Ambient office  =116 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside =89 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 88 nanosieverts per hour

Zuccini from Central Market = 97 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 20 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 115 nanosieverts per hour

Dover sole – Caught in USA = 75 anosieverts per hour

      The Russian Mining and Chemical Combine (MCC) was established in 1950 in Russia to produce plutonium for the Soviet Union nuclear arsenal. It is located in the city of Zheleznogorsk, Krasnoyarsk Krai. The company is currently part of the Rosatom group, the national nuclear company of Russia.
      Some cities in the old Soviet Union where development and production of weapons and other important and sensitive technologies were carried out were referred to as “closed” cities where travel was severely restricted, and security was very tight. Zheleznogorsk was one of these closed cities. These closed cities did not even appear on any official Soviet maps. In 1992, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, President Boris Yeltsin decreed that these closed would now be added to official Russian maps and that their historic names could now be used. During the Soviet Era, Zheleznogorsk was referred to by such slang names as Soctown, Iron City, the Nine, and Atom Town.
      The MCC said this week that it had just completed the next stage in the development of a nuclear battery. The new battery is what is called a beta battery which means that it is energized by the emission of highly energetic electrons from the decay of nickel-63 (NI-63). They claim that this battery would produce electricity for over fifty years.
      The MCC said “Conversion of the working gas enriched for a Ni-63 to a form suitable for drawing on the semiconductor converter has been established. At the moment the delivery of the appropriate components for the deposition of Ni-63 and the final assembly of a prototype atomic battery is expected. The new converter design qualitatively increases the efficiency of all components.”
      The MCC is acting as a system integrator for the new nuclear battery project. One important aspect of the project is procuring highly enriched NI-63 isotope. Another is the creation of a special structure for a semiconductor converter which changes the output of the isotope battery to a form suitable for use in electronic equipment.
      The MCC had to create a number of different technologies in order to create the battery. They had to produce the necessary reagents to generate a working gas from NI-63 which could be fed to centrifuges. They had to restart the Electrochemical Plant to put a cascade of centrifuges into operation. Then they had to convert the NI-63 rich gas for deposition onto semiconductor material. The new technologies that had to be developed to the production chain for the isotope are protected by ten patents.
       The technologies permit miniaturization of power sources for miniature devices used in cybernetics and artificial intelligence. It is hoped that it may aid the development of artificial neurons that could be used to imitate processes in the human brain. The new power sources should not be seen as replacement for lithium batteries. The MCC believes that the new type of devices that they are working on will become the foundation for a whole new architecture of electronic devices.

Ambient office  = 92 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 75 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 75 nanosieverts per hour

Red onion from Central Market = 95 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 78 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 71 nanosieverts per hour

       When we talk about commercial nuclear power reactors, it is usually in the context of generating electricity to feed the national grid. Nuclear plants generate heat which is converted to steam to generate the electricity. There are direct uses for that heat that do not require conversion to electricity. The heat could be used to desalinate seawater, produce hydrogen for heavy industry, decarbonize the transport sector and supply heat for use in residential and commercial applications.
       Last week, the16th Dialogue Forum of the IAEA’s International Project for Innovative Nuclear Reactors and Fuel Cycles (INPRO), was held in Vienna, Austria.  Sixty people from thirty-three countries discussed some benefits of nuclear cogeneration as well as technical challenges. Some of those attending presented current cogeneration projects and others presented plans for countries that are just starting their nuclear programs. One piece of advice at the meeting was that countries that were just ramping up a nuclear program should include plans for cogeneration from the very beginning.
        Mikhail Chudakov is the IAEA Deputy Director General and Head of the Department of Nuclear Energy. He said, “Nuclear cogeneration is very important, particularly if nuclear power is to expand much more broadly in energy markets to meet the need for clean and sustainable energy, while helping to mitigate climate change through avoidance of carbon emissions.”
       There have been cogeneration projects at some nuclear power plants since the 1960s. Because of economic and regulatory reasons, cogeneration never took off commercially. There have been significant changes in technology and regulations that have improved the conditions significantly.
       Cogeneration offers other benefits for the nuclear industry. It could provide more flexibility for the production of electricity by being able to switch between electricity and heat as electricity demand rises and falls. Another important application is removing salt from seawater, so it can be used for residential and commercial needs.
     Juergen Kupitz was a Co-Chair of the 16th Dialogue Forum. He is an industry expert from Germany. He said, “This could substantially increase the fresh water supply in many regions and thus contribute to development and increased standard of living. Water, energy and a healthy environment are basic life support systems.” 
      The market in heat is bigger than the market for electricity. However, while electricity can be sent to sites remote from the location of the generators, heat demand and use takes place in scattered local markets.
       Commercialization of cogeneration at nuclear power plants is impeded by several challenges. The biggest challenge lies in the economics of the heat market. There are also problems in the absence of political commitment to cogeneration. There is low public acceptance for nuclear cogeneration as well.
       It would be helpful to the cogeneration movement for there to be demonstration plants that possible customers could actually see in operation. However, it is difficult for nuclear power plants to make such a huge commitment on a demo cogeneration system unless they have a committed customer for the heat.
       Some potential non-electric applications of nuclear energy may require obtaining specials licenses, new regulations and approval of national regulatory agencies. Nuclear power plants that intend to use cogeneration to sell heat might need to apply for special licenses.
        Critical to the prospects for commercial cogeneration is the availability of technicians with specific expertise to operate such plants. The lack of such human resources is another barrier for the spread of cogeneration.
         Xin Yan was a Co-Chair of the 16th Dialogue Forum from the Japan Atomic Energy Agency who summed up some cogeneration challenges. He said, “First, we need to learn from other conventional industries who have been successful in forming alliances. This is happening already on a smaller scale, as the Republic of Korea and Saudi Arabia have joined forces to develop an SMR for desalination and cogeneration in the Middle East. Second, the IAEA is the best international body to help guide Member States to develop non-electric applications and should play a larger role in increasing public awareness. And thirdly, nuclear newcomer countries should make use of available tools, such as those offered by the IAEA, to understand non-electric applications, to help them in their economic development and to understand the technical challenges.”

Ambient office  = 104 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 93 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 96 nanosieverts per hour

Bannana from Central Market = 87 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 144 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 135 nanosieverts per hour

       I thought it was time to revisit the idea of using thorium as a fuel for nuclear power reactors. India is interested in thorium fuel because it has a lot of thorium and little uranium.
       One selling point for thorium is the idea that you cannot use thorium reactors to create materials for nuclear bombs. In 2005, the International Atomic Energy Agency stated that “Thorium-based fuels and fuel cycles have intrinsic proliferation resistance.”  Simply put, this is just not true. The most abundant isotope of thorium is Th-232 which can be bombarded with neutrons to produce protactinium 233. Ph-233 naturally decays to uranium 233 which is highly radioactive and can be used for nuclear weapons production. U-233 allows simpler nuclear bombs to be created with less materials than U-235. It is possible to build molten salt breeder reactors that use thorium as a fuel and produce U-233 in a continuous process.
       While it is true that thorium does not need to be enriched to be used in a reactor, it is also true that thorium is not fissile. In order to be used in a reactor, thorium must be primed with a neutron producing materials such as plutonium. If the reactor is a breeder reactor, it can eventually produce more radioactive materials than it burns and will not require further inputs of radioactive materials.
       
      Another supposed advantage of thorium is that there is more thorium in the crust of the Earth than there is uranium. While this is true, there is vastly more uranium in the ocean than thorium. Scientists are on the brink of extracting uranium from sea water at a cost near that of mining uranium without all the environmental problems. (India also have a very long coastline with the ocean and would be able to extract uranium.)
      It is often claimed that the waste produced by a thorium reactor is not as nasty as that produced by a conventional uranium fueled power reactor. A thorium reactor produces fewer transuranic elements which have half lives in the ten thousand years and beyond. But there are fast breeder reactors fueled by uranium and plutonium which also produce fewer transuranics, so this is not unique to thorium reactors.
       A concern about waste from thorium reactors is that it contains U-232. U-232 emits powerful abundant gamma rays which are very dangerous making the spent fuel more difficult to handle. This means that more shielding is required which raised the cost of thorium fuel handling and/or reprocessing.
     Thorium reactors have been a subject of research for seventy years. Not one commercial thorium reactor has ever been built. It will take a decade or more to license, construct and turn on the prototype of a thorium reactor. Then it would need to be tested for more years to better understand the impact of the conditions in the reactor on the materials that it is constructed from.
       With the cost of new renewable power plants dropping below the cost of conventional nuclear power plants, there is just no good economic reason to develop thorium power plants. The development of a thorium power plant would require massive government subsidies that could be much better spent advancing the technologies required by renewable power plants.