timed and too pessimistic.
      The JASON panelists advocated a fundamental rethinking of the program in their report. That discussion has already begun in the broader laser-fusion community. Scientists at the NIF and elsewhere are examining ways to reconfigure the current lasers. Others are pushing for entirely new designs that could provide more practical avenues towards fusion energy.
     As far as Hurricane is concerned, he is in no hurry. He claims that the device is now operating in a crucial fusion regime that will be useful for understanding the reliability of nuclear weapons.
     Hurricane said, “Once we get more energy and more predictability, you have kind of skipped over the interesting physics. If understanding and being better scientists and stewards [of the nuclear stockpile] is your objective, this is the regime to work in.”
      There are many different approaches to nuclear fusion. Various private companies and governments are spending billions of dollars on experiments with a variety of designs for prototypes of commercial fusion reactors. Inertial confinement research at the NIF is a long shot. Magnetic confinement found in tokamaks and stellarators is more likely to be the basis of future commercial fusion reactors.

Talk surfaces of bringing small modular nuclear reactors to Moffat, Routt counties postindependent.com

Nuclear and renewables to edge out LNG in South Korea energyvoice.com

NextEra plan for 200 MW solar, 75 MW storage at shuttered nuclear plant approved by Iowa regulators utilitydive.com

Fukushima nuclear plant executives appeal against $138 billion verdict for nuclear disaster abc.net.au

 

 

Ambient office = 70 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 136 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 135 nanosieverts per hour

Bllueberry from Central Market = 115 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 120 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 103 nanosieverts per hour

Part 2 of 3 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
     The NIF was opened at the LLNL in 2009 with the promise of achieving fusion ignition. The U.S National Academy of Sciences (NAS) defines fusion ignition as an experiment that generates more energy than it consumes. This threshold is also referred to as the Lawson Criterion. After the NIF missed the initial deadline of achieving ignition in 2012, LLNL scientists began a decade-long effort to fine-tune the experimental system. Finally, last August, the researchers finished a series of precise adjustments to aspects of the facility including the lasers and the ignition target. The target consisted of a tiny gold capsule containing a frozen pellet of the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium. The final experiment with the adjusted parameters gave them their breakthrough moment.
     In under four billionths of a second, one hundred and ninety-two laser beams delivered one thousand and nine hundred kilojoules to the target capsule. As the target collapsed under the onslaught to the laser beams, hydrogen isotopes at the core of the pellet began to fuse into helium. This released a torrent of energy and created a cascade of reactions that ultimately released more than one thousand three hundred kilojoules of energy. This was around eight times the previous record for fusion energy production. It was also a one-thousand-fold improvement on the earliest experiments at the NIF.
      Although it did not meet the NAS definition of ignition, the shot did result in a high-yield fusion reaction that safely qualified as ignition as defined by the criteria used by scientists at the NIF. Hurricane referred to it as a “Wright brothers’ moment”. Even the harshest critics of the NIF were impressed.
      Last September, the leaders of the inertial-confinement fusion program created a plan for three experiments to determine whether the results of last August’s experiments could be repeated. This set of experiments began last October and yielded only four hundred to seven hundred kilojoules of energy. These results represent a step-change in the operations at the NIF. However, they did not come close to the August breakthrough, and they did not surpass what the NIF scientists describe as the ignition threshold.
       Hurricane said that his team’s analysis of those experiments indicates that inconsistencies in the fabrication of the target and inevitable shifts in the lasers’ performance due to their age produced minute but important differences in the shape of the implosion. He said, “We understand why the repeat shots performed the way they did. But we’re still trying to pin down what exactly about these engineering aspects we need to control better.”
     In light of those experimental results, Hurricane advocated for additional repeat experiments that could be used to better understand the shot-to-shot variation. However, the NIF program leaders decided instead to move on. Hurricane said that the team is now looking at methods of boosting the laser energy by more than ten percent. They are also going to modify the targets to make more efficient use of that energy.
Please read Part 3 next

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Nuclear waste facilities in New Mexico face backlash from groups krqe.com

Ambient office = 68 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 116 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 119 nanosieverts per hour

Avocado from Central Market = 121 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 101 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 89 nanosieverts per hour