Ambient office  =  118 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 109 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water =108 nanosieverts per hour

Crimini mushroom from Central Market = 175 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Filtered water = 89 nanosieverts per hour

Part 1 of 2 Parts
        In the fall of 2017, small quantities of ruthenium-106 (Ru-106) were detected in several European countries. Ru-106 is a product of nuclear fission processes and is used as a radionuclide in medical applications. Early studies of the occurrence of the Ru-106 suggested that air currents in the atmosphere likely carried the radioactive isotope from the southern region of the Ural Mountains. A study commissioned by Russia in April of 2018 concluded that there was not enough evidence to accurately verify that the emission of the Ru-106 was caused by any of the suggested source in the earlier study including possible problems at their Mayak nuclear site.
       Now a study has been published that included over thirteen hundred readings taken from across Europe and other areas of the world. One hundred and seventy-six measuring station from twenty-nine countries collected the samples used in the study. The purpose of the study was to identify the source of the Ru-106 release. Olivier Masson from the French Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety led a group of seventy experts drawn from all over Europe. The study is titled Airborne concentrations and chemical considerations of radioactive ruthenium from an undeclared major nuclear release in 2017. It was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) of the USA on 26 July of this year.
       Since the 1960s, European radioprotection authorities have created or upgraded radionuclide monitoring across Europe. The new study says, “Today most of these European networks are connected to each other via the informal ‘Ring of Five’ (Ro5) platform for the purpose of rapid exchange of expert information on a laboratory level about airborne radionuclides detected at trace levels. In October 2017, an unprecedented release of ruthenium-106 into the atmosphere was the subject of numerous detections and exchanges within the Ro5.  Based on times series of detections at various locations in Central Europe, the event was characterized as a short release. The plume duration lasted about 1 to 3 days on average, depending on the location, with the exception of a few areas.”
        A couple of possible causes for the release were eliminated in the report. There was too much Ru-106 released to have been the result of an incineration of a source of medical radionuclides. The crash of a satellite was also ruled out as a possible source. The report says, “It is much more likely that the Ru-106 escaped during reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, possibly in the course of the miscarried production of a highly radioactive cerium-144 source for research applications in the Gran Sasso Laboratory in Italy. According to detection time series, a back-trajectory analysis, and chemical considerations, the Mayak nuclear complex in southern Urals should be considered as a likely candidate for the release.”
        Professor Georg Steinhauser at the University of Hannover evaluated the data. He said, “The readings indicate the probably largest single release of radioactivity from a civilian reprocessing plant. We were able to show that the accident happened in the reprocessing of spent fuel, at a very advanced stage of reprocessing, shortly before the end of the process chain. Even though there is no official statement yet, we have a pretty detailed idea of what might have happened.”
Please read Part 2

Ambient office  =  127 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 99 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 74 nanosieverts per hour

Red bell pepper from Central Market = 175 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 102 nanosieverts per hour

Filtered water = 77 nanosieverts per hour

         First Energy is an electric utility with headquarters in Akron, Ohio. In March of 2018, FirstEnergy announced that it was going to close the Perry Nuclear Generating Station in 2020 and the Davis–Besse Nuclear Power Station in 2021. Since then there has been a great deal of debate about the impact of the closures on Ohio and the question of whether or not the state of Ohio should subsidize nuclear power generation to prevent the plants from closing. 
        The Ohio state legislature just passed a bill called HB 6. From 2021 to 2027, Ohio ratepayers will pay a new monthly surcharge on their bills for electricity. Residential customers will pay eighty-five cents a month. Big industrial customers will pay up to two thousand four hundred dollars per month. The surcharge is expected to bring in an additional one hundred and seventy million dollars per year. One hundred and fifty million dollars will be provided to FirstEnergy to subsidize the Perry and Davis-Besse nuclear power plants. Obviously, FirstEnergy canceled its plans to close the two plants in 2020 and 2021.
       FirstEnergy and its employees donated almost one million dollars to state legislators, other state office holders, candidates for public office and political parties prior to the close passage of HB 6. The money came from the FirstEnergy Corporation Political Action Committee and the fifteen thousand FirstEnergy employee who paid through payroll deductions. A dark money group supporting FirstEnergy paid most of the bill for almost ten million dollars in television adds supporting the passage of HB 6. Such money is rarely seen in Ohio politics. FirstEnergy has refused to respond to questions about the contributions. A spokesperson said, “FirstEnergy Corp. makes and discloses all campaign contributions in accordance with applicable state and federal laws.”
       FirstEnergy provided a hundred and sixty-three thousand dollars to thirty five of the ninety-eight House members. Twenty of the thirty-five FirstEnergy supported candidates went on to vote for Larry Householder for the Ohio House Speakership and to vote for HB 5. He was instrumental in the passage of HB 6. Householder himself received over twenty-five thousand dollars from FirstEnergy. The Ohio House GOP caucus has received almost twenty thousand dollars from FirstEnergy since 2017. Republican members of the Ohio state Senate received about a hundred thousand in donations from FirstEnergy.
       Ohio House Republican spokeswoman Gail Crawley said, “House Bill 6 was the result of extensive public hearings in both the House and Senate. It will cut mandates and save ratepayers $1.3 billion while preserving Ohio jobs and protecting Ohio’s environment.” Ohio Senate Republican spokesman John Fortney said, “Campaign contributions have nothing to do with policy outcomes in the Senate.”
       Republican Mike DeWine is the governor of Ohio. He lobbied for the HB  6 bill and signed it when it came to his desk. He received over twenty five thousand dollars in donations from FirstEnergy. FirstEnergy upper management provided about thirteen thousand dollars in food and beverages for a GOP fundraiser and FirstEnergy also donated ten thousand dollars for the gubernatorial inaugural and transition fund. FirstEnergy employs almost two dozen lobbyists in the Ohio state capitol.
       David Pomerantz is the executive director of the Energy and Policy Institute. He said, “While it’s unfortunately typical for investor-owned utilities to spend money to influence politicians, the amount of money that FirstEnergy Solutions, AEP and allied dark-money groups spent to buy support from legislators for their coal and nuclear bailout has been astronomical.”
       I have said in previous posts that if not for the enormous amount of money to be made in the construction and operation of nuclear power plants, we would not be using nuclear power as a major source of electrical generation. Whatever economic, political and/or national security arguments may be presented to support nuclear power in the U.S., the main reason it still exists is perfectly illustrated by the huge amount of money that FirstEnergy poured into the political process to support the passage of HB 6.

Ambient office  =  59 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 86 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 81 nanosieverts per hour

Acorn squash from Central Market = 175 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Filtered water = 89 nanosieverts per hour

       Boris Johnson is the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Yesterday, in his first address to the House of Commons as PM, he expressed his passionate support for nuclear power. Seven of the U.K.’s eight operating nuclear power plants are scheduled to be retired by 2030. Attempts to build new nuclear power plants have had problems with funding over the past two years.
        Johnson was responding to a question from Trudy Harrison, the member of parliament for Copeland. Copeland is the borough in Western Cumbria that includes Sellafield which is the nuclear fuel reprocessing and nuclear decommissioning site. It is also the proposed site of the cancelled Moorside nuclear power plant project. She had just pointed out that Copeland is a “center of nuclear excellence” and had asked Johnson if he agreed that “the time is now for a nuclear renaissance”.
        In his response to her question, Johnson said that “It is time for a nuclear renaissance and I believe passionately that nuclear must be part of our energy mix,” He added that nuclear energy was important in helping the U.K. to meet its carbon emissions reduction target.
        On July 22, the U.K. government launched a consultation into funding large-scale nuclear power plants. The consultation also included a proposed twenty-two million dollar investment in the development of small modular reactors. Greg Clark was the secretary of state for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS). Johnson replaced him with Andrea Leadsom following his election. Clark announced in 2018 that the U.K. government would review the viability of a Regulated Asset Base (RAB) model for new nuclear projects. The RAB model means that sunk costs for nuclear projects will ultimately be recovered from ratepayers.
        The consultation states that as the cost of renewable energy sources continues to decline, they will probably provide the major portion of the U.K. low-carbon generating capacity in 2050. It also says that there will still be an important role for low-carbon ‘firm’ or baseload power from nuclear reactors in 2050. 
        Hinkley Point C (HPC) is currently under construction in Somerset, England. It would not follow the RAB model but any future nuclear power plants would. Up to five more new builds had been planned in the U.K. These would be built by EDF Energy together with China General Nuclear (CGN); NuGeneration (NuGen); and Horizon Nuclear Power.
       EDF Energy is working on the construction of two European Pressurized Reactors (EPRs) at Hinkley Point with CGN holding a one third stake in the project. They also planned to build new nuclear power plants at Sizewell in Suffolk and Bradwell in Essex. The Bradwell plant would utilize Chinese technology. Atkins is a U.K.-based engineering company that is a member of the SNC-Lavalin Group. It just announced that it had obtained six-million dollar contract to work on the basic design for the Sizewell C site.
      In November of 2018, Toshiba Corp announced that it was cancelling its nuclear new build project at Moorside. It is going to wind up its NuGen subsidiary which was managing the project. The project was intended to produce a nuclear power plant with a four gigawatt gross capacity. Westinghouse AP1000 nuclear technology would be used to build the plant. The reactor design finished the Generic Design Assessment process in early 2017. This was the same month that Westinghouse filed for bankruptcy protection in U.S. courts.
       Early this year, Horizon’s new-build projects were suspended. This happened even though the U.K. subsidiary of Hitachi had made substantial progress in its plans to provide five and a half gigawatts of capacity spread between two sites by constructing Hitachi-GE U.K. advanced boiling water reactors. The two intended sites of construction were Wylfa Newydd in north Wales and Oldbury-on-Severn in southwest England. The U.K. ABWR design successfully completed the GDA process in December of 2017. Horizon welcomes the government’s involvement in the RAB consultation. Horizon says that a new funding and financing model was one of the critical steps that are necessary if they are to restart development activities.

Ambient office  =  75 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 108 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 109 nanosieverts per hour

Peach from Central Market = 169 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 62 nanosieverts per hour

Filtered water = 56 nanosieverts per hour