Part 1 of 3 Part
     About a year ago, scientists at the world’s largest laser-fusion facility announced a landmark achievement. They had shattered all the existing records and produced, for a fraction of a second, a highly energetic fusion reaction of the kind that powers stars and thermonuclear weapons. However, efforts aimed at replication of that moment of fusion have failed. Earlier this year, researchers at the California facility changed direction. They are working on rethinking their experimental design.
     The failure to reproduce earlier results has renewed debate about the future of the National Ignition Facility (NIF). The NIF is a three and a half billion-dollar device that is housed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). It is overseen by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). The NNSA is a branch of the U.S. Department of Energy that manages all the U.S. nuclear weapons. The NIF’s primary mission is to create high-yield fusion reactions, and to inform maintenance of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
     The record-setting laser shot on August 8th, 2021, proved that the facility has at last accomplished its main mission. However, the facility ultimately cost much more and achieved much less than originally promised. Subsequent attempts at reaching the same energy generation have only managed to produce fifty percent of the energy produced in last year’s experiment. Researchers did not expect that replicating the breakthrough experimental results would be easy. The massive device is now operating at the cusp of fusion “ignition”. Tiny, inadvertent differences from one experiment to another can have huge impacts on the energy output. Many analysts believe that the failure to reproduce last August’s experiment underscores researchers’ inability to understand, engineer and predict experiments at these energies with precision.
     Omar Hurricane is the chief scientist for Livermore’s inertial-confinement fusion program. He has advocated moving forward with the existing experimental design to probe this energy regime. Others at the LLNL believe they should step back and regroup. He said, “The fact that we have done it is kind of existence proof that we can do it. Our issue is doing it repeatedly and reliably.” He went on to say that the program leadership made the decision to halt replication experiments. They now want to focus on next steps that could push the NIF well beyond the fusion threshold and into an entirely new and more predictable regime. Yields are expected to be significantly larger than the August 2021 experiment.
     Some of the researchers in the fusion community had long raised questions about the usefulness of the NIF. For them, the entire episode has highlighted the facility’s remarkable achievements as well as its fundamental limitations.
     Stephen Bodner is a physicist who formerly headed the laser-fusion program at the US Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He said, “I think they should call it a success and stop.” He added that he thought that the NIF is a technological dead end, and that it is time to prepare for a next generation laser that could finally open the door to fusion energy generation.
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Ambient office = 64 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 90 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 5 nanosieverts per hour

Tomato from Central Market = 115 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 65 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 55 nanosieverts per hour

Part 2 of 2 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
     Tugain’s team hypothesized that the “melanized fungi” might be growing successfully because of the way that melanin interacts with radiation. Their research has confirmed this theory. They found that ionizing radiation altered the structure of melanin molecules in a way that encouraged those fungi to grow faster than identical samples that were not exposed to radiation. The closer the fungi were to the source of radiation, the more melanin they expressed. In short, the black fungi were not growing in spite of radiation; they were growing because of it.
     Additional research by Tugai, Zhdanova, and John Dighton of Rutgers University found that fungal bodies containing melanin were actually attracted to radiation. This phenomenon is called “positive radiotropism”. It is “the capability of fungal organisms to sense radioactivity and grow directionally toward the radiation source.” The Berkeley National Lab microbiologist Tamas Torok had samples of these radiation-resistant fungi in his lab for years. He notes that the process isn’t really analogous to metabolism or photosynthesis. Instead, it is another form of energy conversion.
      Ekaterina Dadachova and Arturo Casadevall of Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University created a team and acquired some samples of the black fungus. They confirmed the Ukrainian team’s conclusion that melanin was behind the black fungi’s unique ability to thrive with radiation. Casadevall said, “We began to expose the fungi to radiation. What we noticed was they would grow faster, and this was associated with melanin. If they didn’t have melanin, you didn’t see the effect.”
     The implications of this research are incredible. In 2016, SpaceX and NASA sent samples of melanized fungi into space to see if it could mitigate radiation there. In a peer-reviewed study published in BioRxiv in 2020, they reported that the fungi could cut radiation levels in space by about two percent. The black fungi could potentially “negate the annual dose-equivalent of the radiation environment on the surface of Mars.” This would make it easier for astronauts to live in space.
     Melanized fungi could also play a critical role here on Earth. Further research by Dadachova and her team have proposed that a unique relationship between fungi, melanin, and radiation could proved new insights into to ways to reduce radiation and generate energy in a warming climate. It could also help in the case of another nuclear disaster. Tugai wrote, “To date, a significant amount of [radioactive] hot particles have already decomposed under the action of soil fungi. This indicates that microbiological processes can play a decisive role in the processes of destruction and migration of radionuclides in the environment.” Torok notes that while radiation cannot be completely bioremediated or removed from the environment by biological action, the black fungi can help immobilized some of it. The fate of Chernobyl is still of grave concern and unique solution could still be necessary.
     Black fungi continues to grow inside the Chernobyl reactors and in the radioactive soil around them. When she first went to the exclusion zone, Tugai found that while most of the soil had been cleared of the majority of radiation through brutal, labor-intensive cleanup. “no one touched the soil around the cemetery where the level of background radiation is still dozens of times higher than the norm. When radiation first hit the area around Chernobyl, it caused some of the pines in and near the cemetery to turn red, creating the infamous Red Forest. It later became a burial ground for particularly radioactive tree trunks. Over the years since the disaster, new trees have grown amid the graves and birds now fly and sing in their branches. Deep in the soil, webs of black fungi pass signals through roots as they “alchemize” radiation, transforming it into something new.

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Ambient office = 64 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 126 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 123 nanosieverts per hour

Red bell pepper from Central Market = 91 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 106 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 95 nanosieverts per hour

 Part 1 of 2 Parts

     Russian troops invaded the Chernobyl Exclusion zone in northern Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The closed nuclear power plant is undergoing cleanup and decommissioning after the nuclear disaster in 1986. The Russian seized the plant and took the staff hostage. Before the end of March, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed that the Russian troops had pulled out and IAEA sent in experts to assess security and safety at Chernobyl.

     It was a very stressful time for people around Chernobyl. On the day that the site was invaded by the Russians, Russian artillery was raining down shells on Kyiv where Tatiana Tugai lives. Even as her life if Kyiv was in danger, she thought about Chernobyl. Decades ago, she and a team of scientists had conducted groundbreaking research in the aftermath of the 1986 disaster there. That research still continues to be relevant in new ways even today.
     The radioactively contaminated land around the ruins of Chernobyl has been managed and studied in the decades between the worst nuclear meltdown in history in 1986 and the Russian invasion. The most radioactive areas are covered by a stadium-sized steel and concrete sarcophagus. Unfortunately, the current war could still lead to leaks, new plumes of radioactive dust, or even worse. Ukrainian officials have reported that radiation levels increased follow the invasion and the IAEA is currently investigating whether Russian soldiers stationed Chernobyl experienced radiation poisoning during their occupation. 
      Since the 1986 nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, wildlife has adapted to life in the exclusion zone. This is the area around Chernobyl where visitor access is heavily restricted. It is one of the places on Earth where researchers can study the effects of radiation on nature. The researchers have made many discoveries including revelations about a particularly extraordinary kind of fungus.
      In 1991, five years after the nuclear disaster, remotely piloted robots discovered a jet-black fungus growing on the inside of the Chernobyl reactors. Intrigued by the discovery of the strange fungus, microbiologists from the Kyiv Institute of Microbiology and Virology began visiting the area regularly.
     Tugai wrote in an email, “The first impressions from my personal trips to the Chernobyl zone were very sad. The zone resembled frames from a science fiction film about a dead city. Empty houses without windows.” As the years passed, life began to return to the zone and “the closed exclusion zone gradually began to look like a nature reserve. Scientists constantly walked with a dosimeter, and it reminded us that radiation was nearby.”
     Conditions were especially dangerous close to the remains of the damaged reactors. Tugai wrote, “It was only possible to be directly there for a very short period of time. Therefore, the first samples taken from the walls and water from the interior of the destroyed fourth block … were selected for further research.”
     Tugai and a team led by Nelli Zhdanova found more than 200 fungal species at Chernobyl, including the jet-black fungi with melanin. Melanin is a pigment that influences the color of human and animal hair, skin, and eyes and can protect against ultraviolet light. At the Institute for Nuclear Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, the scientists studied the new fungi’s ability to thrive in the presence extreme radiation.
Please read Part 2 next

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Ambient office = 72 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 103 nanosieverts per hour

Carrot from Central Market = 70 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 125 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 105 nanosieverts per hour

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