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.”
 

Ambient office  = 66 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 94 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 97 nanosieverts per hour

Currents from Central Market = 76 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 80 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 75 nanosieverts per hour

        Congress is considering a nuclear weapons budget that contains four hundred and fifty-eight million dollars more in 2019 than was allocated in 2018. The compromise funding bill that was released from a conference committee on Monday. The Department of Energy will receive forty-four billion six hundred million dollars according to the plan. Eleven Billion one hundred million dollars of the DoE allocation will go to the National Nuclear Security Administration which is a semiautonomous office in DoE with oversight over the U.S. stockpile of nuclear warheads.
       One billion nine hundred and twenty million dollars will be dedicated to funding life-extension programs for nuclear weapons. This supports the NNSA mission to sustain and upgrade U.S. nuclear weapons and their supporting infrastructure as called for in the latest Nuclear Posture Review from the Trump Administration. There are some remaining questions about whether and how the NNSA five major modernization programs will be funded in the future.
       The appropriation bill is considered by analysts to be a “win” for President Trump who wanted to expand the U.S. nuclear arsenal. He asked for a seventeen and a half percent increase in the NNSA above their funding for 2018.
       The bill includes sixty-five million dollars for the low-yield, submarine launched ballistic missile which has been controversial. This program involves the modification of the W76-1 warhead currently used on the U.S. Navy’s Trident II D5 ballistic missile into what will be referred to as the W76-2 warhead.
        The compromise bill retained the wording of the House version which required the NNSA to produce a report with details of the plan, rationale, costs and implications attached to the production of a low-yield version of the W76. The report will need to include estimation of the long-term maintenance costs of the program as well as possible impacts or program delays. Congress has not yet announced a compromise on the spending package that includes the Department of Defense’s request for twenty-two million six hundred thousand dollars in 2019 to complement the development work of the NNSA on the W76-2.
      The bill also requested reports on the cost of the IW-1 Life Extension Program, which is aimed at creating an warhead that is interoperable for different systems. Those costs will be compared to the cost of refurbishing the existing W78 warheads. There will also be other reports of costs associated with W78 program, A rough estimate must be sent to Congress within sixty days after the bill is signed into law with a full cost report due one hundred and eighty days after the bill is signed.
       The Nuclear Posture Review was released this February. It calls for the development of two new nuclear weapons and heavy investment in the infrastructure necessary to support the nuclear arsenal. A report by the Government Accountability Office last year warned that there were five major modernization program that will be underfunded in the plans for future years.
       If the Democrats take back control of the House in the coming mid-term elections, it could have a major impact on nuclear weapons funding. Adam Smith, a Democrat from Washington state said last week that nuclear weapons funding is the number one difference between the two political parties. He said, “I think that the Republican party and the Nuclear Posture Review contemplates a lot more nuclear weapons than I, and I think most Democrats, think we need. We also think that the idea of low-yield nuclear weapons are extremely problematic going forward and that when we look at the larger budget picture, that’s not the best place to spend the money.”
      The Congressional Budget Office estimated last year that the cost of U.S. nuclear forces over the next thirty years will be about one trillion two hundred billion dollars. Eight hundred billion dollars will be spent to operate and perform incremental upgrades. About four hundred billion dollars will be spent to modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

Ambient office  = 88 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 87 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 94 nanosieverts per hour

Mango from Central Market = 86 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 93 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 79 nanosieverts per hour