Ambient office  = 79 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 95 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 87 nanosieverts per hour

English cucumber from Central Market = 62 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 69 nanosieverts per hour

Filtered water = 54 nanosieverts per hour

     I grew up during the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. We hid under our desks for nuclear attack drills. I had a terrible dream that our town had been destroyed in a nuclear blast that left only ashes. When the Cold War ended, many people thought that the world would leave the nuclear madness behind. Alas, that did not happen and, lately, relationships between nuclear armed nations have been deteriorating. The possibility for nuclear war is definitely increasing.
     The International Committee of the Red Cross is a worldwide humanitarian organization. Recently they surveyed sixteen hundred adults between the ages of twenty and thirty-five in sixteen countries. (This group is known as the “millennials.”) The countries surveyed included Afghanistan, Colombia, France, Indonesia, Israel, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Palestinian Territories, Russia, South Africa, Syria, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Ukraine, and the United States. Half of those countries are currently in a state of conflict with neighboring nations and the other half are currently at peace. The report stated that fifty four percent of those surveyed believe that it is probable that there will be a nuclear attack somewhere in the world within the next ten years.
     The millennials in Malaysia were among those who were most likely to be afraid that there would be a nuclear detonation soon. The Syrian millennials were the least likely to fear a nuclear attack. Those who responded to the survey said that nuclear weapons were at the bottom of the list of twelve important issues in the survey. Corruption was at the top of the list. Unemployment and increasing poverty were the next items in terms of importance.
     Even though nuclear weapons were at the bottom of the list of concerns, fears of a nuclear attack seem to be increasing. In January of 2008, a World Economic Forum survey of one thousand leaders from governments, businesses and other institutions said that they felt that nuclear war was a top global threat.
     This rising concern about nuclear war is understandable. There is definitely a possibility that the U.S. and North Korea could exchange nuclear warheads. Pakistan and India have fought three wars since their creation and they are in a rising conflict in Kashmir. The U.S. and Russia still have hundreds of warheads targeting each other.
     But the detonation of one or a few nuclear warheads is not the end of millennial concern. Forty-seven percent of the survey respondents believe that they will see World War III fought with nuclear weapons in their lifetime. Forty six percent did not believe that they would. This is about equal but the fact that about half of the millennials fear all out nuclear war is a serious fact.
     Peter Maurer is the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross. He is very concerned that the millennials view the future in this dark way. He wrote in the report, “Fatalistic, hopeful, worried and uncertain. Things are not likely to get easier for millennials: they are living in a world in which wars are becoming more and more complex.” He also said, “Millennials are the politicians, decision-makers, strategists, and opinion-makers of tomorrow. It’s possible their fears about what could happen might lead them to avoid the worst. In that sense, then, there is hope.”
    The study also found that “the clear majority of millennials think that wars and armed conflict are avoidable, with those from war-affected countries/territories more hopeful than those in conflict-free countries.” That is a positive sign that maybe those who have seen the horrors of war believe that the situation can only get better. Perhaps, the fears of the millennials for the future say more about the adults currently in charge than the next generation of leaders.

Ambient office  = 101 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 98 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 98 nanosieverts per hour

Sugarbee apple from Central Market = 93 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 107 nanosieverts per hour

Filtered water = 87 nanosieverts per hour

      Radium is a chemical element with the symbol Ra and atomic number of 88. It is a naturally occurring alkaline earth metal. It is formed by the radioactive decay of uranium and thorium which are found in many compounds in the environment. All thirty-three isotopes of radium are highly radioactive. The only use for radium is in medical treatments for cancer.
      Radium-224 is an isotope of radium that has a half-life of about three and a half days. While many cancer treatments are toxic for the patient, the alpha particles emitted by Ra-224 are deadly to cancer cells but leave healthy tissue alone. The alpha particles create complex double strand DNA breaks that kill the cancerous cells. The problem with Radium-224 is that the emitted alpha particles have a very short path length in the tissue of tumor. They often cannot reach all the parts of a tumor distant from the injection point.
     Itzhak Kelson and Yona Keisari are professors at Tel Aviv University. They developed a new Ra-224 therapy which is referred to as Diffusing Alpha-emitters Radiation Treatment (ALPHA Dart) in 2003. An ALPHA Dart “seed” is inserted into a tumor. It contains Ra-224 atoms below the surface of the seed. In the process of radioactive decay, the seed emits Ra-224 atoms which in turn emit short lived alpha particles into the tumor. Diffusion and convection processes disperse these alpha particles are to a  therapeutically significant distance of several millimeters. The Ra-224 seed powers the spread of the alpha particles to all parts of a tumor. The ALPHA Dart treatment is the first time that Ra-224 has been used to treat solid tumors.
     Alpha particles hardly diffuse at all in healthy tissue. This means that patients are not threatened with toxic side-effects and ALPHA Dart therapy is very safe. All solid tumors tested have been diminished if not outright destroyed. In a recent Ra-224 study, one hundred percent of the tumors treated shrank. In seventy eight percent of the treatments, the tumors were totally destroyed.
     ALPHA Dart treatment is suitable for the destruction of cancer cells regardless of oxygen level or cell life cycle. This makes it suitable for treating tumors that resist conventional gamma ray treatments. ALPHA Dart treatment is rapid and improvements in the patient’s condition can occur in a few days from the date of treatment. ALPHA Dart seeds are implanted once with a local anesthetic. ALPHA Dart can be combined with other treatments such as immunotherapy and chemotherapy. There is negligible exposure of the doctors and nurses to gamma radiation from the ALPHA Dart seeds. Alpha Tau has developed minimally invasive and cheap applicators that can treat a variety of tumors in different areas of the body. ALPHA Dart applicators are disposable, and the treatment does not require special equipment or special shielding so it should be cost effective in the treatment of millions of people suffering from cancer.
     In 2016, Uzi Sofer founded a private company named Alpha Tau Medical and now serves as the CEO of the company. The number of employees at Alpha Tau has grown to forty from the original ten. Trials of the new ALPHA Dart therapy are underway in Israel, Canada, Japan, Russia, Italy and in the United States.

Ambient office  = 87 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 142 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 143 nanosieverts per hour

Broccoli from Central Market = 108 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 71 nanosieverts per hour

Filtered water = 60 nanosieverts per hour

    A team of scientists at the U.K. University of Bristol is working on recycling radioactive materials taken directly from a closed nuclear powerplant in Gloucestershire. They hope to use these recycled materials to create ultra-long-lasting power sources.
     The Berkley Power Station was been permanently closed in 1989. Now enough radioactivity has dissipated to make it is safe to begin decommissioning work at the plant. The removal of radioactive waste products is underway. The nuclear waste is currently stored in concrete vaults that are about twenty six feet below the ground. Special equipment is needed to retrieve and process the waste safely and securely. Oldbury is a nuclear power station located on the bank of the River Severn. It was permanently closed in 2012 and is now undergoing decommissioning.
     Both of these sites and other decommissioned sites across the U.K. contain a huge amount of irradiated graphite that holds Carbon-14 isotopes that could be recycled into batteries. The researchers at the University of Bristol have grown an artificial diamond that, when immersed in a radioactive field, can generate a small amount of electricity. Carbon-14 has a half-life of five thousand seven hundred and thirty years. Batteries based on the artificial diamond and carbon-14 could provide power on a virtually infinite basis.
     The work at the University of Bristol is part of the Advanced Self-Powered sensor units in Intense Radiation Environments (ASPIRE) project which is “A cross Faculty collaboration between Physics, Chemistry and the Communication Systems & Networks research group in the Faculty of Engineering.”  The project is “addressing the UK’s nuclear legacy as the largest and most important environmental remediation program which will require an estimated expenditure of about one hundred and fifty billion dollars over the next 120 years.”
     Professor Tom Scott is from the School of Physics and Director of the South West Nuclear Hub. He is the leader of the nuclear battery project. He said, “Over the past few years we have been developing ultra-low powered sensors that harvest energy from radioactive decay. This project is at quite an advanced stage now and we have tested the batteries in sensors in places as extreme as the top of a volcano!”
     One application for these new batteries would be for supplying power in locations where it is not easy to access and replace power sources. Another application would be in implanted medical devices such as hearing aids or pacemakers. It should also be posssible to use them on spacecraft or satellites which would allow for those spacecraft and satellites to be powered for much longer than is now possible.
     Scott said, “The ultimate aim is to have a factory based at one of the former power stations in the South West that takes carbon-14 isotopes directly from the graphite blocks for use in diamond batteries. This would significantly reduce the radioactivity of the remaining material, making it easier and safer to manage. With the majority of the UK’s nuclear power plants set to go offline in the next 10-15 years this presents a huge opportunity to recycle a large amount of material to generate power for so many great uses.”
     This technology is an excellent example of research and innovation that is currently being developed in the South Western area of Britain. This area is the location of the only new nuclear power reactors being constructed in the U.K.