The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is a regional intergovernmental organization that is composed of ten Southeast Asian countries including Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam. It was founded to “promote intergovernmental cooperation and facilitates economic, political, security, military, educational, and sociocultural integration amongst its members, other Asian countries, and globally.”
        This last April, ASEAN Center for Energy (ACE) released a report titled Pre-Feasibility Study on the Establishment of Nuclear Power Plant in ASEAN. The government of Canada supported the work on the report through their Nuclear and Radiological Program Administrative Support (NPRAS) program. This report is the first time in recent years that ASEAN produced an official report that deals comprehensively with the current state of nuclear power development in its member state in the mid-term and long-term. There are three interesting developments mentioned in the report.
       First, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines will be in the vanguard to develop commercial nuclear power. Their status as leaders is based on the fact that they have more advanced legal and regulatory frameworks, actual nuclear power infrastructure, and existing organizational and human resources than the other five member nations. These are just a few of the nineteen criteria for nuclear infrastructure that are detailed in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Milestones Approach.
      Second, projecting current developments and progress in these five member states, it is estimated that there may be an operational civilian nuclear power plant in Indonesia by 2030 and a possible two more by 2035 located in Malaysia and Thailand. The Philippines and Vietnam have made nuclear power part of their long range planning for sources of power.
       Third, Malaysia was singled out as having the most “accomplished” approach to nuclear power because of the progress already made by their nuclear energy program implementation office (NEPIO). The the Malaysian Nuclear Power Corporation is the NEPIO for Malasia. The role of a nation’s NEIPO is to plan, coordinate and lead the implementation of a nuclear power program.
       Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar have not said that they would not consider nuclear power, but they have yet to commit any specific plans for necessary infrastructure development. All three have signed bilateral nuclear power cooperation agreements with Russia.
       Brunei and Singapore have no current plans for nuclear power projects. Singapore has committed significant resources to developing its capabilities in the areas of nuclear safety and science in its Nuclear Safety and Research Program.
       Interest in civilian nuclear power for Southeast Asia began after World War II with the arrival of the Atoms for Peace Program from the United States. One result has been the construction of reactors dedicated to research and medicine in Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Thailand.
       The development of a commercial civilian nuclear power reactor can take from ten to fifteen years to complete and cost from six to nine billion dollars. There are often construction delays in the nuclear industry which can raise the cost substantially. If there is strong political support and careful planning involving technical support from establish members of the nuclear industry, it should be possible to build a nuclear power plant on schedule and in budget. Unfortunately, the history of the nuclear industry does not necessarily support this.
      Public perception and acceptance is critical to the success of any nuclear power reactor project in ASEAN. The Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011 resulted in a public fear of nuclear power which must be overcome.
      In the end, a push for nuclear power in ASEAN would have to be based on a solid argument that other sources of energy are too expensive. Considering the rapid drop in prices for solar and wind energy, that may not be an easy sell.

Ambient office  = 109 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 97 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Bartlett pear from Central Market = 87 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 112 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 101 nanosieverts per hour

      The Competent Authorities under the Convention on Early Notification of a Nuclear Accident and the Convention on Assistance in the Case of a Nuclear Accident or Radiological Emergency had a convention in Vienna last week. The representatives to the Competent Authorities are selected by the eighty-five Member States to attend conferences to “carry out specific functions related to nuclear and radiological emergencies.” They are dedicated to continued information exchange as a way to improve emergency preparedness and response (EPR) arrangements. Meetings are held every two years to discuss experiences and challenges of enhancing EPR systems.
      One hundred and seventy Competent Authorities representatives and representatives from two other international organizations participated in the Vienna convention to carry out specific functions related to nuclear and radiological emergencies. They discussed the implementation of the conventions. They also discussed topics such as global information exchange, international assistance and public communication techniques.
      The Head of the Department of Nuclear Safety and Security for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) gave an opening address in Vienna. He said that such meetings helped to improve cooperation to ensure that national and international EPR capabilities and arrangements were efficient and prepared to supply effective responses to nuclear and radiological emergencies.
      The Director General of the Moroccan Agency on Nuclear and Radiological Safety and Security was the Chair of the Vienna meeting. He stressed that the IAEA Incident and Emergency Centre was very important in promoting and supporting the international EPR framework. He pointed out that the IAEA Centre played an important role in establishing safety standards and validating their relevant application. This is achieved through supporting information exchange and offering Emergency Preparedness Review Service and training. He said that, “Many challenges faced by each Member State are common challenges that we must work on together.”
      Lessons learned from a big IAEA international exercise held to simulate the global emergency response to an accident at a nuclear power plant were presented. Meeting participants discussed the importance of regular emergency exercises. They encouraged each other to invite the IAEA and neighboring nations to participate in future national emergency response exercises.
      Meeting participants stressed the importance of planning for communications in time of nuclear emergencies to ensure its effectiveness. There were also discussions about the fact that nations that have nuclear power plants need to have different emergency communications than nations that do not have nuclear power plants although there are also big overlaps in their communications as well. The increasing importance of social media in emergency communications was also discussed. The meeting participants called for strengthening of IAEA EPR tools such as Unified System for Information Exchange in Incidents and Emergencies (USIE), International Radiation Monitoring Information System (IRMIS) and the Emergency Preparedness and Response Information Management System (EPRIMS).
     The participants agreed that it was very important to harmonize national and regional preparedness arrangements during the preparation phase. They also specifically agreed that Part 7 of the IAEA General Safety Requirements was an excellent reference for such harmonization.

Ambient office  = 109 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 93 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Crimini mushroom from Central Market = 97 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 74 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 66 nanosieverts per hour

       The Ion Exchange for Nuclear Waste Treatment and for Recycling is a research group at the Department of Chemistry at the University of Helsinki. Recently, they have been working on materials that can be used to remove radioactive contamination from water.
       The material that they are investigating is electospun sodium titanate. Electrospinning is a way to produce fibers by using electric force to draw charged threads out of polymer solutions or polymer melts. The fibers produced are hundreds of nanometers in size. This process does not require the use of chemicals to coagulate the solution or high temperatures to produce solid threads from a solution.
       Synthetic sodium titanate is known to be a good material to use for the removal of strontium from water. It is produced and used in granular form in industrial quantities for treating radioactively contaminated waste water. The waste water at the Fukushima nuclear power plant is currently being decontaminated with granular sodium titanate
        Sodium titanate is employed in ion exchange systems. In ion exchange, water contaminated with ions of an unwanted material is run through a column full of ion exchange materials. In the remediation of strontium contaminated water, the sodium in the sodium titanate replaces the strontium ion which bonds to other opposite charged ions in the electrospun sodium titanate fibers which can then be removed from the water and disposed of.
        The benefit of using electrospun sodium titanate fibers is that the speed of the ion exchange process is faster than standard granular sodium titanate ion exchange and the electrospun sodium titanate is more efficient. Because less of the electrospun sodium titanate is needed than running the process with granular sodium titanate, the resulting volume of solid radioactive waste is smaller and more easily disposed of.
        The original ion exchange process was pioneered by Jukka Lehto and Risto Harjula from the University of Helsinki. The electrospinning equipment at the University of Helsinki was designed and built by the Centre for Excellence for Atomic Layer Deposition. The team leader was Mikko Ritala. It was a simple process to create electrospun sodium titanate with the equipment. The researchers tested the fibers that were produced and found that the ion exchange process using the fibers behaved in a chemically similar way to the process using granular sodium titanate.
       This is a major advancement in the treating of strontium contaminated waste water. Produced by a simple process, the electrospun sodium titanate is faster and more effective than the granular sodium titanate and it leaves less radioactive waste to be disposed of. Ultimately, it is a better and cheaper method of waste water remediation.
        With the huge volume of waste water stored at Fukushima and with more waste water being generated every day, this new better cheaper method of treating that water to remove strontium is a very welcome development. There are many bodies of water contaminated with strontium scatter around the world. It is difficult if not impossible to prevent this water from leaking out of its current location into ground water and surface water. There are many places where this new remediation method could be usefully applied.

Ambient office  = 109 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 97 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Carrot from Central Market = 87 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 112 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 101 nanosieverts per hour

       The Max Planck Institute of Plasma Physics is a German physics institute dedicated to the exploration of plasma physics for potential use in the creation of commercial fusion power reactors. It is an institute of the Max Planck Society and has two sites; one in Garching near Munich and one in Greifswald. It is host to several large experimental devices including the experimental tokamak ASDEX Upgrade, the experimental stellarator Wendelstein 7-AS, the experimental stellarator Wendelstein 7-X, and a tandem accelerator.
       It is designed to advance stellarator technology and evaluate the major components of a possible future fusion power reactor. As of 2015, it was the biggest stellarator in the world. The researchers are hoping to be able to demonstrate thirty minutes of continuous operations, a crucial milestone on the way to commercial fusion power. Earlier tests of the Wendelstein 7-X resulted in world records for highest temperature, greatest plasma density, longest pulses and fusion products.
       The term “fusion product” is the mathematical product of the temperature of a plasma, the density of the plasma and the energy confinement times. This product is a measure of how close a device is to achieving a nuclear fusion reaction. 
       A stellarator is a device that is designed to confine hot plasma with magnetic fields for the purpose of creating a controlled nuclear fusion reaction. In the toroidal fusion machines called tokamaks, instabilities develop in the donut shaped confinement chamber. The stellarator was designed to eliminate such instabilities by creating magnetic fields that force the particles traveling around the circular containment vessel to travel in twisted paths. The “magnetic cage” of the Wendelstein 7-X is created by a ring of fifty superconducting coils that are each about eleven and a half feet tall. Their exact shapes are the result of extensive optimization calculations.
       Since the previous round of tests, the Wendelstein 7-X has had the walls of its containment vessel covered in graphite tiles. This will permit higher temperatures and longer plasma discharges. Plasmas of up to twenty-six seconds are now being produced. The plasma can be fed with a heating energy of seventy-five megajoules which is almost eighteen times the heating energy that was possible before the new graphite wall tiles were installed.
      The latest fusion product for the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator encourages the researchers to believe that they are on the right track. Dr. Andreas Dinklage, the first author of the report on the new experiments said, “Thus, already during the first experimentation phase important aspects of the optimization could be verified. More exact and systematic evaluation will ensue in further experiments at much higher heating power and higher plasma pressure.”
      Since the end of 2017, the Wendelstein 7-X has received additional upgrades. New measuring equipment and heating systems have been added. Plasma experiments will begin again in July of this year. Major extensions are scheduled for the fall of 2018. The graphite wall tiles will be replaced by carbon-reinforced carbon components that are water-cooled.
       The Wendelstein 7-X is not designed to actually produce more energy than it consumes. Part of the reason for the new experiments is to prove that the stellarator approach can yield fusion products equal to or better than the tokamak approach to controlled nuclear fusion.