Ambient office = 93 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 93 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 92 nanosieverts per hour

Hierloom tomato from Central Market = 72 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 96 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 89 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient office = 111 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 83 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 83 nanosieverts per hour

Garlic from Central Market = 123 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 111 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient office = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 126 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 128 nanosieverts per hour

English cucumber from Central Market = 111 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 94 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 80 nanosieverts per hour

Dover Sole from Central = 90 nanosieverts per hour

     In their zeal to achieve a reduced carbon environment, Democrats have been promoting nuclear energy as a safe, clean energy source. Some states are moving as quickly as they can to reactivate idle reactors. In 2022, Congress passed the Inflation Relief Act (IRA) which contained a provision to provide thirty billion dollars for nuclear subsidies.
     Scandals involving bribery over nuclear energy have brought down high-level state officials and corporate executives in Ohio, Illinois and other places.
     In 2020, federal prosecutors presented charges against officials of Commonwealth Edison (ComEd), an Illinois company. They were charged with offering jobs and favors to friends of the Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives in exchange for a bill to bailout the company’s nuclear division.
     At about the same time, Ohio-based FirstEnergy executives were charged with paying sixty million dollars in bribes to state legislators.  Former Ohio Speaker of the House Larry Householder is currently serving a forty-seven-year prison sentence.
     Floodlight is a non-profit environmental news service. They published a piece in the liberal magazine Mother Jones that perfectly showcases the corruption in the nuclear industry. The article said, “Utility fraud and corruption—in Florida, Illinois, Mississippi, Ohio, and South Carolina—have cost electricity customers at least $6.6 billion, according to Floodlight’s analysis. Ratepayers have bankrolled nuclear plants that never got built, transmission systems that were over-engineered to beef up profits, and aging coal facilities that couldn’t compete with cheaper plants powered by methane, which the industry calls natural gas.”
     Before these scandals developed, and before Congress passed the Inflation Recovery Act, the nuclear industry had become so unpopular that it was a tempting target for political corruption.
     The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists said, “Changes in the economics of electricity markets are threatening the profitability of nuclear power plants, a shifting reality driving a demand for these financial bailouts. As the New Jersey-based energy company Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG) explained in October 2020, across the nation “nuclear plants continue to struggle economically to survive. Since 2018, three nuclear plants have closed in the eastern US, all for economic reasons, and the impact has had a ripple effect.”
     Over the past few years, the U.S. Justice Department and the courts have carried out their jobs in prosecuting and sentencing bad actors in the nuclear industry. Now, it is time for Congress to investigate the root causes of the corruption. Executives and experts from the nuclear industry must be brought before congressional committees to explain why their industry has been allowed to fall into corruption at the expense of the taxpayer and the consumer.
     Congress must fulfill its investigative role and discover why this corruption keeps happening.  The first witness called to testify should be the Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Granholm. She should inform members of the House and Senate why uncompetitive nuclear plants are being propped up. If they cannot compete, they should be shuttered.
     The head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) should be pressed to give a full accounting of all nuclear reactors in the U.S. This account should include how many are in working order.
     Former Ohio Speaker Larry Householder should be brought before the committee in his prison jumpsuit to explain why bribery was thought to be a solution to inefficient energy.
     State governors should be asked to explain their plans for providing energy to their states if a particular source is no longer viable.
     The list of those responsible for the growth of corruption in the nuclear industry is long.  However, more needs to be done than simply punishing the criminals.  Congress must take the lead in finding out why an unreliable and dangerous energy source is ripe for corruption.

Ambient office = 66 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 123 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 122 nanosieverts per hour

Blueberry from Central Market = 87 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 101 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 93 nanosieverts per hour

     Oil and gas producer Diamondback Energy Inc has signed a letter of intent (LoI) on a long-term power purchase agreement to use Oklo’s Aurora powerhouse reactors for its operations in the Permian Basin. Oklo has also signed a deal to supply up to five hundred megawatts of power to Equinix to serve its data centers in the U.S.
     The non-binding LoI with Diamondback outlines a proposed twenty-year power purchase agreement (PPA) focusing on using Aurora powerhouses to supply “reliable and emission-free electricity” to Diamondback’s operations in the Permian. According to the terms of the LoI, Oklo intends to license, construct, and operate powerhouse reactors capable of generating fifty megawatts of electric power to Diamondback E&P LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Diamondback near Midland, Texas.
     The LoI outlines options to renew and extend the potential power purchase agreement for an additional twenty-year term. Oklo’s powerhouse reactor designs are intended to be able to operate forty years. The company’s design-build-own-operate business model means potential customers like Diamondback can purchase power without complex ownership issues or other capital requirements, Oklo said.
Jacob DeWitte is the Diamondback CEO. He said, “By developing and providing a low-cost, high-reliability, and emission-free energy source, Oklo is poised to help meet the growing energy requirements of operators like Diamondback.”
     Oklo has also recently signed a LoI to provide up to five hundred megawatts of power to Equinix, according to an April 2nd filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission by AltC Acquisition Corp. The LoI was executed on the 16th of February. Oklo is in the process of merging with AltC as part of its plans to go public. The coming merger was announced in July 2023.
     The LoI confirms Equinix’s interest in buying power from Oklo’s powerhouses to serve its data centers in the U.S. for a twenty-year according to the filing notes. The power purchase agreements would be renewable for further twenty-year terms. Equinix has made a twenty-five-million-dollar prepayment to Oklo. The filing says it is Permitted Equity Financing. Under the LoI, Equinix would have a right of first refusal for one hundred to five hundred megawatts of output from certain powerhouses for up to thirty-six months.
     Oklo was founded in 2013. It plans to commercialize its liquid metal fast reactor technology in the Aurora ‘powerhouse’. The Aurora is a fast neutron reactor using heat pipes to transport heat from the reactor core to a supercritical carbon dioxide power conversion system to generate electricity. Oklo has received a site use permit from the U.S. Department of Energy for a prototype unit to be constructed at the Idaho National Laboratory.
     In August of 2023, the U.S. Department of the Air Force, in partnership with the Defense Logistics Agency Energy, selected Oklo to site, design, build, own and operate a microreactor facility to deliver electricity and steam at the Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska. Subsequently, Eielson rescinded its Notice of Intent to Award pending the completion of further due diligence and a review of the vendor selection process by the Department of Justice. According to an update on the project issued in January of this year, the Department of the Air Force has said it still intends to meet the 2027 timeline for the project.