Latitude 47.704656 Longitude -122.318745

Ambient office = 108 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 151 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 143 nanosieverts per hour

Roma tomato from Central Market = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 86 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 72 nanosieverts per hour

Deep Isolation Resumes Bulgaria Spent Nuclear Fuel Disposal Study After Trump Delay nucnet.org

Iran confirms end of UN-imposed nuclear limits shafaq.com

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TEPCO considering fate of oldest Kashiwazaki-Kariwa units world-nuclear-news.org

Latitude 47.704656 Longitude -122.318745

Ambient office = 122 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 110 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 111 nanosieverts per hour

Lime from Central Market =109 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 79 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 69 nanosieverts per hour

Dover Sole from Central = 98 nanosieverts per hour

First Light Fusion (FLF) is a British inertial fusion energy developer. It has just presented the first commercially viable, reactor-compatible path to ‘high gain’ fusion, which it says would drastically reduce the cost of what the company says is a virtually limitless clean energy source.

In its white paper published today, FLF outlines a novel and scientifically grounded approach to fusion energy called Fusion via Low-power Assembly and Rapid Excitation (FLARE). The conventional inertial fusion energy (IFE) approach is to compress and heat the fuel at the same time to achieve ignition. FLARE splits this process into two stages. In the first stage, the fuel is compressed in a controlled and highly efficient manner. Then in the second stage, a separate process is used to ignite the compressed fuel, generating a massive surplus of energy, a concept known as ‘fast ignition’.

FLARE leverages over fourteen years of First Light’s inertial fusion experience and its unique controlled-amplification technology. They have created a system capable of reaching the high gain levels needed for cost competitive energy production. Their new approach “would underpin the design for commercial reactors that can be based on much lower power systems that already exist today, opening up an opportunity for partners to build those systems, using FLF’s technology as the fuel, and to roll it out worldwide,” according to the company.

Gain is the ratio of energy output to energy input in a fusion reaction. It is the critical metric determining commercial viability. The current record gain level is four, achieved at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) in May of this year.

“The FLARE concept, as detailed in today’s white paper, could produce an energy gain of up to 1000. FLF’s economic modelling suggests that a gain of at least 200 is needed for fusion energy to be commercially competitive, while a gain of 1000 would enable very low-cost power,” according to the company said.

According to FLF, an experimental gain scale facility is expected to cost one-twentieth of the NIF cost and could be built using existing technologies. Due to the lower energy and power requirements provided by the FLARE technology, future commercial fusion power plants would have significantly lower capital costs than other plausible IFE approaches. They would have lower complexity and core components such as the energy delivery system costing one-tenth of the capital cost of previous fast ignition schemes.

“By building on existing technology, First Light’s approach takes the brakes off inertial fusion deployment as it has the potential to leverage existing supply chains, significantly reduce capital expenditure, speed up planning approvals and reduce regulatory hurdles in the deployment of commercial fusion plants,” FLF said.

Mark Thomas is the CEO of FLF. He said, “This is a pivotal moment not just for First Light, but for the future of energy. With the FLARE approach, we’ve laid out the world’s first commercially viable, reactor-compatible pathway to high gain inertial fusion – and it’s grounded in real science, proven technologies, and practical engineering. A pathway to a gain of 1000 puts us well beyond the threshold where fusion becomes economically transformative. Through our approach, we’re opening the door to a new industrial sector – and we want to bring others with us.”

FLF was founded by Yiannis Ventikos of the Mechanical Engineering Department at University College, London, and Nicholas Hawker, formerly an engineering lecturer at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. The company was spun out of the University of Oxford in July of 2011, with seed capital from IP Group plc, Parkwalk Advisors Ltd and private investors. Invesco and OSI supplied follow-on capital.

In February of this year, Oxfordshire-based FLF announced it will focus on commercial partnerships with other fusion companies who want to use its amplifier technology, as well as with companies who have non-fusion applications such as NASA seeking to replicate potential high-velocity impacts in space. By dropping its plans for a commercial fusion power plant, and instead targeting commercial partnerships with others, FLF aims to “capitalize on the huge inertial fusion energy market opportunities enabling earlier revenues and lowering the long-term funding requirement.”

First Light Fusion

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Latitude 47.704656 Longitude -122.318745

Ambient office = 151 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 107 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 106 nanosieverts per hour

Jalapeno pepper from Central Market = 87 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water =71 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 61 nanosieverts per hour

Part 2 of 2 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)

Nuclear power represented just thirty one percent of TVA’s power mix in the first nine months of the current fiscal year. TVA has not reported a share of nuclear power that low since 2007, when the utility was sixty-four percent coal, thirty percent nuclear, six percent hydroelectric and less than one percent gas or renewable during that fiscal year. TVA had its lowest use of nuclear power since 2007 between the 1^st 2024 and June 30^th 2025.

TVA’s power mix caused more air pollution and planet-warming emissions that normal this past year due to increased fossil fuel burning. Mining or drilling for methane and coal releases methane into the atmosphere, pipelines transporting methane leak, and burning coal and methane at power plants releases carbon dioxide and other toxic air pollutants. TVA’s fossil fuel plants are among the biggest single-source climate polluters in Tennessee. The Cumberland and Gallatin plants consistently rank as the top two, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The nuclear plant outages have likely increased monthly bills for residents across the valley. Forced outages caused TVA to use more expensive fuels.

TVA bought more fuel in the form of methane and coal, instead of uranium, and more natural gas-fired power from other companies this past year. TVA was forced to buy more expensive power than it would have if the nuclear reactors had been operational.

TVA initially denied that the outages raised utility bills. The utility said that fuel costs went up because of the outages and fuel costs affect how local power companies like the Nashville Electric Service charge monthly bills to customers. Unplanned outages can be especially costly during extreme heat or cold events, such as when the entire Sequoyah plant failed during a heatwave in July of this year.

Scott Brooks is the TVA spokesperson. He said, “The forced outages caused TVA to use more expensive sources including natural gas and purchased power to maintain our industry-leading reliability. Fuel expenses are higher than projected for fiscal year 25 so far.

While TVA may have been able to fill in the lost power, a high number of outages is a reliability concern, according to Allen, the professor.

During the Sequoyah outage in July of this year, for example, TVA activated its “emergency load curtailment program” and asked residents to voluntarily lower their energy usage hours after the reactors failed without disclosing the outages.

Allen said, “If you take a reactor down, that’s a lot of capacity that you take down.”

Over this past year, state officials and folks in the power industry have been watching the utility’s other nuclear developments, because TVA may play a big role in the next generation of nuclear reactors. In May of this year, TVA became the first utility to ask the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a construction permit for a small, modular reactor in Oak Ridge. Prominent state Republicans, including Governor Bill Lee and Senators Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty, have all pushed for a fast expansion of new nuclear plants in editorials this year.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission

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New Duke Energy plan adds nuclear and extends coal, but drops wind to meet surging demand starnewsonline.com

Latitude 47.704656 Longitude -122.318745

Ambient office = 129 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 104 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Green onion from Central Market = 93 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 72 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 60 nanosieverts per hour

Part 1 of 2 Parts

Commercial nuclear power plants are usually the Tennessee Valley Authority’s biggest source of electricity. However, this source of electricity plummeted this past year because outages plagued all seven reactors owned by the utility.

TVA reported fourteen unplanned or maintenance outages over a thirteen-month period, according to a review of data from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. TVA has not responded to multiple requests for comments to verify the number of outages. At least twelve of the outages were “forced,” meaning they were unplanned, while two were planned for maintenance purposes.

The longest outage occurred at TVA’s Sequoyah Nuclear Plant in Soddy-Daisy, Tenn., which has two reactors. The main generator of the second reactor failed in July 2024. TVA undertook additional nuclear life extension projects during the extended, eleven-month outage, and the new generator is expected to last another forty years, according to TVA spokesperson Scott Fiedler. On June 24^th 2025, just one day after TVA brought this reactor back online, the entire nuclear plant failed because of a cooling water shortage during a heatwave.

Tim Rausch was the TVA’s top nuclear official. Two weeks later, on the same day as a forced outage at the Watts Bar Nuclear, Rausch resigned. Rausch joined TVA in 2018 and managed the entire nuclear fleet, making fourteen million dollars between fall 2018 and fall 2024, according to the utility’s financial filings to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Rausch plans to step down by March 2026, halfway into the next fiscal year.

TVA reported twelve unplanned nuclear outages to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission between July 2024 and August 2025.

Occasional nuclear outages are not especially unsafe. None of these outages were directly related to the nuclear reactors.

Todd Allen, a professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Michigan said, “The fact that it’s a forced outage doesn’t mean danger. Sometimes it can be as simple as a piece of critical equipment fails to operate as normal.” However, outages are a risk to reliability and costs.

TVA owns seven nuclear reactors among the Sequoyah, Watts Bar and Browns Ferry plants. The plants together account for about one fifth of TVA’s total energy capacity. TVA generally keeps its nuclear plants in constant operation, except when refueling uranium, so nuclear is usually about forty percent of the utility’s total energy use in a normal year. This year, nuclear power dropped to lowest share of the energy mix since 2007.

But the use of nuclear power dropped by about thirty percent between the 1^st of September 2024 and June 30^th 2025 compared to the same period the year before, according to TVA. The utility replaced more than ninety percent of that lost power with fossil fuels.

Tom Rice is the TVA’s chief financial officer. He said, during a board meeting in August, “That generation was offset with natural gas, purchased power, which is primarily natural gas, and very strong performance by the coal fleet this year.”

Tennessee Valley Authority

Please read Part 2 of 2 Parts next