Ambient office = 96 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 83 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 84 nanosieverts per hour

Portabella mushroom from Central Market = 105 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 95 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 87 nanosieverts per hour

Part 1 of 2 Parts

     Military bunkers in the U.K. are being upgraded so that they can be used for long term storage of U.S. nuclear weapons again after being empty for fourteen years. In the Biden administration’s 2023 defense budget request, the U.K. was added to the list of countries where infrastructure investments are taking place at “special weapons” storage sites. Along with the U.K, Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey are all countries where the U.S. stores an estimate of one hundred nuclear bombs.
     Hans Kristensen is the director of the nuclear information project at the Federation of American Scientists. He was the first analyst who reported on that particular budget item. He said that he believed that the U.K. site which is being upgraded is the U.S. airbase at RAF Lakenheath which is about sixty two miles north-east of London.
     The U.S. removed its stockpile B61 nuclear munitions from Lakenheath in 2008. This marked the end of more than half a century of maintaining a U.S. nuclear stockpile in the U.K. At the time of removal, the B61 gravity bombs were widely seen as militarily obsolete. There were high hopes for further nuclear disarmament by the nations armed with nuclear weapons.
      That optimism has since faced because of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s nuclear threats against NATO, and extensive nuclear weapons modernization programs pursued by both Russia and the U.S. As part of the U.S. plan, the B61 has been given a new extension of capability with the addition of the B61-12 variant. This new version of the original B61 is scheduled to go into production in May of this year.
     The 2023 budget request says that NATO “is wrapping up a 13-year, $384m infrastructure investment program at storage sites in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, the UK, and Turkey to upgrade security measures, communication systems, and facilities”.
     In the 1990s, RAF Lakenheath has thirty-three underground storage vaults. One hundred and ten B61 nuclear bombs were stored in the vaults according to the FAS. Since the B61 bombs were removed, the vaults have been mothballed. Kristensen said that he believes the vaults are now being upgraded in order for the new B61-12 bombs to be stored there if necessary.
     The Biden administration has been very careful not to carry out any activities that might be seen as escalatory in the nuclear arena in response to Putin’s announcement that he would put Russia’s nuclear forces on higher alert a few days after he invaded Ukraine. The U.S. has cancelled previously scheduled tests of its intercontinental ballistic missiles.
     For the same reason, Kristensen said that he doubted the Biden administration is planning to increase the U.S. stockpile in European nations. When the new B61-12 bombs are delivered, they are expected to replace the older models already being stored in Europe. He believes that the Lakenheath upgrade is actually intended to provide more flexibility to move the nuclear weapons around Europe as needed.

Please read Part 2 next

Ambient office = 146 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 126 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 132 nanosieverts per hour

Mango from Central Market = 95 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 103 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 83 nanosieverts per hour

Part 2 of 2 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
     A 2019 analysis from the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford University by Amory B. Lovins mentioned that grid integration costs matter too when comparing electrical resources but they do not add much. They would need to be about two to twelve times the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) in order for nuclear to rival renewables. However, just the opposite is true. Solar and wind grid integration costs are at worst comparable to their LCOE. In the U.K., these grid integration costs are low. In U.S. utilities find they’re many times below renewables’ LCOE even at eighty five percent wind share. This means that adding them into the comparison can’t flip the outcome as the 2016 report claimed. BNEF finds that even a flat load is most cheaply provided by variable renewables, plus backup that is also carbon-free if it is demand-side, renewable, or storage. That is why the International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts renewables to supply at least ninety five percent of the world’s new capacity. This amounts to about three hundred gigawatts per year through 2026.
     It is likely that grid integration or small grid expansion cost would probably increase nuclear’s cost disadvantage because big thermal plants usually incur much higher integration costs than wind or solar farms. This is consistent with the findings of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The reason for this is that those renewable’s outages are slower, shorter and more predictable. In fact, those outages are easier to predict than demand itself. Renewables usually avoid big thermal plants’ high intermittency or forced outage costs for reserve margin, spinning reserve and cycling. Those costs must also be counted and compared.
     Adding complementary nuclear power does not aid but actually harms variable renewables. Its cycling limitations and high capital cost requires maximum runtime. However near-zero-operating-cost renewables idle reactors by dispatching whenever available. Reactors cannot have both a high and low capacity factor. In addition, cycling reactors spoil their economics via lifetimes, maintenance and efficiency penalties. They spread high fixed costs over less output. The same thing holds true for proposed small modular reactors (SMR). These bring greater economic and use-case challenges, novel safety and proliferation issues that are now making the Department of Energy (DoE) undercut the mission of the Department of Defense, and lesser carbon savings achieved later.
      Thus, nuclear newbuild are already grossly uncompetitive when renewables generate a minor share, and gets more so as they grow. It’s also slower. It cut global carbon emissions from 2010 to 2020 five times less than renewables did. President Macron of France recently said, “We need to massively develop renewable energies because it is the only way to meet our immediate electricity needs, since it takes 15 years to build a nuclear reactor.”
     Most existing commercial nuclear reactors cost more to operate that replacing them with carbon-free efficiency and renewables. The 2016 report urges increasing that misallocation with billions of dollars more in subsidies to keep uneconomical reactors running and save carbon. But allowing them to exit the market instead would open up demand for cheaper carbon-free competitors to contest which would save more carbon starting in a year or two later as efficiency and renewables overtake and reverse transient gas substitution

Ambient office = 148 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 59 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 55 nanosieverts per hour

Lime from Central Market = 71 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 89 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 80 nanosieverts per hour

Part 1 of 2 Parts
     Supporters of nuclear power often favor a technology-inclusive approach over reliance solely on what they refer to as desirable-but-inadequate renewables. This framing of the debate does not compare energy generating technologies because it claims that all technologies are needed. It condenses the diverse portfolio of renewable energy sources into a single technology for the sake of the discussion. It also ignores the biggest and cheapest resource which is energy efficiency. Retrofitting existing government building with good insulation worldwide could reduce energy demand by one third. Nuclear promoters often evade any mention of nuclear energy generation’s actual status, economics, prospects and operation role. Another major problem with the call for all the renewable energy sources plus nuclear fission is the fact that backing nuclear power with lavish subsidies actually diminishes needed resources for implementing sustainable renewables.
     Nuclear power accounts for about ten percent of global electricity generated but the global nuclear industry is stagnant and slipping. In 2020, nuclear power added four hundred megawatts more capacity than it retired. In 2021, nuclear capacity dropped for the seventh year in the past thirteen years. The global fleet of commercial nuclear power reactors averages about thirty-two years so requirements are outpacing additions. Global nuclear power cultures, skills, vendors and prospects are shriveling. A great deal of this is being caused by bad economics. Solar and wind are now the cheapest bulk source for at least ninety percent of world electricity. The renewables are winning between ten and twenty times more investment than nuclear.
     A 2016 report claimed that foreign nuclear power plants were “competitive” but it was convincingly debunked by nuclear experts including the author of the report. The cheapest reactors in China cost at least twice as much per kilowatt hour as the Chinese wind and solar that are outgenerating them by two to one. In China, renewable investments were equal to the previous twelve-year cumulative nuclear investments.
     The best analysis in the report claims that renewables plus nuclear “can create the most cost-effective carbon-free energy system” but only if it is very cheap. This assumption is based on learning curves that have not been observed for current nuclear power reactors. The assumption of improving learning curves is even less certain for new types of reactors that have not yet been built. It also assumes that renewables and storage are far more expensive than they are shown to be by empirical data. The report also ignores most grid-flexibility resources. Diverse peer-reviewed studies without the shortcomings of the 2016 report show a better match for empirical market choices and do not need nuclear power to minimize cost or carbon.
     Considering over twenty-four thousand actual energy projects in the marketplace, new unsubsidized renewables make electricity five to thirteen times cheaper than new nuclear builds according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF). Another report from Lazard merchant bank claims three to eight times cheaper. Per dollars, renewables provide three to thirteen more kilowatt hours and can displace three to thirteen times more fossil fuel electrical generation.
Please read Part 2 next