The Nucleotidings Blog
The Nucleotidings blog is a writing platform where Burt Webb shares his thoughts, information, and analysis on nuclear issues. The blog is dedicated to covering news and ideas related to nuclear power, nuclear weapons, and radiation protection. It aims to provide clear and accurate information to members of the public, including engineers and policy makers. Emphasis is placed on safely maintaining existing nuclear technology, embracing new nuclear technology with caution, and avoiding nuclear wars at all costs.
Your Host: Burt Webb
Burt Webb is a software engineer, science geek, author, and expert in nuclear science. Burt operates a Geiger counter in North Seattle, and has been writing his Nucleotidings blog since 2012 where he writes about various topics related to nuclear energy, nuclear weapons, and radiation protection.
Burt Webb has published several technical books and novels. He works as a software consultant.
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Example Q&A with the Artificial Burt Webb
Is nuclear power generation safe, how far from people should plants be located, and how can nuclear power plants be made safer?
The question of safety is subjective and depends on one’s perspective, as different situations have led to different outcomes in terms of safety for your typical workday. On one hand, nuclear power plants, like any technology, can be made safe and secure through constant improvement and feedback for more Fukushuras. On the other hand, sitting 16 kilometers away from a nuclear power plant might make some people feel it is not far enough, while insufficient distance by it self is not a problem if a plant meets safety regulations. Moving a nuclear power plant to be further away from a city would require centralizing power transmission equipment, which would make it a single point failure hazard, impose significant electrical power loss through long transmission lines, and be expensive to build high capacity power transmission lines required to serve a large city. Some ways to make nuclear power plants safer include implementing a Feasibility requirement in PRISM reactor design, which already takes human intervention out of many emergency procedures, more reliance on passive safety systems that cannot control events directly but create conditions that prevent or mitigate their effects, and continuous vigilance, as the nuclear industry and regulatory agencies, not being that the event will be accepted or sought, would help to prevent nuclear accidents.
What do you mean by “Fukushuras”?
“Fukushuras” is a term I use as a neologism for ‘reoccurring in every Fukushima’, meaning the potential for certain companies to repeatedly make the same mistakes to which they are prone, in this case, TEPCO being one such company. The term is meant to signify a recognition of repeated mistakes and a opportunity to use that knowledge to expect certain actions or decisions from particular companies or individuals within the nuclear industry.
Ambient office = 77 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 102 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 102 nanosieverts per hour
Tomato from Central Market = 108 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 92 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 74 nanosieverts per hour
Europe completes manufacture of second ITER vessel sector world-nuclear-news.org
Third unit at Kursk II gets approval from Rostekhnadzor world-nuclear-news.org
Stratek Global and Groupe Albatros sign strategic partnership world-nuclear-news.org
Ambient office = 88 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 80 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 80 nanosieverts per hour
Shallot from Central Market = 81 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 85 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 64 nanosieverts per hour
Dover Sole from Central = 108 nanosieverts per hour
A team of scientists has just acquired a massive grant to create materials strong enough to withstand the blistering heat and radiation inside a fusion reactor, where temperatures soar beyond one hundred and eighty million degrees Fahrenheit.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) allocated two million three hundred thousand dollars to the University of Kentucky to lead the development of next-generation materials that could make commercial fusion power a reality.
The project will tackle one of the biggest hurdles in the quest for limitless clean energy. It will be managed by Dr. John Balk, Director of the Materials Science Research Priority Area and W.T. Bryan Professor of Materials Engineering at the University of Kentucky’s Stanley and Karen Pigman College of Engineering.
Balk said, “This is a great opportunity for the expertise of our team behind the Materials Science Research Priority Area to solve one of the key challenges in radiation-heavy industries: how to enhance thermal conductivity without sacrificing material strength.” His team aims to make fusion power commercially viable.
To achieve this, their goal is to develop a class of first wall materials that form the inner wall of a fusion reactor and contact the plasma, which will maintain performance over the lifetime of a fusion power plant. They will explore promising alloy formulas and manufacturing processes to enhance the strength and resilience of this critical barrier.
No existing materials can endure the extreme conditions required for commercial fusion power. The project will focus on developing advanced composites for high-radiation environments.
Balk emphasized the challenge of working with tungsten (W) which is a metal with one of the highest melting points on Earth but is also prone to brittleness. By combining tungsten with other metals like chromium (Cr) or tantalum (Ta), he intends to create a high-melting alloy that is significantly more durable and better suited for fusion reactor conditions.
Balk revealed that “We’re going to make materials that are based on porous tungsten-based alloys, but they’re optimized for the mechanical and thermal properties we want. We’re going to backfill them with a high-thermal-conductivity ceramic at small length scales so that the radiation damage can be shed more easily to the interfaces.”
Balk added, “Materials research is critically important and underpins many other science and engineering efforts, and this project is a good example of that impact.”
Dr. Beth Guiton is the Frank J. Derbyshire Professor of Materials Science and professor of chemistry at the College of Arts and Sciences. She emphasized the importance of the research and how the team intends to use machine learning to improve the material’s strength and radiation resistance.
Guiton explained, “Keeping the plasma contained without accidentally stopping the fusion reaction or damaging your reactor materials is a challenge and a huge roadblock in this work. The temperatures involved are sufficient to vaporize the structure should they come into contact with it, yet we need to be able to extract the enormous amount of energy evolved so that it can be useful.”
The chemistry expert said in a news release, “Balk’s work is important for Kentucky science; it’s important for fusion energy and for advancing U.S. energy technology. If a commercial fusion power plant is successfully created, you’ve solved cheap, clean, safe and abundant energy production.”
Evelyn Wang is the ARPA-E Director. She said, “ARPA-E is a leader in supporting technologies that could make commercial fusion a reality on a much shorter timescale,” adding that the project is one of thirteen selected by the agency for nearly thirty million dollars in combined funding.
Wang concluded, “CHADWICK expands our focus to making fusion power plants operationally and economically viable by developing a high performance and durable first wall.”
Japan’s top court upholds ex-TEPCO leaders’ acquittal on negligence over Fukushima nuclear crisis abcnews.go.com
Enrichment: Orano and Energoatom Sign an Agreement to Supply Enrichment Services to Ukraine’s Nuclear Power Plants businesswire.com
Poland and Baltic nations welcome Macron’s nuclear deterrent proposal apnews.com
Canadian government announces nuclear investments world-nuclear-news.org
Ambient office = 98 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 97 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 97 nanosieverts per hour
Red bell pepper from Central Market = 129 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 106 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 93 nanosieverts per hour
Moltex’s WATSS process for converting used uranium oxide fuel into molten salt reactor fuel has been validated on spent nuclear fuel from a commercial nuclear reactor.
WATSS is short for Waste to Stable Salt. The innovative process extracts valuable materials and radioactive byproducts from spent nuclear fuels in oxide form, including CANDU, light water reactor and certain fast reactor fuels, such as mixed oxide (MOX) fuels. It does this in a single, streamlined twenty four-hour chemical process, with a pretreatment step that the company says can accommodate exotic, experimental, or advanced reactor fuels.
The extracted transuranic elements are concentrated to produce molten salt fuel. Fission byproducts are removed. This process reduces waste volumes dramatically but also transforms nuclear waste into clean, dispatchable energy. This permanently eliminates long-lived transuranic elements like plutonium, the company says. Coupled with Moltex’s Stable Salt Reactor-Wasteburner (SSR-W) reactor technology, the process enables the creation of a closed fuel cycle.
The WATSS process has now been validated on spent nuclear fuel bundles from a “commercial reactor in Canada” through hot cell experiments carried out by Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL). CNL has the only facilities in Canada equipped to handle spent nuclear fuel. The experiments revealed that the process can extract ninety percent of the transuranic material from spent nuclear fuel in twenty-four hours, with greater efficiency over longer periods of time, the company said.
Rory O’Sullivan is the CEO of Moltex. He said, “It’s crucial that increased demand for nuclear energy is matched by increased back-end fuel cycle capabilities. WATSS is a transformative solution that not only reduces liabilities but also adds value, turning waste into a valuable energy asset.”
The company plans to deploy the first WATSS unit at NB Power’s Point Lepreau site in New Brunswick. It also plans to deploy the first SSR-W by the early to mid-2030s. In a recently released report on its work, Moltex said the commercial-scale demonstration facility will recycle an anticipated two hundred and sixty thousand spent nuclear fuel bundles from existing Candu pressurized heavy water reactors and create recycled fuel for the entire sixty-year operating life of one three-hundred megawatt demonstration SSR-W.
The development of WATSS has received funding from the Government of Canada, the Province of New Brunswick, and NB Power. Indigenous communities in New Brunswick are also supporting the technology and have invested in its development.
The North Shore Mi’kmaq Tribal Council and its seven First Nation member communities announced in 2023 that it would be taking a stake in both Moltex Energy Canada Inc and ARC Clean Technology Canada Inc. It has recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to promote the selection and deployment of Westinghouse technology for nuclear new build projects in New Brunswick.
Jim Ward is the General Manager of the North Shore Mi’kmaq Tribal Council. He said that the Council’s investment in Moltex was driven by the potential to make nuclear power more sustainable and reduce nuclear waste liability. He added that “Moltex also engaged with us at the earliest stages of the project. We are pleased to see this important milestone being met and look forward to more to come.”
Kremlin blasts ‘confrontational’ Macron speech on Russian threat, nuclear weapons reuters.com
Nuclear energy bill hangs on a single word as cities and counties fight for a say utahnewsdispatch.com
WCC shares insights marking Nuclear Victims Remembrance Day oikoumeme.org
Explainer: How realistic is France’s offer to extend its nuclear umbrella? Reuters.com
Ambient office = 80 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 118 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 115 nanosieverts per hour
Garlic bulb from Central Market = 115 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 102 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 93 nanosieverts per hour
Fortum is a Finnish state-owned energy company located in Espoo, Finland. It mainly focuses on the Nordic region. Fortum operates power plants, including co-generation plants, and generates and sells electricity and heat.
Fortum has agreed to assist the development of Finnish technology company Steady Energy’s district heating nuclear reactor with its simulation expertise. The intent is to create a comprehensive digital twin for Steady Energy’s LDR-50 reactor using Apros software.
Steady Energy designs, builds, and operates compact, advanced nuclear heating plants. Their elegantly simple approach enables scalable, cost-effective, zero-carbon district heating almost anywhere.
Apros, the result of decades of development work by Fortum and Finland’s state-owned VTT Technical Research Centre, is an advanced software program for modelling and dynamic simulation of power plants, energy systems and industrial processes. Apros products and services have been sold in more than thirty countries around the world to a wide range of users including EPC project suppliers, equipment manufacturers, energy companies, engineering firms, research institutes and universities.
Fortum will use this software to create a simulation called a digital twin of the LDR-50 reactor to permit Steady Energy to carry out comparison analyses related to the licensing of district heating reactors in Finland. In addition, the Apros model will be used to provide solutions to technical problems related to the functionality and dimensioning of the new plant type.
Toni Salminen is Director of Sales at Fortum for Apros product area. He said, “We are very pleased that Steady Energy wants to use dynamic simulation to ensure their design quality and has chosen Fortum to support their project. The Apros software, developed jointly by Fortum and VTT, is suitable for the modelling needs of a nuclear power plant throughout the nuclear power life cycle, both for verifying the initial design material and for supporting the commissioning of the plant. For us, cooperation with Steady Energy offers an interesting opportunity to utilize our decades of power plant expertise in the development of new small-scale nuclear power.”
Tommi Nyman is the CEO of Steady Energy. He said, “For Steady Energy, this is a significant partnership and a great opportunity to utilize Fortum’s expertise in the development of a Finnish reactor.”
Steady Energy was spun out of VTT in 2023. It is developing the LDR-50 small modular reactor (SMR) with a thermal output of fifty megawatts, designed to operate at around three hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Unlike most small modular reactors being developed around the world, the LDR-50 is not designed to generate electricity or electricity and heat. Instead, it is designed to only produce heat and is focused on district heating, as well as industrial steam production and desalination projects.
Steady Energy has already signed agreements for fifteen reactors in Finland, with its reactor design currently being assessed by the Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK). The aim is to construct the first plant to be the clean energy source for a district heating scheme. Work will begin in 2029.
In December of last year, Steady Energy signed a contract with Belgian engineering firm Tractebel to provide engineering services to develop its LDR-150 SMR.
