Ambient office  =  81nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 96 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Bartlett pear from Central Market =126 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 122 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 106 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient office  =  119 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 112 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 116 nanosieverts per hour

Jalepeno pepper from Central Market = 80 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 71 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 63 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient office  =  112 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 88 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 84 nanosieverts per hour

Yam from Central Market = 90 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 90 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 85 nanosieverts per hour

Dover sole – Caught in USA = 73 nanosieverts per hour

       Many years ago, shortly after I left college, I was talking to some folks about nuclear power. I said that I was confident that engineers could design safe systems but that we would have to rely on government and industry to be far more competent and honest than they had ever been in order to use nuclear power without major accidents. After years of writing these essays about nuclear issues, I see no reason to change my opinion.
       The nuclear power industry is appealing to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to cut back on the number of inspections at U.S. nuclear power plants. They also want to be able to tell the public less about problems at their plants. The NRC is currently considering some of the requests by the nuclear industry as they conduct a major review of how the Commission enforces regulations at the ninety-eight operating nuclear power reactors. The five-member board of the NRC will be issuing their recommendation in June.
       Annie Caputo is a member of the NRC board appointed by President Trump. Previously, she was a lobbyist for the nuclear industry. At a nuclear industry meeting this week, she said that she was “open to self-assessments” by nuclear power plant operators. Members of the nuclear industry are suggesting that self-reporting by plant operators be allowed instead of some NRC inspections.
       The Trump administration is well-known for being hostile to federal regulation of U.S. industries, including the nuclear industry. Trump has appointed four members of the current five-member board. Trump appointees and industry representatives claim that changes in oversight are overdue because the industry has improved its safety record and the nuclear industry is having financial problems turning a profit at some power plants. The cost of operating aging nuclear power plants is rising as the cost of renewables and natural gas is falling.
       In reaction to this activity at the NRC, nuclear industry critics are alarmed at the idea of relaxing regulations and trusting the industry to monitor itself. Geoffrey Fettus is a senior attorney for nuclear issues at the Natural Resources Defense Council. He points out that the regulation cutting in some federal departments would not lead to the kind of accidents such cutting may risk at nuclear power plants. Paul Gunter is a member of the anti-nuclear group Beyond Nuclear. He said, “For an industry that is increasingly under financial decline … to take regulatory authority away from the NRC puts us on a collision course with a nuclear accident.”
      The nuclear industry made its request for regulatory changes in a letter from the Nuclear Energy Institute. One major request has to do with eliminating required press releases about lower level safety issues at plants. Such problems could result in increased inspections and oversight at a nuclear power plant but would not be considered emergencies. The industry group requested that the NRC relieve the industry of the “burden of radiation-protection and emergency-preparedness inspections.” Industry representatives repeated their requests at an annual industry function in Washington, D.C. this week.
       Greg Halnon is the vice president of regulatory affairs for FirstEnergy Corp. in Ohio. He said that it would be better to scale back reporting of lower-level problems at plants “than to put out a headline on the webpage to the world.” He said that following reporting of such lower level problems there were “rapid calls from the press and SEC filings get impacted because of potential financial impact.”
       The NRC will be issuing a new set of regulations this spring in response to the lessons learned from the 2011 Fukushima disaster. Nuclear power plants will be required to harden themselves against major floods and other natural disasters that could result the release of radioactive materials.
       Over the past seventy years of nuclear power generation there have been many stories of nuclear power plant operators failing to follow regulations requiring safety measures and the reporting of problems. It would be far better for the citizens of this country to have the NRC concentrate on enforcing regulations than removing them.

Ambient office  =  102 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 97 nanosieverts per hour

Yellow Onion from Central Market = 131 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 111 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 90 nanosieverts per hour

       One of the major problems that could impact the global nuclear industry is a meltdown at a nuclear power plant. When the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan was destroyed by flooding following a tsunami in March of 2011, the shock of the accident reverberated around the world. Germany decided to retire all of its nuclear power reactors. Other countries put nuclear projects on hold while they studied the disaster. The Obama administration ordered a national emergency review of all one hundred U.S. nuclear power reactors. Eventually many countries drafted new more stringent safety regulation for nuclear power plants to avoid a repeat of the Fukushima disaster.
       The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is issuing major new regulations this spring to codify some of the measures taken by U.S. nuclear power plants in response to Fukushima. A NRC spokesperson said in an interview that “The NRC remains satisfied that the overall response to what we learned from Fukushima means U.S. nuclear power plants have appropriately enhanced their already robust ability to safely withstand severe events of any kind.”
       The new post-Fukushima set of NRC regulations are referred to as the “Mitigation of Beyond-Design-Basis Events rule.” The U.S. nuclear industry is being given about two years to comply with the new safety regulation regarding earthquakes and other events that could cause a leak of radioactive materials that would pose a threat to public health and the environment. These new regulations are called “major” because an analysis of their impact indicates that the cost will be over a hundred million dollars. There are three major requirements for the Owners of commercial nuclear power reactors.
        First, steps must be taken to insure that reactor cores are kept properly cooled in the event that the emergency electricity supply is damaged or destroyed. In addition, modifications and procedures must be put into place to keep spent fuel cooling pools full of water in the event of an emergency that cuts all emergency power.
        Second, the nuclear power plant operators must install equipment that can be relied upon to accurately measure the water levels in the spent nuclear fuel cooling pools. When nuclear fuel rods have been used up in a reactor core, they are very radioactive and must be kept in a cooling pool for up to five years in order for some of the radioactivity to dissipate. Once removed from the cooling pools, spent fuel rods will have to be stored onsite in dry casks at each nuclear power plant because there is no permanent national repository for the disposal of spent nuclear fuel.
       Third, every nuclear power plant must “reserve the resources” necessary to physically protect the reactor cores and spent fuel pools from external threats that might breach the walls of the plant and/or the reactor containment vessels.
       The NRC states that it will be proactive with respect to the assessment of future risks that might arise outside of the current rule making process. This includes analyses of the need for additional improvements to nuclear power plants to deal with upgraded risk assessments for flooding and/or seismic events.