A New Way To Remove Contaminants From Nuclear Wastewater

Nuclear Power Plant, Cooling Tower, Sunrise, Mood

Nuclear power continues to expand globally, propelled, in part, by the fact that it produces few greenhouse gas emissions while providing steady power output. But along with that expansion comes an increased need for dealing with the large volumes of water used for cooling these plants, which becomes contaminated with radioactive isotopes that require special long-term disposal.

Now, a method developed at MIT provides a way of substantially reducing the volume of contaminated water that needs to be disposed of, instead concentrating the contaminants and allowing the rest of the water to be recycled through the plant’s cooling system. The proposed system is described in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, in a paper by graduate student Mohammad Alkhadra, professor of chemical engineering Martin Bazant, and three others.
The method makes use of a process called shock electrodialysis, which uses an electric field to generate a deionization shock wave in the water. The shock wave pushes the electrically charged particles, or ions, to one side of a tube filled with charged porous material, so that concentrated stream of contaminants can be separated out from the rest of the water. The group discovered that two radionuclide contaminants — isotopes of cobalt and cesium — can be selectively removed from water that also contains boric acid and lithium. After the water stream is cleansed of its cobalt and cesium contaminants, it can be reused in the reactor.
The shock electrodialysis process was initially developed by Bazant and his co-workers as a general method of removing salt from water, as demonstrated in their first scalable prototype four years ago. Now, the team has focused on this more specific application, which could help improve the economics and environmental impact of working nuclear power plants. In ongoing research, they are also continuing to develop a system for removing other contaminants, including lead, from drinking water.
Not only is the new system inexpensive and scalable to large sizes, but in principle it also can deal with a wide range of contaminants, Bazant says. “It’s a single device that can perform a whole range of separations for any specific application,” he says.
In their earlier desalination work, the researchers used measurements of the water’s electrical conductivity to determine how much salt was removed. In the years since then, the team has developed other methods for detecting and quantifying the details of what’s in the concentrated radioactive waste and the cleaned water.
“We carefully measure the composition of all the stuff going in and out,” says Bazant, who is the E.G. Roos Professor of Chemical Engineering as well as a professor of mathematics. “This really opened up a new direction for our research.” They began to focus on separation processes that would be useful for health reasons or that would result in concentrating material that has high value, either for reuse or to offset disposal costs.
The method they developed works for sea water desalination, but it is a relatively energy-intensive process for that application. The energy cost is dramatically lower when the method is used for ion-selective separations from dilute streams such as nuclear plant cooling water. For this application, which also requires expensive disposal, the method makes economic sense, he says. It also hits both of the team’s targets: dealing with high-value materials and helping to safeguard health. The scale of the application is also significant — a single large nuclear plant can circulate about 10 million cubic meters of water per year through its cooling system, Alkhadra says.
For their tests of the system, the researchers used simulated nuclear wastewater based on a recipe provided by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which sponsored the research and is a major builder of nuclear plants. In the team’s tests, after a three-stage separation process, they were able to remove 99.5 percent of the cobalt radionuclides in the water while retaining about 43 percent of the water in cleaned-up form so that it could be reused. As much as two-thirds of the water can be reused if the cleanup level is cut back to 98.3 percent of the contaminants removed, the team found.
While the overall method has many potential applications, the nuclear wastewater separation, is “one of the first problems we think we can solve [with this method] that no other solution exists for,” Bazant says. No other practical, continuous, economic method has been found for separating out the radioactive isotopes of cobalt and cesium, the two major contaminants of nuclear wastewater, he adds.
While the method could be used for routine cleanup, it could also make a big difference in dealing with more extreme cases, such as the millions of gallons of contaminated water at the damaged Fukushima Daichi power plant in Japan, where the accumulation of that contaminated water has threatened to overpower the containment systems designed to prevent it from leaking out into the adjacent Pacific. While the new system has so far only been tested at much smaller scales, Bazant says that such large-scale decontamination systems based on this method might be possible “within a few years.”
The research team also included MIT postdocs Kameron Conforti and Tao Gao and graduate student Huanhuan Tian.

Indian Forest Expanded by in Last 2 years

Environmental Protection, Nature Conservation, Ecology
The forest and tree cover in India risen by 5,188 square kilometers in the last two years. Karnataka is growing the maximum protection of 1,025 sq km. There is an increase of 3,976 sq. Km (0.56 percent) of forest cover and 1,212 sq. Km (1.29 percent) of tree cover compared to the 2017 report.
Different States – Forest 
The three states in terms of forest cover are KarnatakaAndhra Pradesh, and KeralaKarnataka grew the maximum forest-and-tree protection at 1,025 sq km, Andhra Pradesh grew a 990-sq. Km cover and an 823-sq.km of forest cover created by Kerala in the last two years. Two other states followed are Jammu and Kashmir, which grew a 371-sq. Km forest cover, and Himachal Pradesh. The current assessment shows an increase of 544 sq. Km (0.19 percent) in 140 hill districts of the country. The forest data of Jammu and Kashmir, recorded through satellite imaging, covers areas outside LoC that are under the illegal occupation of Pakistan and China. The north-east did not show positive results as the current assessment showed a decrease of forest cover to the extent of 765 sq. Km (0.45 percent) in the region. The total forest cover of India is 7,12,249 sq. Km is 21.67 percent of the geographical area of the country. The tree cover of the country is estimated at 95,027 sq. Km, which is 2.89 percent of the geographic area. India on track to achieve its climate goal of creating an additional carbon sink of 2.5-3 billion tonnes under the Paris Agreement.

Lost Mobile Phone Tracker Portal CEIR

Selfie, Mobile, Phone, Portrait, Hood, Hoodie
CEIR lost mobile phone tracker portal: The Central Equipment Identity Register portal for blocking stolen mobiles will now be available to users in Delhi NCR and help them with lost or stolen mobiles or smartphones.
If you have lost your smartphone or mobile phone, there is now an official government portal to help you block the use of the device, and get some peace of mind. The Central Equipment Identity Register or CEIR, which was launched for Mumbai in September 2019, is now officially open for those residing in Delhi-NCR region.
The idea is that if your mobile gets stolen or lost, you will be able to take some steps on this website in order to ensure that it is blocked. So someone else who stole the mobile or perhaps found it, will be unable to use it. The facility will be extended to other parts of the country in 2020, according to reports. it relies on the International Mobile Equipment Identity or IMEI number to help with tracking. Do keep in mind that one has to file a First Information Report (FIR) after the device is lost or stolen, in order to carry out the steps.
First, they have to submit an FIR with the police about their smartphone or mobile being lost or stolen. A copy of that report should be kept by the concerned user as this will be required for filling up the form on the website eventually. Users should also get their duplicate SIM card from the telecom service provider.
The form requires your primary mobile phone number, and the second one as well if you have one. If you have a dual-SIM phone, you will have to enter the IMEI  number for both as well. You can check the IMEI number from the retail box of the device if you still have it.
IMEI number can be checked from the mobile by dialing *#06# from your device. It is best to note down the number someplace safe for future, in case you do lose the mobile and you don’t have the retail box.

World Biggest Air Purifier

An experimental tower over 100 metres (328 feet) high in northern China – dubbed the world’s biggest air purifier by its operators – has brought a noticeable improvement in air quality, according to the scientist leading the project, as authorities seek ways to tackle the nation’s chronic smog problem.
The tower has been built in Xian in Shaanxi province and is undergoing testing by researchers at the Institute of Earth Environment at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The head of the research, Cao Junji, said improvements in air quality had been observed over an area of 10 square kilometres (3.86 square miles) in the city over the past few months and the tower has managed to produce more than 10 million cubic metres (353 million cubic feet) of clean air a day since its launch. Cao added that on severely polluted days the tower was able to reduce smog close to moderate levels.