Ambient office = 112 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 121 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 121 nanosieverts per hour

Blueberry from Central Market = 70 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 83 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 63 nanosieverts per hour

     The Inspector General of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commissions (NRC) released a new report last Thursday. The report states that counterfeit parts have been discovered in U.S. nuclear power plants. These parts increase the risk of a safety failure. This report will have a serious effect on the U.S. nuclear industry which has been shrinking due to the impact of dropping renewables and natural gas costs.
     The report said, “Counterfeit parts are safety and security concerns that could have serious consequences in critical power plant equipment required to perform a safety function.”
      The report evaluated concerns that counterfeit parts are present in most if not all U.S. nuclear power plants. The authors of the report sampled a plant from each of the NRC’s four regions. They found data that showed fake parts were used in plants in the Midwest.
      In addition, the report included a quote from a “well placed NRC principle” in which the inspector general was told about two component failures at plants in the U.S. Northeast that plant operators determined involved counterfeit parts. A recent inspector general audit report revealed that the parts are currently in use at operating nuclear power plants but did not provide details.
      The Department of Energy (DoE) has identified over one hundred incidents involving counterfeit, fraudulent or suspect items (CFSI) in reactors monitored by the NRC in fiscal year 2021 alone.
      Counterfeit parts found in operating reactors have included an emergency service water pump shaft, temperature sensors used to identify steam line breaks, and breaker switches meant to prevent fires, according to the report.
     The report also said that the NRC may be underestimating the number of counterfeit parts in plants “because it does not require licensees to report CFSI except in extraordinary circumstances, such as those involving the failure of equipment that performs a significant safety function.”
     Scott Burnell is a spokesperson for the NRC. He said, “While the report’s findings include the ongoing presence of CFSI at U.S. reactors, nothing in the report suggests an immediate safety concern. The NRC’s office of the Executive Director for Operations is thoroughly reviewing the report and will direct the agency’s program offices to take appropriate action.”
     Edwin Lyman is the director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists. He thinks that the NRC needs to work much harder to counter the problems with counterfeit parts. He also said, “This troubling report shows that the NRC needs to do much more to ensure that counterfeit or fraudulent parts with potentially dangerous defects are kept out of US nuclear power plants — including strengthening requirements for plant owners to report and correct such problems as soon as they are discovered.”
     The administration of President Biden has said that it believes that nuclear fission reactors will play a critical role in decarbonizing the U.S.’s economy to fight climate change because they do not release carbon dioxide during normal operations. Nuclear power backers also point out the reactors do not release harmful particulate pollution like fossil fuels plants do.

Ambient office = 122 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 126 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 125 nanosieverts per hour

Avocado from Central Market = 80 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 91 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 69 nanosieverts per hour

     There is a great deal of research being carried out to generate power with nuclear fusion reactors. Many countries have fusion projects and there are claims that commercial power nuclear fusion plants may be in operation by 2030. Japan has now announced that it will be part of the intense competition to harness nuclear fusion for power generation.
     A Japanese venture plans to construct the first experimental plant in the country to generate power through nuclear fusion. The company said that the technology is drawing attention as a new way to produce energy without emitting carbon dioxide.
      Kyoto Fusioneering Ltd (KFL) is a startup based in Uji, Kyoto Prefecture. It intends to start operating the plant in the next five years. They have already procured some of the necessary funds and started work on the design of the plant. Taka Nagao is the CEO of KFL.
     The experimental KFL plant will be equipped with a heat exchanger and a turbine in addition to a reactor that generates thermal energy to produce a small amount of electricity. Experimental reactors dedicated to proving the feasibility of nuclear fusion for power generation already exist in Japan. Nagao said, “a plant that actually generates power is rare even on a global basis.”
      The venture is being partially funded by an investment firm established by Kyoto University. The firm was launched in 2019 led by Nagao and Satoshi Konishi who is a professor at the Institute of Advanced Energy of Kyoto University.
      The new investment firm develops equipment for nuclear fusion reactors. This equipment includes a key device the effectively collects heat with a temperature of over two hundred million degrees Fahrenheit.
      The venture has already raised eleven million dollars and intends to raise a total twenty-five million dollars. Sources of funds include an investment fund connected to the state-backed fund Japan Investment Corporation. It also intends to seek funds from megabanks such as MUFG Bank. The venture will hold discussions with the central government and municipalities in the future in order to work out details which will include finding a location to construct the plant.
     Fusion power generation converts the energy created by fusing light nuclei to electricity. Unlike nuclear power generation that involves fission chain reactions, fusion power is consider safer and does not produce highly radioactive nuclear waste like nuclear fission power plants.
     Fusion energy recently attracted global attention as the U.S. nuclear fusion startup Commonwealth Fusion Systems secured funds last year from Bill Gates as well as Google.
     The Japanese government also encourages the research and development of fusion energy as a means to secure clean energy to cope with global warming. It plans to set up a panel of experts in the near future to enhance support for the move.
     Before the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, Japan was dedicated to nuclear power. Following the disaster, Japan shut down all nuclear reactors. Some are being restarted but many will be closed permanently. Japan appears to believe that switch to fusion power will be a better choice for power generation.

Ambient office = 105 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 111 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 112 nanosieverts per hour

Tomato from Central Market = 109 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 91 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 67 nanosieverts per hour

     Two new North American initiatives dedicated to accelerating the deployment of technologies for fusion power generation have been announced. In Canada, Bruce Power, General Fusion, and the Nuclear Innovation Institute (NII) will collaborate to evaluate potential deployment of a fusion power plant in Ontario. In the U.S., scientists at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) are teaming up with Renaissance Fusion America (RFA). They are participating in a U.S. program to speed the development of nuclear fusion energy.
     Yesterday, Bruce Power, General Fusion and the NII announced that they have entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to collaborate on accelerating the delivery of clear fusion power in Canada. The collaborators said that they will build on existing clear energy technologies, skills, and expertise in the Clear Energy Frontier region of Ontario to develop a “go forward”. They will also lead stakeholders and public outreach activities to raise awareness of the “transformative potential” of fusion energy for powering Canadian homes, businesses, and industry.
     General Fusion is a private company which intends to build a commercial fusion power plant based on Magnetized Target Fusion (MFT) technology which involves injecting hydrogen plasma into a liquid metal sphere, where it is compressed and heated to produce nuclear fusion. A Fusion Demonstration Plant at the Culham Campus near Oxford in the UK is scheduled to go into operation by 2025. The company says that it intends to bring clean fusion energy to the world’s energy systems by the early 2030s.
     Christofer Mowry is the CEO of General Fusion. He describes the MOU as a “landmark”. It provides a framework under which Canada’s energy leaders can benefit from each other’s technology innovations and expertise to lead the way in adopting fusion power in Ontario and across Canada. He said, “We look forward to advancing this partnership to help meet Canada’s climate targets and the increasing electricity needs of Canadians.”
     Encouraging innovation in new energy technologies including fusion is one of the five pillars in Bruce Power’s NZ-2050 strategy to contribute to a net zero Canada while growing the economy and supporting innovation. The MOU is said to represent one way in which the company is looking to advance new clear energy technologies.
      Mike Rencheck is the President and CEO of Bruce Power. He said, “In order to achieve a net-zero future here in Ontario, and Canada, we need to continue expanding the clean electricity production of our existing facilities and will need innovation as part of the future. Our partnership will explore these innovations and leverage the established capability in this region as a home to new technologies that will contribute to a carbon-free future.”
    Renaissance Fusion is based in Grenoble, France. They intend to generate fusion energy from stellarator-based devices in the next thirteen years. A new public-private partnership between the company’s U.S. affiliate RFA and three scientists at the PPPL aims to further stimulate the development of the technology by generating an open-source dataset of stellarator configurations that scientists around the globe can utilize to train their own models and advance artificial intelligence research in stellarators.
      Stellarators are devices for the magnetic confinement of fusion plasmas. Unlike the popular tokamaks in many laboratories, the stellarators have no toroidal plasma current. This means that they offer increased plasma stability compared to tokamaks. Because stellarators can more easily control and monitor the burning plasma, stellarators have an intrinsic potential for steady-state continuous operation. This makes stellarators potentially easier to operate than tokamaks. However, their greater complexity makes them more difficult and expensive to design and build than tokamaks.
     Developing machine-learning software to speed up predictions of the loss of alpha particles from fusion reactions should allow designers to quickly enhance the shape of stellarator magnetic fields to improve particle confinement.
      The year-long collaboration is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DoE) Innovation Network for Fusion Energy (INFUSE) program which was launched in 2015 to accelerate fusion energy development involving the expertise and unique resources available at DoE laboratories and universities.