Ambient office = 88 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 63 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 56 nanosieverts per hour

Jalapeno pepper  from Central Market = 142 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 122 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 116 nanosieverts per hour

     The National Nuclear Safety Administration of China issued an operating license on August 20th for the demonstration high-temperature gas-cooled reactor plant (HTR-PM) at Shidaowan in the Shandong province of China. The next day, workers began loading the first spherical fuel elements into the first reactor at the plant.
      The ceramic coated spherical fuel elements are sixty millimeters in diameter. Each of the fuel elements contains seven grams of uranium enriched to eight- and one-half percent. The core outlet temperature of the HTR-PM is seven hundred and fifty degrees Celsius for the helium gas coolant, steam temperature is five hundred and sixty-six degrees Celsius and the core inlet temperature is two hundred and fifty degrees Celsius. The reactor has a thermal efficiency of forty percent. The height of the core is eleven meters, and it has a diameter of three meters. Each reactor has two independent reactivity control system. The primary system consists of twenty-four control rods in the side graphite reflector. The secondary system has six channels for small absorber spheres which fall by gravity. These are also located in the side reflector. Fuel spheres are released into the top of the core one at a time as the reactor operates. As fuel spheres fall into the top, other spheres are removed from the bottom of the reactor. Broken spheres are separated out and the burnup is measured. Used fuel spheres are screened out and sent to storage. A forty-year operating lifetime is expected.
      China Huaneng is the lead organization of the consortium to build demonstrations units. They said that the initial loading of fuel is divided into two stages. First, the fuel spheres are loaded into a temporary fuel storage tank and then transferred to the core through the fuel loading and unloading system. It will take about thirty days from the loading of the first fuel sphere until the reactor achieves first criticality. During this initial period, an estimated one hundred thousand fuel spheres will be installed. A full fuel load of one of the reactors at the plant will require about four hundred and twenty thousand fuel spheres. The first reactor has now entered the state of nuclear operation and will be connected to the Chinese grid sometime this year.
     The HTR-PM has advantages such as inherent safety, a high equipment localization rate, modular design and adaptations to small and medium-sized power grids. It also has a wide range of potential commercial applications including power generation, cogeneration of heat and power and high temperature process heat applications.
     Construction of the demonstration HTR-PM plant began in December of 2012. Two small reactors at the plant will drive a single two hundred- and ten-megawatt turbine. China Huaneng is working together with together with China National Nuclear Corporation subsidiary China Nuclear Engineering Corporation (CNEC) and Tsinghua University’s Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology. Chingery, a joint venture of Tsinghua and CNED, is the main contractor for the nuclear island.
     Cold functional tests aim to verify the reactor’s primary loop system and equipment as well as the strengths and tightness of its auxiliary pipelines under pressure higher than the design pressure. These tests were completed at the HTR-PM two reactors on the 19th of October and the 3rd last year, respectively. Hot functional tests which simulate the temperatures and pressures the reactor systems will be subjected to during normal operation will begin in January.
     There are plans for another eighteen HTR-PM reactors for the site at Shidaowan. Beyond the HTR-PM reactor design, China has proposed a scaled-up version called the HTR-PM6000. Six of these reactors will drive one large six hundred- and fifty-megawatt turbine. Feasibility studies with respect to the deployment of HTR-PM6000 are being conducted for Sanmen, Zhejiang province; Ruijin, Jiangxi province; Xiapu and Wan’an, in Fujian province; and Bai’an, Guangdong province.

Ambient office = 123 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 89 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 96 nanosieverts per hour

White onion from Central Market = 115 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 72 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 65 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient office = 126 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 173 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 165 nanosieverts per hour

Watermelon from Central Market = 84 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 136 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 123 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient office = 105 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 87 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 85 nanosieverts per hour

Broccoli from Central Market = 93 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 102 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 90 nanosieverts per hour

Dover sole – Caught in USA = 103 nanosieverts per hour

      Western University in Canada has just been awarded a three million three hundred-thousand-dollar research grant. Two million dollars came from the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC ), and one million three hundred thousand dollars came Canada’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization. The purpose of the grant is for Western to continue the work it has been doing for decades in understanding how to store nuclear waste as safely as possible.
      Jamie Noël is an electrochemist and member of the Surface Science Western research group. He said, “We’re already recognized as experts in this research. This collaboration makes us a powerhouse and it solidifies our international reach.”
    The grant includes partnerships with David Shoesmith who a chemistry professor at Western, Lyudmila Goncharova who is a physics professor at Western and a Western earth sciences professor named Des Moser. It also includes partner nuclear waste management organizations in Canada, Japan, Sweden and Switzerland.
     Noël said, “This makes a lot of sense because this work is an international issue; it’s not proprietary to Canada. There’s a very good incentive for collaboration among countries because everyone wants this done in the safest and best way possible.”
     Thirty-two countries around the globe including Canada generate some of their power from nuclear sources. The production of nuclear power generates much less carbon dioxide than fossil fuels. However, it does produce a great deal of radioactive spent nuclear fuel rods that must be dealt with.
     Canada has developed a plan for dealing with such waste. Spent nuclear fuel bundles are loaded into steel canisters which are then electrochemically coated with a three-millimeter layer of copper. Then the canisters are encased in a buffer of compacted bentonite clay in a deep vault in bedrock five hundred meter below the surface.
     Noël’s work is involved with testing ways to make the canisters corrosion-proof. His team expertise includes metallurgy, electrochemistry, corrosion science, thermodynamics, hydrogeology, mineralogy, microbiology, synthetic chemistry and computer modeling. The addition of Moser and Goncharova to Noël’s team provides an even more comprehensive scope.
     Moser’s research is investigating corrosion-proof analogs that already exist. Noël said, “Nature put copper out there a billion years ago and it’s still good today, so we know it can be done. Des’s work can help show us how.”
     Noël went on to say that his team is also working with Indigenous Peoples to integrate their long-time traditional relationship with the land, to understand where copper deposits are and how they historically interact with Indigenous culture as well as how they interact with surrounding geology and hydrology.
     The five-year grant is a huge investment of money and public trust, Noël said. He added, “We want to make sure, really sure, that if we’re going to have a nuclear waste repository that it is safe, and safe the first time around – because there will be no second time.”
     Some of the joint research includes validating the efficacy of a three-millimeter copper coating. This approach is unique to the Canadian researchers. Another aspect of the research is to understand fuel chemistry and to ensure different forms of spent nuclear fuel waste are made both stable and insoluble before long-term storage.
      Wester Faculty of Science Dean Matt Davidson said that the long-term international relationships and collaborations Noël continues to build are invaluable to his research.
     Laurie Swami is the president and CEO of NWMO. She pointed out that the research funding from her organization has been leveraged into additional support from NSERC and other organization, both in Canada and around the world. She added, “It’s important that that work is supported not only in Canada, but internationally.”