The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Foratom recently held an event called Management systems for a sustainable nuclear supply chain in early September. This event was the sixteenth in a series of joint events intended to raise awareness and increase understanding of management systems as integrating all the vital objectives of nuclear facilities and activities.
     Participants were told that the nuclear industry will need to foster even closer coordination between licensees, regulators and suppliers to ensure that its supply chain can efficiently meet the needs of buyers. Some of the changes that were the result of the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic including the intensive use of digital platforms will not disappear.
     The virtual event looked at how the nuclear industry is coping with recent global developments. These developments include a shift from global to localized supply; the adoption of novel and innovative technologies such as additive manufacturing methods; and preparation for the introduction of the new small modular reactors (SMRs) currently in development against the backdrop of the global COVID-19 pandemic.
     Mikhail Chudakov is the IAEA Deputy Director General and Head of the Department of Nuclear Energy. He said, in opening remarks at the event, that the COVID-19 pandemic had influenced the nuclear supply chain by causing longer lead times for new construction and some major refurbishment projects while also impacting the mobility of contractors. He also went on to say that the industry was still resilient. He added that “Despite the pandemic and all the related lockdowns, there were no enforced shutdowns of nuclear power plants or major disruptions or outages.”
     Different national regulations, standards and legislation highlight the problem of harmonizing the nuclear supply chain. These issues also impact developing a global framework to enable the use of high-quality ‘commercial grade’ components not manufactured specifically for the nuclear sector. The nuclear industry can manage such developments through further innovation. One important innovation is the development of a methodology for qualifying materials and components produced by additive manufacture that comply with nuclear codes and standards.
     The members of the global nuclear industry need to be fully aware of the all the requirements and emerging guidance, as the deployment of SMRs for electricity and non-power application approaches. The industry must also be open to suppliers that are new to the nuclear sector. If necessary, licensees should be ready to educate new suppliers to enable them to bring their products into compliance and keep them in the supply chain.
     Changes implemented by companies to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic have included remote work, remote audits and verifications, digital sampling of documents and better risk management. In an IAEA webinar held as part of the meeting, Marc Tannebaum, the project manager at the U.S. Electric Power Research Institute, quoted a survey that found that almost seventy percent of the respondents planned to retain some of those changes.
     The IAEA is supporting the development of proactive management systems of supply chains and well-planned procurement by owners and operators, with the goal of facilitating industry co-operation. The agency launched a Nuclear Supply Chain Toolkit. It has also launched a series of webinars, training courses and other events to support countries in coordinating among regulators, technical support organizations, nuclear facility owners and operators and their suppliers, and nuclear facilities and their suppliers to improve common understanding when dealing with supply chain issues.

Ambient office = 94 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 66 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 63 nanosieverts per hour

Carrot from Central Market = 93 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 118 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 103 nanosieverts per hour

     Scientists and collaborators at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have proposed a new mechanism by which nuclear waste could spread in the environment. Researchers at Penn State and Harvard Medical School are also involved in the research. The new findings have implications for nuclear waste management and environmental chemistry. The results of the research have been published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
     Gauthier Deblonde is a LLNL scientist and lead author of the report on the new research. He said, “This study relates to the fate of nuclear materials in nature, and we stumbled upon a previously unknown mechanism by which certain radioactive elements could spread in the environment. We show that there are molecules in nature that were not considered before, notably proteins like ‘lanmodulin’ that could have a strong impact on radioelements that are problematic for nuclear waste management, such as americium, curium, etc.”
     Past and present nuclear activities like fundamental research, energy generation, and nuclear weapons development have increased the urgency to understand the behavior of radioactive materials in the environment. Nuclear wastes contain actinides such as plutonium, americium, curium, neptunium and other radioactive isotopes which are particularly problematic because they remain radioactive and dangerous for thousands of years.
     Unfortunately, very little is known about the chemical forms of these elements in the environment. This forces scientists and engineers to utilize models to predict their long-term behavior and migration patterns. Up to the present, these models have only been able to consider interactions with small natural compounds, mineral phases and colloids. The impact of more complex compounds such as proteins has mostly been ignored. The new research demonstrates that a type of protein that is abundant in nature vastly outcompetes molecules that scientists previously considered as the most problematic with respect to actinide migration in the environment.
      Joseph Cotruvo Jr., is a Penn State assistant professor and co-corresponding author on the paper. He said, “The recent discovery that some bacteria specifically use rare earth elements has opened new areas of biochemistry with important technological applications and potential implications for actinide geochemistry, because of chemical similarities between the rare earths and actinides”.
     The protein named lanmodulin is a small and abundant protein in many rare earth-utilizing bacteria. It was discovered by the Penn State members of the research team in 2018. The LLNL and Penn State team have studied in detail exactly how this unique protein works and how it can be applied for the commercial extraction of rare earths. However, the relevance of the protein to radioactive contaminants in the environment was previously unexplored.
     Annie Kersting is a LLNL scientist. She said, “Our results suggest that lanmodulin, and similar compounds, play a more important role in the chemistry of actinides in the environment than we could have imagined. Our study also points to the important role that selective biological molecules can play in the differential migration patterns of synthetic radioisotopes in the environment.”
      Mavrik Zavarin is also a LLNL scientist. He said, “The study also shows for the first time that lanmodulin prefers the actinide elements over any other metals, including the rare earth elements, an interesting property than could be used for novel separation processes.”
     Rare earth element biochemistry is a very recent field that Penn State and LLNL have helped to pioneer. The new work is first to explore how the environmental chemistry of actinides could be connected to nature’s use of rare earth elements. Lanmodulin’s higher affinity for actinides may even mean that rare earth-utilizing organisms that are ubiquitous in nature might preferentially incorporate certain actinides into their biochemistry, according to Deblonde.

Ambient office = 131 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 136 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 131 nanosieverts per hour

Celery from Central Market = 89 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 93 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 83 nanosieverts per hour

     Nuclear fusion researchers have just claimed a “watershed” moment in the development of practical nuclear fusion. They were talking about a successful test of a powerful magnet that they say is the key to future generation of unlimited zero-carbon energy.
    Partners Commonwealth Fusion systems (CFS) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) claim that the creation of a record-breaking magnetic field for the first time “opens a clear path” to commercial nuclear fusion power. Some analysts believe that nuclear fusion is the “holy grail” of clean energy while other analysts believe that the quest for nuclear fusion power is only a distraction from green tech such as wind and solar.
     CFS is a technology start-up backed by investors which include Bill Gates and fossil energy companies Eni and Equinor. They said that they were successful in generating a magnetic field of twenty tesla, the most powerful field of its type using a high temperature superconducting (HTS) magnet technology that will sit at the heart of planned nuclear fusion systems.
      Dennis White is the Director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center and a professor of engineering. He said that the September 5th test answers a key question about the viability of small-scale tokamaks such as the kind being developed by CFS. These small tokamaks are claimed to offer the quickest practical route to commercial nuclear fusion.
      Whyte said, “It’s really a watershed moment, I believe, in fusion science and technology. Fusion will be an inexhaustible, carbon-free source of energy that you can deploy anywhere and at any time. It’s really a fundamentally new energy source”.
      Bob Mumgaard is the CEO of CFS. He claimed that “This record-breaking magnet is the culmination of the last three years of work and will give the world a clear path to fusion power for the first time.” Mumgaard told an interviewer that fusion could play a critical role in energy transition by “filling in the gaps” left by wind and solar.
      The CFS-MIT team said that the scientific milestone keeps the project on course to demonstrate the net generation of energy from nuclear fusion by 2025. This will be followed by commercial scale devices that generate thermal energy that could be captured to produce power in a conventional steam turbine style.
     Mumgaard admitted that even if the first commercial fusion systems appear in the early 2030s, deployment of commercial fusion to generate power on a gigawatt scale would not happen “until the latter half of the 2030s at the earliest”. Mumgaard claimed that that fact does not undermine the case for fusion technology. He said, “If you look at other technologies and markets, and what’s needed, that’s in the range where you’re at the time where problems are getting really hard on carbon emissions, because you’ve taken all the easy gains.”
     Nuclear fusion researchers are emphatic in distinguishing nuclear fusion technology from nuclear fission technology currently in use around the globe. Despite the current buzz around fusion research, the physics involved has proven to be incredibly complex and difficult. There is a standing joke that fusion power is always forty years away.
    So far, there are no solid estimates of the cost of power produced by fusion. Many argue that the massive drops in wind and solar power prices combined with new storage technologies, smart networks and the huge potential of green hydrogen will make fusion economically uncompetitive before it is even born.

Ambient office = 109 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 122 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 124 nanosieverts per hour

Tomato from Central Market = 79 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 102 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 83 nanosieverts per hour