Ambient office  =  87 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 98 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 98 nanosieverts per hour

English cucumber from Central Market = 103 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 97 nanosieverts per hour

Filtered water = 78 nanosieverts per hour

       In situ leaching is a mining technique for extracting minerals such as copper and uranium. Holes are drilled into the ore deposit and leaching fluid is pumped into the holes. The solution carrying the dissolved ore is then pumped back to the surface and processed. In uranium in situ mining, an acidic solution such as sulfuric acid or an alkaline solution such as sodium bicarbonate is used. In situ mining does little to disturb the landscape and there are no mine tailings or waste rock created.
       The ore body must be permeable to the leaching solution. In addition, care must be taken that the leaching solution will not reach the ground water in the area of the mine. The choice of acidic or alkaline leaching solution depends on the geology of the ore body. In general, leaching with an acidic solution recovers more uranium and costs less than alkaline leaching.
      The in-situ process is used around the world to extract forty five percent of the uranium mined. In situ mining of uranium started in the U.S. and Soviet Union in the early 1960s using sulfuric acid. Since 1970, all commercial in-situ uranium mines in the U.S. have used carbonate solutions which are alkaline.
        Peninsula Energy Ltd has just finished the regulatory application process for the use of low pH in situ uranium mining at the Lance uranium project in Wyoming. Peninsula is now the only operator licensed to use low pH uranium extraction in the U.S. Low pH means that the leaching solution is acidic.
            The Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality (WDEQ) formally approved an amendment to the Lance source materials license on 31 July. The WDEQ notified the Peninsula Energy Ltd subsidiary Strata Energy Inc the following day. The authorization confirmed that the acidic in situ leaching technology to be employed by Peninsula complies with the regulatory standards and requirements of the state regulator.
       Wayne Heli is the CEO of Peninsula. He described the low pH recovery technique as a “proven and effective” method. Low pH recovery is in wide use in other parts of the world. Peninsula began working on authorization for their low pH in situ mining method in 2017. Tests had shown that using acidic rather than alkaline leaching solutions could possibly improve performance and reduce costs in uranium mining. Heli said, “The final implementation of this initiative is anticipated to bring significant benefit for our shareholders.”
      Peninsula reduced uranium production at the Lance mine in the second quarter of 2019 to prepare for a transition from alkaline to acidic leaching. According to the amended Permit to Mine from the state regulatory authority, Peninsula must demonstrate the process before they can begin commercial operations. Peninsula said that actual commercial use of the acidic in situ mining at the Lance mine would be determined by “the timing and extent of improvement in the uranium market conditions and the companies’ requirements for produced uranium.”  Currently, there are four in-situ mining operations in the U.S. including the Peninsula mine in Wyoming.

Ambient office  =  78 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 92 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 90 nanosieverts per hour

English cucumber from Central Market = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 96 nanosieverts per hour

Filtered water = 81 nanosieverts per hour

Part 2 of 2 Parts (Please read Part 2)
       Commercial nuclear power reactors have to be refueled every eighteen to twenty-four months. During the shutdown of the reactors for refueling and maintenance, human inspectors can check the reactor. Some of the new reactor designs will not have to be refueled for up to thirty years. The simulations run by Erickson and her team show that their new monitoring technology could be used to check on the operations of sodium cooled reactors. The signatures of the antineutrino fluxes from sodium reactors will be different than the fluxes from common pressurized-water power reactors.
       Further challenges include making the antineutrino detectors small enough to fit into a vehicle. A vehicle equipped with such an antineutrino detector could be driven past a nuclear reactor to check antineutrino flux. Erickson also wants to increase the directionality of the detectors so they can be kept focused on emission from the reactor core. This should allow them to detect even small changes.
       The principle of the detector can be compared to that of a retinal scanner that is used for identification. During a retinal scan, an infrared beam moves across the back of a person’s retina over the blood vessels. Blood vessels absorb more of the infrared light than the tissue around them and everyone has a unique pattern of blood vessels in their retinas. In order for such a system to work, the retinal signature of the person being scanned must already be in the device’s database. Following the scan, it is matched to the scans in the database to verify identity.
        A nuclear reactor constantly emits antineutrinos that vary depending on the flux and spectrum generated by the particular type of fuel isotopes that are involved in the fission process in that particular reactor. Some antineutrinos generated in the reactor are detected by in inverse beta decay. The specific signature from a particular reactor can be matched with signatures drawn from previous scans of the same reactor and stored in a database.
       If the signature of an operating reactor matches the stored signature for the same reactor, that means that there has been no significant alteration in the isotopes being fissioned in the reactor. On the other hand, if there is a marked change in the signature, that might mean that the reactor has been diverted for use in making nuclear materials for bombs.
       When a reactor switches from burning uranium to burning plutonium, the rate of emission of antineutrinos at different energies changes with operating lifetimes. The signature from a commercial reactor burning regular uranium fuel will show a repeating eighteen or twenty-four months cycle with a three month gap while fuel is being changed. If an ultra-long cycle fast reactor is burning plutonium, the signature would show continuous operation except for brief maintenance breaks. Many different agencies and individuals are working on this and other projects to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.
        Erickson said, “It goes all the way from mining of nuclear material to disposition of nuclear material, and at every step of that process, we have to be concerned about who’s handling it and whether it might get into the wrong hands. The picture is more complicated because we don’t want to prevent the use of nuclear materials for power generation because nuclear is a big contributor to non-carbon energy.”
       “One of the highlights of the research is a detailed analysis of assembly-level diversion that is critical to our understanding of the limitations on antineutrino detectors and the potential implications for policy that could be implemented,” she said. “I think the paper will encourage people to look into future systems in more detail.”

Ambient office  =  103 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 95 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 98 nanosieverts per hour

English cucumber from Central Market = 105 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 93 nanosieverts per hour

Filtered water = 75 nanosieverts per hour

Part 1 of 2 Parts
        One major problem with monitoring the processes inside a nuclear reactor lies in the fact that there is a great deal of dangerous radiation released during operation of the reactor. Now a group of researchers have found a way to use antineutrinos to continuously monitor nuclear fission processes from outside of the reactor.
        A neutrino is a neutral subatomic particle. It has very little mass and a half-integral spin. Neutrinos have very little interaction with normal matter. An antineutrino is the anti-matter version of the neutrino. The fission process inside a nuclear reactor generates antineutrinos. They can easily pass through the densest and thickest shielding around a nuclear reactor core. The flux of antineutrinos coming from a reactor depends on the type of fissionable materials that are fueling the reactor and the power level that the reactors is operating at. Now researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology (GIT) are investigating a way to use the release of antineutrinos from a nuclear reactor to monitor the fission processes.
        Anna Erickson is an associate professor in Georgia Tech’s George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. She says, “Antineutrino detectors offer a solution for continuous, real-time verification of what is going on within a nuclear reactor without actually having to be in the reactor core. You cannot shield antineutrinos, so if the state running a reactor decides to use it for nefarious purposes, they can’t prevent us from seeing that there was a change in reactor operations.”
      The new monitoring technique can be used with existing pressurized water reactors. It will also be able to monitor future reactor designs which may require less nuclear fuel. It can be used in conjunction with other monitoring techniques. The GIT carried out extensive simulations of reactor operations as part of their research. An article published on August 6th of this year in Nature Communications details the research at GIT.
       Two different types of reactors were evaluated during the GIT research. They used a PROSPECT detector currently deployed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR). PROSPECT stands for “Precision Oscillation and Spectrum Experiment”. It makes precision measurements of the flux and energy spectrum of antineutrinos emitted from nuclear reactors.
       Erickson said, “Traditional nuclear reactors slowly build up plutonium 239 in their cores as a consequence of uranium 238 absorption of neutrons, shifting the fission reaction from uranium 235 to plutonium 239 during the fuel cycle. We can see that as the signature of antineutrino emission changes over time. If the fuel is changed by a rogue nation attempting to divert plutonium for weapons by replacing fuel assemblies, we should be able to see that with a detector capable of measuring even small changes in the signatures.”
       “The antineutrino signature of the fuel can be as unique as a retinal scan, and how the signature changes over time can be predicted using simulations. We could then verify that what we see with the antineutrino detector matches what we would expect to see.”
       Erickson and two of her graduate students use powerful computer simulations to gauge the capabilities of near-field antineutrino detectors. These detectors would be positioned near but not inside the reactor containment vessel. One problem that has to dealt with is the separation of the readings coming from the fission reactors from the readings coming from natural background processes.
       Erickson said, “We would measure the energy, position and timing to determine whether a detection was an antineutrino from the reactor or something else. Antineutrinos are difficult to detect and we cannot do that directly. These particles have a very small chance of interacting with a hydrogen nucleus, so we rely on those protons to convert the antineutrinos into positrons and neutrons.”
Please read Part 2

Ambient office  =  91 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 112 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 113 nanosieverts per hour

English cucumber from Central Market = 115 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Filtered water = 85 nanosieverts per hour