Ambient office  = 93 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 116 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 119 nanosieverts per hour

Blueberry from Central Market = 76 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 77 nanosieverts per hour

Filtered water = 59 nanosieverts per hour

Part 2 of 3 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
    Moltex has a customer for its first operational SSR. NB Power is a Canadian electric utility which intends to put a Moltex SSR into operation by 2030. It has been claimed that nuclear power generates no carbon dioxide. This is true for operation but not true for mining and refining fuel as well as constructing the nuclear reactor. NB has decided that Gen IV reactors should be a part of its move to green power. It has selected both a Moltex SSR and an SSR from ARC Nuclear Canada for deployment. Brett Plummer is the chief nuclear officer for NB Power. He says, “I believe that we need nuclear energy with renewables to decarbonize the earth.” Plummer praises Gen IV reactors for their inherent safety features and their ability to burn nuclear waste. He says, “The more we discuss the advantages of these reactors, the more acceptance we get.”
     Plummer says, “We’re about 75% non-emitting right now in the province of New Brunswick, and we would like to meet our goal to be completely non-emitting by 2030/2040. We’re looking at nuclear technology to fill that gap from a safe, reliable, cost-effective, clean energy source that can integrate with renewables.”
     NB currently provides electricity for about four hundred customers. Their power is generated by conventional water-cooled nuclear power reactors, hydroelectric plants and fossil fuel plants. Unfortunately, the enthusiasm of Moltex and NB power for SSRs is not shared by many in the nuclear power industry.
     Many anti-nuclear activists oppose the development of SSRs because they oppose all nuclear power generation. In addition, there are major technical challenges that may impede the wide adoption of SSRs. One of the big concerns is that SSRs are unproven technology when compared to conventional water-cooled power reactors which have been generating power for over sixty years. This is one of the reasons that Moltex turned to crowdfunding to raise the money that they need to continue development of SSRs. Moltex is attempting to get an early design state approval from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC).
    There have been designs for MSR Gen IVs floating around for sixty years. They have not been adopted due to a lack of money and political support as the water-cooled conventional reactors caught on commercially. The first MSR which is the basis for the SSR design was designed and constructed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee is the 1950s and 1960s. MSR research was carried on parallel to the water-cooled reactors that came to dominate the nuclear power market place during the Nixon administration. The water-cooled reactors won out because they produce plutonium that can be extracted for the purpose of making nuclear weapons which was highly desirable at the height of the Cold War.
      It is estimated that about one and a quarter billion dollars will be required to build the Moltex reactor. It is also possible that the cost will be a lot higher. Moltex will eventually look for more conventional means of obtaining funds such as equity funds. The problem is that Moltex needs to have money come in stages. Currently it has a continuing requirement for money to fund the complex, time consuming and rigorous process that is necessary in order to receive regulatory approval of the reactor design from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.
Please read Part 3

Ambient office  = 124 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 93 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 97 nanosieverts per hour

Avocado from Central Market = 79 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 103 nanosieverts per hour

Filtered water = 85 nanosieverts per hour

Part 1 of 3 Parts
     There are many problems with nuclear power but one of the biggest is the cost of licensing and construction a nuclear power reactor. The cost of nuclear construction is steadily rising while the cost of renewables and natural gas. Now a group in the U.K. is trying to pioneer a new method of funding a molten salt reactor.
     One hundred and fifty-six funders have committed to three hundred and fifty million dollars in a crowdfunding project to construct a new type nuclear reactor based on using a liquid form of a metal salt (MSR). The company running the crowdfunding project is named Moltex Energy. Moltex calls its MSR a stable salt reactor (SSR). They claim that it would make nuclear power safer and cheaper than the expensive giant nuclear power reactors that have been providing electricity for over sixty years. This same claim is made by many companies working on what are called “Generation IV” (Gen IV) alternative nuclear power reactors. They have also emphasized that, in general, nuclear power is “green” because it emits no carbon during operation.
    Simon Newton is the Moltex business development director. He said, “Our success in crowdfunding, which surprised us, may tell us something about public attitudes to new forms of nuclear power. Climate change is upon us and there are many individuals who may be frustrated by the slow pace of government action”.
     Moltex has a lot of competition across the world in the race to construct Gen IV nuclear power reactors. Work on Gen IV nuclear power reactors is being carried out in the U.S. and Canada, Europe, China and Russia. In most cases, this research is being funded by organizations both public and private with deep pockets. ARC Nuclear Canada is being funded by GE-Hitachi. TerraPower in the U.S. is being partially funded by Bill Gates. General Fusion in Canada is being bank-rolled by Jeff Bezos.
    The SSR being developed by Moltex is a box that contains fuel rods which contain salt combined with either uranium or thorium. It can also burn plutonium extracted from spent nuclear fuel. The fuel rods dangle in a huge bath of additional molten salt. The molten salt bath absorbs the heat emitted by the fission reaction and uses it to boil water which drives steam turbines to generate electricity.
    The heat exchange, coolant and turbine technologies are similar to those used in a conventional nuclear power reactor. However, the MSRs being developed operate at normal sea level atmospheric pressure as opposed to high pressure conventional water-cooled power reactors which are currently used to generate electricity.
     Moltex says that physics prevents its SSRs from overheating. The fission reaction slows down as temperature rises. If it goes beyond a threshold, the fission reaction stops. SSR safety is insured by their natural shutdown. Moltex says that conventional reactors are safe but that it is very expensive to ensure that safety. Moltex says that ultimately Gen IV reactors produce less waste than conventional reactors, can more easily burn nuclear waste and will be less likely to meltdown or explode.
     The World Nuclear Association is an industry advocacy group which supports the expansion of nuclear power for the generation of electricity. They said, “All (Gen IV) systems represent advances in sustainability, economics, safety, reliability and proliferation-resistance.” Some of the competitors of Moltex in the U.S. are ThorCon, Flibe Energy and TerraPower. China has more Gen IV projects in development than any other company in the world. Nuclear power has been fading in the developed world and Moltex and other countries have been claiming that nuclear power should be considered green power that would help mitigate climate change.
Please read Part 2

Ambient office  = 96 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 108 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 107 nanosieverts per hour

English cucumber from Central Market = 68 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 105 nanosieverts per hour

Filtered water = 83 nanosieverts per hour

     All fifteen previously known forms of the element plutonium are radioactive. This means that they are unstable and decay into lighter elements. Now an international team led by the Helmholtz Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) has discovered a new compound of plutonium with a surprising pentavalent oxidation state. They made this discovery on the European Synchrotron in Grenoble, France (ESRF). The new phase of plutonium is solid and stable. It may be a transient phase in depositories of radioactive waste. The research was published in an article in the Angewandte Chemie journal.
    There is global research going on to improve the safety of radioactive waste repositories. This work is aimed at preventing radioactive nuclides from being released into the environment. Research on movement of elements carried by ground water is part of this work. Plutonium can be carried for miles underground from contaminated sites in colloids.
     Colloids are formed when a homogeneous non-crystalline substance is formed. Large molecules or tiny particles are dispersed through a second substance. These include gels, sols and emulsions. Particles in colloids do not settle out and they cannot be separated by ordinary filtering or centrifuging. The plutonium colloids are formed when plutonium combines with clay, iron oxides or natural organic materials.
    A group of researchers led by HXDR studied the chemistry of actinides under condition similar to those found in the natural environment. The electronic and structural behavior of synthesized compounds were studied theoretically and with advanced synchrotron X-ray methods. During an experiment which appeared to fail, the new stable form of plutonium was discovered.
    Kristina Kvashnina is a physicist with the HZDR based at the ROBL beamline ESRF, a beamline which is owned and operated by the HZDR. Her team were trying to synthesize plutonium dioxide nanoparticles with different precursors to be used in experiments at ROBL. When the Pu(VI) precursor was used, an unexpended reaction occurred during formation of the plutonium dioxide nanoparticles. Kvashnina said, “Every time we create nanoparticles from the other precursors Pu(III) or (IV) the reaction is very quick, but here we observed a weird phenomenon half way.” She decided that it must be because of the formation of Pu (V) which is a pentavalent form of plutonium. This form of plutonium has never been seen before.
     When a team of scientists from Moscow State University reviewed the data, they said, “A stable phase of Pu(V)! – no, it is impossible, it doesn’t exist, the synthesis must have gone wrong.” Kvashnina said that “Chemists were in complete disbelief, but the results were quite clear.”
     The only way to verify that she was dealing with the pentavalent compound would be to confirm it with using the HERFD at the Pu M4 edge. An edge in this context is the point where an absorption spectra has a sharp spike or discontinuity. She explained that, “Our choice of beamline was straightforward: the ESRF-ID26 beamline, as it is the best place, regarding the intensity and energy resolution, where such high-energy resolution X-ray absorption spectroscopy studies at low energies can be done. In fact the Pu M4 edge HERFD experiment was done at ID26 for the first time. To the best of our knowledge, HERFD data at the Pu M4 edge have never been reported in the literature and never been exploited.”
    The initial experiments confirmed her hypothesis. Three months later, more experiments confirmed that the new form of plutonium was stable. At the same time, theoreticians in Sweden were developing prediction of the features of the Pu M4 edge spectral features, theoreticians at ROBL worked to identify the species of the new phase of plutonium. Ultimately, these lines of research converged and confirmed the existence of the new Pu (V) phase.
    Scientists have been working on predicting what happens to radioactive waste over millions of years. Kvashnina said, “It is a difficult task and only theoretical predictions are possible, but the existence of this new Pu(V) solid phase, which is stable, will have to be taken into account from now on. It will change, for sure, the theoretical predictions of plutonium behavior in the environment over a period of millions of years.”