The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has released a regulatory analysis of the regulatory basis supporting a “rulemaking” to change the NRC’s decommissioning of nuclear power reactors. The NRC has multiple goals for changes to the current regulations. First, they want to make the decommissioning process more efficient. Second, they want to reduce the need for granting exemptions to existing regulations. Third, they are going to consider other decommissioning issues that are identified as relevant by the NRC staff. Fourth, they want to support the principles of good regulation, including openness, clarity, and reliability.
        The NRC is recommending rule making in the areas of “emergency planning, physical security, cyber security, drug and alcohol testing, training requirements for certified fuel handlers, decommissioning trust funds, applicability of backfitting provisions, and offsite and onsite financial protection requirements and indemnity agreements.”
        The revised regulations would “formalize steps to transition a power reactor from operating status to decommissioning while reducing the need for exemptions and license amendments.” There are also recommendations to clarify requirements regarding topics such as spent fuel management and environmental reporting.
        In addition to the recommendations for rule making, there are also updates for guidance that deals with aging management, the proper roles for State and local governments in the decommissioning process, the level of NRC review of a Post-Shutdown Decommissioning Activities Report, the options that exist for decommissioning and the schedule for decommissioning.
        The regulatory analysis was carried out in order to assess the economic impact on the nuclear industry, government and society that would be the result of the rule making and guidance contemplated by the NRC. The NRC staff laid out the various decommissioning alternatives and discussed the cost benefit analysis. The conclusion is that the staff recommendations for rule making and guidance development is ultimately cost beneficial to the nuclear industry, government and society.
       Four Democratic sent a letter to the NRC warning that the new rulemaking and guidance updates could pose a threat to safety, security and emergency preparedness with respect to decommissioning nuclear power plants.
       Senator Ed Markey, a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee and one of the four authors of the letter, said “We need a decommissioning rule that acts as a plan for addressing the myriad difficult issues, including the challenges posed by climate change like rising sea levels, that communities will face as nuclear power plants across the country prepare to shut down. The challenge of decommissioning Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant in a safe and expeditious manner would only be greater because of this draft rule.”
       “This is a missed opportunity to put down a marker for smarter decommissioning, and I urge the Commission to strengthen this draft rule to ensure safety not expediency is paramount. I will be following up with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to understand why key provisions requested by the public are missing from this proposed decommissioning rule.”
       Earlier this year, Senators Ed Markley, Kamala D. Harris, Bernie Sanders and Kirsten Gillibrand co-sponsored legislation to “…improve the safety and security of decommissioning reactors and the storage of spent nuclear fuel at nuclear plants across the nation.” Markley has also introduced the Dry Cask Storage Act. This legislation would require that every nuclear reactor operator comply with an NRC-approve plan that requires that the spent nuclear fuel at a decommissioned plant be safely removed and placed in dry casks storage within seven years of the time that the decommissioning plan was submitted to the NRC.

       Radioactive isotopes are used in many medical diagnostic and treatment procedures. In recent years, there have been problems with the production and distribution of radioisotopes used to treat cancer. New technologies are being developed for the production of medical radioisotopes. Now a new process for producing pure radium for cancer treatment is under development.
       Radium is a chemical element with the symbol Ra and an atomic number of eighty-eight. It is an alkaline earth metal. All the isotopes of radium are highly radioactive with the most stable isotope being radium-226. It has a half-life sixteen hundred years and it decays into radon-226 gas. Radium is found in trace amounts in natural deposits of uranium and thorium. It is not a necessary element for living systems and can damage health when incorporated into biochemical processes. The only commercial use for radium is in nuclear medicine. The global production of radium is about five pounds per year.
       Radium is a radioelement that tends to wind up in the bones of living creatures. The most important element in the bone mineral hydroxyapatite is calcium. Radium is similar to calcium, so it can replace the calcium in hydroxyapatite. It accumulates in rapidly proliferating cancel cells in bone metastases. Once it has been incorporated into the cancer cells, the alpha particles emitted by the radium cause the death of the cancer cells.
        Radium-223 was the first alpha emitting isotope that was approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of cancer. Two other radium isotopes, radium-224 and radium-225, are used in preclinical research. The researchers at Los Alamos created a new method for automatically recovering such radioisotopes from targets of irradiated thorium.
        There are huge deposits of thorium around the world which are largely unexploited. There has been research into thorium as a possible nuclear fuel since the 1950 but there are no operational thorium power reactors in the world. However, this may change because thorium research has been accelerating lately, especially in India which has huge deposits of thorium.
       Researchers from the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Isotope Team worked with collaborators from Brookhaven National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory to develop a new industrial process for creating pure radium. The new radium recovery process begins with a solution made by bombarding thorium with radiation and then dissolving the thorium target. The solution is then fed into a series of columns. Each column contains a different substrate that binds to a different isotope. The research in aimed at scaling up the thorium targets so that dozens of treatment doses of radium can be produced by a single production run of the new system.
       Hundreds of millicuries of radium can be recovered in large quantities with high purity with the new method. In addition, other isotopes used in medical therapy can also be recovered in the same production run. All three of the radium isotopes mentioned above are produced by the new method. They are used in chemistry applications and treatment regimes. Radium-225 decays into actinium-225 which produces pure actinium-225 for use in clinical applications.

Ambient office  = 87 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 82 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 83 nanosieverts per hour

Jalepano pepper from Central Market = 73 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 77 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 64 nanosieverts per hour

       With the antagonism for NATO and the European Union being expressed by the U.S. President, the NATO members who do not have nuclear weapons are coming to doubt the reliability of the U.S. in coming to their aid if attacked by a nuclear armed enemy such as Russia. The U.S. President himself has even suggested that in addition to increased defense spending, some non-nuclear nations might consider getting their own nuclear weapons. This flies in the face of international attempts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.
       Since the end of World War II, the Protocol of the Treaty of Brussels has forbidden Germany to have nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. Now a prominent German political scientist named Christian Hacke has suggested that Germany does need to have nuclear weapons in order to deal with current international tensions.
       Hacke recently published an opinion piece that said, “National defense on the basis of a nuclear deterrent must be given priority in light of new transatlantic uncertainties and potential confrontations. “Since the American nuclear guarantee has become doubtful and presumably no European deterrent variable seems feasible, the conclusion follows that in extreme cases, Germany can only rely on itself. Germany can no longer rely 100 percent on the fact that an allied nuclear power would intervene atomically for its security in an emergency. With that, the gaze is turned to the white elephant in the room, about which nobody wants to speak in Germany. How do we think about a potential nuclear power Germany?”
       Irike Franke is an analyst for the European Council on Foreign Relations. He recently expressed a belief that it was “crucial” for Germany to have a debate over nuclear weapons. He said, “What Germany is slowly realizing is that the general structure of the European security system is not prepared for the future.
      Germany started two world wars in the Twentieth Century and the world is still divide on the idea of Germany acquiring the most power weapons in the world. They certainly have the technical and industrial mean to develop and test nuclear weapons if they choose to. The U.K. has nuclear weapons and they are leaving the European Union. France has nuclear weapons and there are French politicians who would like to leave the E.U. behind. Spain, Greece and Italy have growing movements which would like to see the end of the E.U.
       If the E.U. collapses, the countries of Europe might return to the adversarial positions that led to two world wars. In addition, Russia has been aggressively brandishing it nuclear arsenal in order to intimidate the countries of Europe. Russia and Germany are old enemies and there are wounds on both sides left by World War II have never hears.
       In the increasingly unstable and contentious international atmosphere, German politicians would be remiss in their duties not to consider a future in which Germany might have to face a nuclear armed Russia alone. It would only make sense for them to be thinking about their own nuclear arsenal.

Ambient office  = 84 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 63 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 66 nanosieverts per hour

Roma tomato from Central Market = 63 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 105 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 98 nanosieverts per hour