Ambient office  = 115 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 119 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 121 nanosieverts per hour

Blueberry from Central Market = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 91 nanosieverts per hour

Part 1 of 3 Parts
      Mikhail Chudakov is the head of the World Nuclear Association nuclear energy department. At the World Nuclear Association Symposium 2018 held in London last week, Chudakov said that the nuclear industry needs to change public acceptance for nuclear power to public demand for nuclear power which he claims is a safe, reliable, sustainable and low-carbon source of electricity. Readers of this blog will know that I take exception to all of these claims.
       Chudakov said, “We know the challenges: World energy consumption is expected to grow at an annual growth rate of about 1%, but electricity consumption will grow at a higher rate of about 2.5% per year up to 2030 and around 2% thereafter. With virtually no greenhouse gas emissions during operation, nuclear power can have an important role to play in achieving [the United Nation’s] Sustainable Development Goals, meeting the targets set out in the Paris Agreement.”
       He went on to point out that the challenge of limiting global temperature increase to two degrees will not be easy. Seventy percent of the world’s electricity currently comes from the burning of fossil fuels. To hold down the rise in temperature, it will be necessary for eighty percent of global electricity to be derived from low-carbon sources by 2030. In order to accomplish this, all low-carbon sources will have to be scaled up.
       He said, “If nuclear power deployment doesn’t grow in line with this scenario, the other technologies will not make up the gap. And we will not meet our climate targets that are critical to life on this planet.”
        The existing projections of the International Atomic Energy Agency suggest that a best case for use of nuclear energy would require that it be increased by thirty percent over 2017 levels by 2030 and then increased by ninety percent by 2050. In a low case projection, nuclear energy would decline until 2040 and then rebound back to the 2030 level by 2050. The best case would see nuclear energy rising to about six percent of global electricity generation by 2050 and the low case would reach three percent of global electricity generation by 2050. The new projections from the IAEA have not yet been published but they suggest that the numbers would be two point eight percent for the low case and five point six percent for the best case by 2050.
       The nuclear industry has announced the Harmony goal of adding one thousand gigawatts of new nuclear power to the global grid by 2050. This would have nuclear energy accounting for twenty five percent of global electricity generation. Chudakov said: “Last year’s high case was 700 Giga Watts. Where is the 1000 Giga Watts plus of new capacity? We can’t see it. Where is our 25% of electricity production by 2050? We are already losing the battle and we will be responsible for this. This should be a big wake up call for all of us.”
       Chudakov also provided notes along with his verbal presentation. In the notes, he said, “the early retirement or lack of interest in extending the operating life of nuclear power plants in some countries, due to the reduced competitiveness of nuclear power in the short run and nuclear policies in several countries following the accident at Fukushima Daiichi in 2011”. His notes added: “We are still looking into a heavy new build schedule to replace the large figure of capacity that will go away due to retiring reactors.”
Please read Part 2

Ambient office  = 136 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 97 nanosieverts per hour

Crimini mushroom from Central Market = 116 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 128 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 109 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient office  = 116 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 109 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 117 nanosieverts per hour

Mango from Central Market = 150 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 63 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 57 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient office  = 105 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 93 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 108 nanosieverts per hour

Peach from Central Market = 95 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 101 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 95 nanosieverts per hour

Halibut – Caught in USA = 115 nanosieverts per hour

       One of the biggest problems confronting nuclear fusion research is how to maintain a stable plasma while the fusion reaction is taking place. The tokomak fusion reactor design features a donut shaped containment vessel that uses magnetic fields to corral the hot dense plasma. A great deal of research is being carried out on how best to arrange the magnetic fields to prevent instabilities.
       If instabilities develop in the plasma, then the plasma may touch to sides of the containment vessel causing damage to the walls of the vessel. This is caused by “edge localized modes” (ELMs) which are flares-like bursts of plasma. 
        In order to prevent ELMs, scientists have developed technology to produce resonant magnetic perturbations (RMPs). RMPs are small magnetic ripples that are introduced into the donut-shaped ring of plasma in the tokamak. These ripples distort the smooth donut of plasma and release excess pressure. This can reduce or eliminate the ELMs. The most difficult part of this solution is causing just the right amount of distortion to remove ELMs while not causing other types instabilities. If the RMPs release too much energy, it can cause a major disruption in the plasma and stop the fusion reaction.
       There are virtually infinite ways in which the plasma in a tokamak may be perturbed by applied magnetic fields. The challenge has been to find exactly the correct perturbations needed to eliminate ELMs without causing other problems. This problem has now been solved.
      Jong-Kyu Park is a physicist who works at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Laboratory. He is collaborating with teams from the U.S and the National Fusion Research Institute of South Korea. This group has successfully predicted all of the best 3-D magnetic distortion patterns for controlling ELMs which do not cause other problems. The group used the Korean Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) facility to validate their predictions. The KSTAR is one of the most advanced superconducting tokamaks in the world.
        The KSTAR was used for validation because it has advanced magnetic systems for precisely controlling distortions in the plasma. The best distortion patterns account for less than one percent of the possible patterns. Identifying the best patterns would have been impossible without the new model developed by Park and his associates.
        Park published a paper in Nature Physics along with fourteen other coauthors. He said, “the result was a precedent-setting achievement. We show for the first time the full 3-D field operating window in a tokamak to suppress ELMs without stirring up core instabilities or excessively degrading confinement. For a long time we thought it would be too computationally difficult to identify all beneficial symmetry-breaking fields, but our work now demonstrates a simple procedure to identify the set of all such configurations.”
       Park and his associates were able to significantly reduce the complexity of calculations for their breakthrough when they realized that the number of types of plasma perturbations were far fewer than the number perturbations. They worked back from the type of perturbations that they wanted to the exact 3-D field patterns that would produce them for the elimination of ELMs.
       The validation of the proper patterns which eliminate ELMs will be useful in the design of the ITER, the international tokamak project being constructed in France. The control of ELMs will be critical for the completion of ITER as it attempts to produce ten times as much energy as is required to heat its plasma. The authors of the paper in Nature Physics said, “the method and principle adopted in this study can substantially improve the efficiency and fidelity of the complicated 3-D optimizing process in tokamaks.”