Ambient office = 108 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 79 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 79 nanosieverts per hour

Red bell pepper from Central Market = 3 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 80 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 73 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient office = 90 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 73 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 76 nanosieverts per hour

Avocado from Central Market = 93 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 77 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 66 nanosieverts per hour

Dover sole – Caught in USA = 97 nanosieverts per hour

Part 2 of 2 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
     Jigar Shah, director of the Loans Program Office (LPO) at the US Department of Energy, said yesterday during World Nuclear Association’s Annual Symposium. “In addition to new, technically-ready designs, we need to consider how government and private industry can work together on new approaches – both technically and from a business execution approach.”
     About forty technology developers are “striving” to develop new innovative reactor design concepts. In October of 2020, the DoE’s Office of Nuclear Energy announced two awardees – TerraPower and X-energy. They will receive eighty million dollars each of initial cost-sharing funding to build an advanced reactor demonstration plant that can be operational in seven years. “These plants are of commercial scale and must be connected to the grid, providing commercially viable power to customers by 2027.”
      Shah said, “But more needs to be done than just a technology-push approach. That’s where the Loans Program Office can come in to not only use the 10,000 scientists at the DOE and the national laboratories to validate the technology, but also to stand up the next generation of business models needed to deploy new nuclear. What we call that is ‘building a bridge to bankability’ for new nuclear.”
     As a first step, innovative reactors technologies need to be identified that can be approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to operate safely and achieve the economic viability to be competitive with other clear energy sources. “We have several designs going through the NRC process now, four of which we believe will have full approval by 2027.”
     A second step is to completely rethink the way nuclear power plants are constructed “so that we are building airplanes and not airports. Airplanes are very complicated, with a very detailed and long supply chain, but they can repeat their design consistently – that leads to lower costs, higher quality and a faster roll-out with the same learning curve benefit that we have seen in other clean energy technologies.”
     Shah said that the public-private partnership needs to be kickstarted. This is the goal of the DoE Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program. The loan guarantees will be needed to provide the financing required to prepare the supply chain and make the first new deployments.
     “Lastly, we have to recognize that we need a roll-out of one hundred billion dollars to be able to achieve the economic cost points that we hope for nuclear technology. This can’t be just a continuous first-of-a-kind deployment. That really won’t accomplish the mission. Our goal at LPO is to work with sectors on early commercial deployments, develop the right business models and a commercial operating history, then let the private sector come in with the real money to allow the technology to reach scale.”
     Interest has already been shown by several countries around the world in deploying SMRs and microreactors. Shah said, “We really do believe that we can get USD100 billion of commercial interest, which is what will be required to reach the cost points that we all need them to reach to be able to be part of the 2050 solution.”

Ambient office = 73 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 140 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 145 nanosieverts per hour

English cucumber from Central Market = 55 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 73 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 63 nanosieverts per hour

Part 1 of 2 Parts
     The nuclear industry has enjoyed a great deal of financial support from federal and state governments over the years. Contracts were cut for the long term with guarantees of set prices for electricity regardless of the energy market. However, the low price of natural gas, the falling prices of renewables and the rising cost of maintaining aging reactors along with changes in the energy market have made nuclear power plants less and less attractive to investors.
     Jigar Shah is the director of the Loans Program Office (LPO) at the US Department of Energy. He participated in the World Nuclear Association’s Annual Symposium recently. He said that the private sector had to be prepared to provide the funds that would be needed to take new and innovative reactor technologies from the first deployment stage to wide-scale commercial operation. He added that the LPO is in the process of developing new business models that will be needed to deploy new nuclear reactors.
     Shah pointed out that the Biden Administration has committed to decarbonizing the U.S. electric power sector by 2035. As part o this effort, the U.S. must rely on all available sources of clear energy, including nuclear power. He said, “The nuclear sector in the USA enjoys a robust track record in terms of annual operations, as measured by reliability, safety and zero-carbon generation.” Shah remarked that nuclear power currently accounts for fifty percent of U.S. carbon-free electricity generation. It supplies almost twenty percent of the country’s total electricity generation.
     However, the pace of new builds has slowed considerably when compared to other clean energy sources. “Some of this slowdown over the past decade is attributable to the great recession and the attendant loss of electricity demand growth, the rise of fracking and the increased supply of cheap natural gas. And lastly, the unfortunate accident at Fukushima. For the nuclear sector taken together, this really amounts to a near-perfect storm.”
     Shah said that the current commercial nuclear reactors options are seen as “too large for the market, too costly on an overnight basis per kilowatt or too expensive on a levelized cost of energy basis compared to alternatives, too long to construct and, taken collectively altogether, as too risky by the capital markets. However, I think we all recognize an expansion of nuclear power will be critical to reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 and there is an urgent need to bring new clean energy technologies to market.”
     Shah remarked that the Biden Administration has put a focus on scaling up commercial deployment of the next generation of nuclear power technology. This new generation of nuclear power reactors includes some smaller and more flexible advanced reactor designs as well as the new advanced fuels that will be required to operate them. “With these new innovative technologies (such as small modular reactors (SMRs) and microreactors), when combined with innovations in manufacturing, product delivery models and innovations in financing led by the LPO, utilities and other potential buyers of nuclear power plants can once again begin to order new units for deployment.”
Please read Part 2 next

Ambient office = 70 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 104 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 04 nanosieverts per hour

Blueberry from Central Market = 73 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 95 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 84 nanosieverts per hour