Ambient office = 91 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 79 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 70 nanosieverts per hour

Blueberry from Central Market = 130 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 77 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 58 nanosieverts per hour

Part 1 of 2 Parts
     One of the biggest problems of nuclear power generation is the creation of spent nuclear fuel waste that is radioactive and dangerous for many years. There have been tests of using deep geological repositories to store spent nuclear fuel but, so far, actual permanent geological repositories for spent nuclear fuel do not yet exist. The development of nuclear weapons produces a variety of types of radioactive waste with different levels of radioactivity. A great deal of toxic radioactive waste was poured into unlined pits at Hanford and still threatens the ground water. There is a lot of toxic radioactive waste buried in leaking tanks at Hanford.
     There is a special geological repository located in New Mexico called the Waste Isolation Plant which was constructed to take some of the waste stream from nuclear weapons work. However, because of a serious accident involving the exploding of a barrel of waste from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, this accident shut down the WIPP for several years while repairs were made. The repository is open again.
     The administration of President Biden has affirmed an interpretation of high-level radioactive waste that is based on the radioactivity of a particular quantity of waste rather than how exactly the radioactive waste was produced. The U.S. Department of Energy announcement last week means that some radioactive waste from nuclear weapons production stored in Idaho, Washington and South Carolina could be reclassified and moved from current storage facilities to permanent storage in another location.
      The Agency’s announcement to the Associated Press yesterday said, “After extensive policy and legal assessment, DOE affirmed that the interpretation is consistent with the law, guided by the best available science and data, and that the views of members of the public and the scientific community were considered in its adoption.”
      The affirmation by the Biden administration came after consideration of various letters of support and opposition sent to the agency after the election of President Biden. The notice filed by the DoE in the Federal Register clarified exactly what the position of the new administration meant for the classification of radioactive waste. Biden has reversed some of Trump’s policies in other areas but decided that he agreed with Trump on the waste reclassification.
      This policy change specifically has to do with radioactive waste generated from the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel to build nuclear warheads. This radioactive waste has previously been characterized as high-level waste. The new interpretation from the Biden administration applies to waste that includes such things as sludge, slurry, liquid, debris and contaminated equipment from national laboratories reprocessing radioactive waste.
     The DoE stated that making disposal decision based on radioactive characteristics rather than how it became radioactive could allow the DoE to focus on other high-priority cleanup projects, reduce the length of time that radioactive waste is stored at Energy Department facilities and increase safety for workers, communities and the environment.
     The Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future was created during the administration of Barrack Obama. The new approach to waste classification was supported by the Commission. The DoE has identified three sites where waste is being stored that will be receiving some of the reclassified waste.   
Please read Part 2 next

Ambient office = 81 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 96 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Avocado from Central Market = 85 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 87 nanosieverts per hour

      One of the biggest uses of radioactive materials outside power generation and nuclear weapons is for the diagnosis and treatment of disease. Production of isotopes such as molybdenum-99 (Mo-99) fell and left a world-wide shortage for the past few years. Fortunately, production has ramped recently.
     US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm and Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Xavier Becerra have jointly certified that there is now enough of a global supply of Mo-99 that the U.S. can ban the export of highly enriched uranium to other countries to allow them to make their own Mo-99.
     Granholm said, “Doctors and patients across the globe can be confident that the critical medical isotope Mo-99 will be there when they need it, and we can provide that assurance without making any further exports of highly enriched uranium.”
     Mo-99 is used for more than forty thousand medical procedures in the U.S. each day. These uses include the diagnosis of heart disease and cancer. Most of the world supply is produced by fission of uranium-235 targets in nuclear research reactors. However, the highly enriched uranium targets used for much of that production is a proliferation-sensitive material that, if diverted or stolen, could be used to construct a nuclear weapon.
     For decades, the U.S. had no ability to produce Mo-99 domestically. In order to ensure a steady supply, the U.S. exported highly enriched uranium to foreign medical isotope producers who used the material to produce Mo-99 for the U.S. and global markets. In 2012, the U.S. Congress directed the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to establish a program to support the development of commercial domestic production of Mo-99 without the use of highly enriched uranium.
     The U.S. Department of Energy said, “Achieving a sufficient supply of Mo-99 produced without the use of HEU is a result of significant accomplishments by DOE, HHS and the commercial Mo-99 industry.”  The NNSA has supplied financial and technical assistance to assist global Mo-99 producers convert their production of Mo-99 from highly enriched uranium to low enriched uranium. In addition, the NNSA supported the development of a domestic production capacity for Mo-99 without the use of highly enriched uranium. Over two hundred million dollars in cost-shared cooperative agreements was provided by the DoE, as well as technical support from U.S. national laboratories being provided. A Uranium Lease and Take-Back program was established for the nuclear industry.
     HHS has facilitated this by approving the use of Mo-99 produced by global suppliers using low enriched uranium. They also approved a Mo-99 production system developed by NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes which uses Mo-98 instead of uranium targets.
     Globally, Mo-99 is produced by a small number of research reactors. Australia’s OPAL and South Africa’s SAFARI reactors are examples of research reactors that now produce Mo-99 from low enriched uranium targets. Earlier this year the Nuclear Research and Consultancy Group stopped using highly enriched uranium targets to produce radioisotopes at the High Flux Reactor in Petten, the Netherlands.
     The NNSA and HHS have said that they will continue to work together to further increase the U.S. supply of non-highly-enriched-uranium Mo-99.

Ambient office = 109 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 67 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 62 nanosieverts per hour

Yam from Central Market = 88 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 70 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 66 nanosieverts per hour

Part 2 of 2 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
     The moderator of the December 1991 Meet the Press show asked Dick Cheney what the U.S. could do to reduce the possibility of rogue Russia nukes. As part of his official duties, Cheney had been pondering this question. He said, “The only realistic thing for me to do as secretary of defense is to anticipate that one of the byproducts of the breakup of the Soviet Union will be the proliferation of nuclear weapons.” The prospect of two hundred and fifty nuclear weapons finding their way into the hands of Al Qaeda or ISIS via the international black market is truly terrifying.
     Fortunately for the U.S. and the world, not all U.S. leaders were willing to just let such a thing happen. Many felt that President George H.W. Bush’s administration had a failure of imagination and did not deal with the situation adequately. Democratic senator Sam Nunn of Georgia and Republican senator Dick Lugar of Indian came up with a plan. They wrote and passed legislation called Nunn-Lugar with no help from the Executive branch. This bill gave the Department of Defense and U.S. energy officials authority and money to build partnerships with the former Soviet nuclear custodians in Russia and the other former Soviet client states to secure former Soviet nuclear weapons. The U.S. and Russia collaborated to create a new post-Soviet nuclear order.
     Over the past thirty years, with strong bipartisan support, more than twenty billion taxpayer dollars have been invested in the most cost-effective expenditure in the defense budget. More than three thousand long-range nuclear missiles targeting U.S. cities were ultimately removed from Soviet successor states. It was the greatest nonproliferation success in the history of the world. In addition, thanks to the Nunn-Lugar program, fourteen thousand short-range tactical nuclear weapons ideally suited for use by terrorists were secured and most of them eliminated.
     Now, looking back over the last thirty years, we can ask how many nuclear weapons from the Soviet arsenal have proliferated? As far as we know, not a single weapon has been discovered outside the control of the Russian authorities. And we know for certain that not one of them has ever been detonated.
    As disappointing as the U.S. – Russian relationship has been and will continue to be, when it comes to the challenge that mattered most, the two governments found a way to prevent a plausible, even likely, catastrophe.
     As optimistic as the current picture is, there remains a desire for terrorist organizations to obtain nuclear materials to construct their own nuclear weapons. There is a thriving black market in eastern Europe for weapons sales. The authorities there have intercepted small amounts of radioactive materials that were involved in attempts to sell much greater quantities to terrorists. Fortunately, all such attempted sales were foiled. However, the world must be continually vigilant in preventing any such trafficking in nuclear materials. The technology needed to construct a nuclear bomb is widely available and any country with expertise, equipment and weapons grade nuclear materials could easily build one if so motivated. There is a global movement for total nuclear disarmament which will need to be implemented to eliminate the threat of nuclear weapons permanently.