Slow and fast light, or big changes in the group velocity of light have been seen in a variety of optical media. However, the refractive index required to induce an observable effect has not yet been accomplished in a plasma. (“The group velocity g is the velocity with which the envelope of a pulse propagates in a medium, assuming a long pulse with narrow bandwidth (so that higher-order chromatic dispersion is not relevant) and the absence of nonlinear effects (i.e., low enough optical intensities. Under certain circumstances, the group velocity can be higher than the vacuum velocity of light. However, this does not allow for superluminal transmission of information, which would amount to a violation of causality. There are also cases with a strongly reduced group velocity dispersion (usually in the vicinity of some narrow resonance) (slow light, a hot topic of current research.” Wikipedia).
      Scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and the Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE) recently published a report titled “Slow and Fast Light in Plasma Using Optical Wave Mixing,” in Physical Review Letters that described how a laser-plasma system can be configured to produce large and measurable changes in the group velocity of light.
     Clément Goyon is the lead author of the report. He said that their team achieved both slow and fast light inside plasmas. This demonstrates the ability to custom tailor the refractive index of a laser-plasma system. He also said, “Slow and fast light is the tip of the iceberg. The community has increased its understanding of optical nonlinear plasma properties over the last decades. Being able to predict and use plasma properties to our advantage is critical for high-energy laser experiments in high-energy density physics and inertial confinement fusion.”
     Goyon went on to explain that the cross-beam energy transfer utilized by the National Ignition Facility relies on correctly predicting the nonlinear optical properties of plasma using linear theory. Additionally, plasma-based replacements for a variety of standard optical components would enable the manipulation of light at extreme fluences. (Fluence refers the number of particles crossing a unit area expressed as particles per second.)
     The reported experiment was conducted at the Jupiter Laser Facility where an energetic pump beam and a low-energy probe beam were crossing inside a helium/hydrogen plasma. By turning the wavelength difference between the two beams, the Goyon’s team was able to change the pulsed light group velocity from 0.995c to 0.12c and -0.34c. (The letter c refers to the speed of light in a vacuum or approximately three hundred thousand kilometers per second.) Pierre Michel’s group helped provide funding for the project. He said that laser-plasma interactions are extremely difficult to predict and control. He said, “However, by demonstrating slow and fast light in plasmas, I feel we have achieved a new stepping stone for the applications of plasmas as an optical medium for high-power lasers, by reproducing one of the most confounding and delicate achievements of modern nonlinear optics using plasma. This helps advance the case for using plasma as a medium in the design of future generations of high-power lasers.”

Ambient office = 83 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 126 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 129 nanosieverts per hour

Iceberg lettuce from Central Market = 115 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 105 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 85 nanosieverts per hour

Part 2 of 2 Parts (Please read Part 1 first) 
     The new rules from the Trump regulators turned out not to be much of a factor. This is partly because the steep drop in price mitigated some of the advantages of the participants. In addition, many bidders were granted exemptions. The result of all this was disastrous for coal power plants. Katie Bays is an analyst at FiscalNote Markets. She wrote in a research note, “Coal was far and away the biggest loser in the auction.”
     Exelon serves the Chicago area. The price was sixty-eight dollars and ninety-six cents compared to one hundred ninety-five dollars and fifty-five cents from the last auction. The price in the Pennsylvania and New Jersey region fell to ninety-seven dollars and eighty-six cents from one hundred sixty-five dollars and seventy-three cents. In all, one hundred forty-four thousand four hundred and seventy-seven megawatts cleared the auction. This represents a reserve margin of twenty one percent.
     Nuclear power plants did manage to win more contracts in the auction than in previous years. They cleared an additional four thousand five hundred megawatts from the prior auction in 2018, Wind and solar added about one thousand three hundred megawatts and natural gas added three thousand four hundred megawatts. On the other hand, coal fell by about eight thousand two hundred megawatts.
     Blackouts triggered by the extreme weather in Texas and California over the past year have fueled a debate over whether other regions should institute capacity systems similar to the one currently used by PJM. The market pays generators to be on standby in case extra power is needed. This practice has long been a source of controversy. It does make the grid more reliable but it also drivers up costs for consumers. Around Chicago, these charges totaled more than one billion seven hundred million dollars per year. This accounted for twenty percent of customers billing.
     The new pricing rules imposed by federal regulators under the Trump administration triggered contentious debate between power providers, PJM and federal regulators. The auction was delayed by two years because to the confusion. The new pricing system may be short lived. The new Biden administration is moving to review and change the rules in time for the next PJM auction in December.
     Dominion Energy Inc. is one of the biggest utility owners in the U.S. They recently pulled out of the capacity market because of the new rules. The company has a goal to have net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. They said that the new PJM format will make renewables more expensive than they would be if clean energy were delivered through alternative markets.
     Illinois, New Jersey and Maryland have also threatened to withdraw from the capacity market unless the new price floor is eliminated. PJM has already launched a process to do just that. Lazerwitz said that “After all that fighting, it had basically no impact.” Hopefully, new regulations from the Biden administration will remedy some of these problems.

Ambient office = 89 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 84 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 81 nanosieverts per hour

Blueberry from Central Market = 108 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 74 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 59 nanosieverts per hour

Part 1 of 2 Parts    
     The PJM Interconnection LLC’s grid serves more than sixty-five million people. Suppliers to the grid will receive fifty dollars a megawatt day to provide backup generating capacity for the year starting June 2022. The results of the last PJM Interconnection LLC’s grid auction were released Wednesday. That price for backup is the lowest price in eleven years. The results of this auction will deal an especially harsh blow to coal plants and nuclear power plants that are already struggling to compete in today’s energy market.
     The PJM Interconnection LLC’s grid auction is the most important event for generators across the eastern U.S. including Calpine Corp., NRG Energy Inc. and Exelon Corp. The auction dictates a big portion of their future revenues. The auction also plays a pivotal role in the shaping the electricity mix for the regions. It determines how much the region is willing to stick with coal and natural gas plants or replace them with wind and solar. Payments from the auction are designed to ensure that the electricity remains on from New Jersey to Illinois are set to drop sixty four percent.
     Brianna Lazerwitz is an energy analyst for BloombergNEF. She said, “I can’t imagine how nuclear is going to be able to cover all their fixed costs with such a low price.”
     Analysts had expected the price for backup to fall but they had not anticipated such a big drop. A conjunction of factors caused the price to plunge. The forecast of electricity demand was lower than last year. There are a bunch of new and cheaper power plants entering the market which is pushing down bids for power plant construction.  The lower prices could be especially painful for Exelon nuclear power plants in Illinois. There is increasing pressure on Illinois lawmakers to provide subsidies to the nuclear industry to bail out the Illinois nuclear plants.
     Kit Konolige is a Bloomberg Intelligence Analyst. He published research in which he stated that Exelon could possibly face a nine hundred million pretax charge. This Thursday, Exelon issued a statement that said that it planned to close two more of its Illinois nuclear power plants unless the state offers subsidies. Exelon shares dropped by about two percent before trading opened in New York on Thursday. NRG stock fell one and sixth tenths of a percent and Vistra stock fell two percent.
      Gayle Podurgiel is a power markets analyst at Moody’s. She said, “It’s a direct hit to the companies’ income statements.” She predicted that more coal plants would close because of the outcome of the auction.
       Natural gas is the dominant fuel for generating electricity in PJM because of shale natural gas production in the region. Analysis had anticipated that the PJM auction would hurt nuclear power and renewables while possibly boosting coal. This is a result of new rules that were imposed by regulators which were designed from the beginning to blunt any advantage that wind, solar or nuclear reactors gained from state subsidies.
Please read Part 2 next

Ambient office = 93 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 19 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 119 nanosieverts per hour

English cucumber from Central Market = 56 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 98 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 75 nanosieverts per hour

      A recent report from the Congressional Budget Office estimates that over the next ten years, U.S. nuclear spending will be twenty eight percent higher than was estimated just two years ago. There were claims that modernizing the U.S. nuclear arsenal will be “far more expensive than anticipated.” That may be true but there are a lot of caveats and footnotes in that report. There are four things that should be kept in mind when considering the estimations in the report.
     First of all, the new report is reviewing the costs for a different time period than the previous estimate. The previous report covered 2019-2028. The new report covers the period from 2021 – 2030. The CBO report explains that “The higher estimates in this report do not necessarily signal an increase in programs’ total lifetime costs.” The report does reflect a more expensive period for nuclear modernization. In the two new years in the new report, procurement in the key programs including the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent accelerates. If that is not taken into account when considering the differences between the two reports, then the comparison is not fair.
     Second, the program requirements have changed over the last two years. The CBO attributes the majority of the higher costs projected for the 2021-2028 period which is covered by both reports to new requirements related to nuclear warheads. The report said, “The majority of that increase comes from new plans for modernizing production facilities for strategic materials…[and] warhead life-extension programs for which funding schedules have been accelerated.”
     Sixty percent of our military nuclear facilities are more than forty years old. All weapons in the stockpile date back to the Cold War. Many analysts say that modernization plans and schedules may be expensive, but they are necessary.
     Third, the CBO report includes cost estimates that are subjective. Fifteen percent of the estimated increase comes for a CBO decision to add an extra twenty-one billion dollars to account for “general growth beyond budgeted amounts.”
     This extra money is not based on known program or technical difficulties. It just reflects historical cost overruns for similar programs. This part of the estimate is not a hard number and is subject to change as circumstances require.
      Another problem is the lack of precise project costs. The CBO report estimates that the nuclear sea-launched cruise missile will cost ten billion dollars over ten years. This project does not have an acquisition strategy yet so the CBO based its estimate on the cost of the Long-Range Standoff weapon which is a completely different weapon system and a poor basis for an estimate. So, this estimate is also subject to change.
     Fourth, the CBO report has been challenged because it includes dubious costs that inflate the estimates such as the costs of sustaining our current nuclear forces in addition to their replacement programs. For example, the CBO report includes four billion two hundred million dollars for intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) for fiscal year 2021 even though Congress only appropriated about one billion five hundred million dollars for the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent program for 2021.
      In order to understand the origin of this discrepancy, you have to plow through additional data tables that can only be found elsewhere on the CBO website. Ultimately, you will find a table that lists two billion eight hundred million dollars for ICBM modernization.  This number must include warhead modernization although that is not made explicit.
     The remainder of the four billion two hundred million is dedicated to operating and sustaining the fifty-year old Minuteman III missiles. This confuses the cost of replacement with what we already must do just to maintain our current deterrent. Because of this confusion, some critics have mistakenly claimed that the cost of replacing the nuclear triad has jumped to six hundred and thirty-four billion dollars although a significant portion of that covers sustainment costs.