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.
I have blogged about thorium as a possible nuclear fuel. Thorium was considered for fueling nuclear reactors in the 1960s but the abundance of uranium and the fact that uranium could be converted into plutonium for nuclear weapons removed thorium from serious consideration. Thorium is an abundant element and the United States has actually buried tons of thorium as an unwanted byproduct of rare earth mining.
Originally, China intended to develop and construct an operational thorium reactor by 2040 but now Chinese nuclear scientists have been told that they must construct a thorium reactor by 2025. China feels that it is under pressure to develop thorium reactors because other countries, especially India are pouring money into thorium research.
In early 2013, Jiang Miaheng, son of the former Chinese Premier Jiang Zemin, launched their current thorium research program. He said that China had enough thorium to supply energy needs for twenty thousand years. Three hundred and fifty million dollars were allocated to start the project. One hundred and forty PhD level scientists were recruited by the Shanghai Institute of Nuclear and Applied Physics (SINAP). It was anticipated that the staff of the SINAP would reach seven hundred and fifty by 2015 but this appears to have been an overly conservative estimate.
The Chinese are focusing on molten salt or liquid fluoride reactors as the best designs for a thorium reactor. Thorium reactors can theoretically be much smaller and operate at atmospheric pressured without the need for huge containment vessels that are required by uranium and MOX reactors. If such reactors can be built and operated safely, small thorium reactors could be used to power individual office buildings and industrial plants.
Britain has a small thorium project called ThorEA at Huddersfield University. The head of that project says that thorium is intrinsically safer than uranium fuel because the thorium itself must be bombarded with an external source of neutrons in order to produce power. If the reactor fails and shuts down, there can be no chain reaction or critical events such as happened at Fukushima.
The U.S. actually built a molten salt thorium reactor at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in the 1960s. The Nixon administration cancelled the project because the Pentagon wanted the plutonium produced in nuclear reactors fueled with uranium. A former NASA engineer named Kirk Sorensen retrieved the designs for thorium reactors from the government archives and published them. This aroused no interest in the United States to pursue thorium reactors. Jiang visited the ORNL and obtained a copy of the thorium reactor design documents after reading an article about the benefits of thorium as a nuclear fuel.
China has plenty of thorium and is very concerned about being dependent on foreign sources of fuel. China also has a very serious problem with air pollution. If thorium reactors could be developed, they would reduce air pollution and assist in ameliorating climate change. China is currently building twenty eight conventional reactors and pursuing other cutting edge nuclear projects including the thorium project.
Thorium reactors are promoted as being safer and cheaper than conventional power reactors. In other blogs I have pointed out some of the problems with thorium reactors including higher operating temperatures and more highly radioactive waste than produced by uranium reactors.
Shanghai Institute of Nuclear and Applied Physics:
I have blogged a lot about all the reasons that nuclear power is not a viable option. Recently a promoter of nuclear power gave a lecture in which he questioned whether nuclear power was really necessary as a part of the mix of future global energy sources. Professor Sir David King was formerly a chief scientist and an advocate for building new nuclear reactors in the United Kingdom. He presented his lecture for the Ashden charity which presents the Ashden Energy Awards annually.
Although King has been one of the most prominent strong advocates for nuclear power in the past, he did not make much mention of nuclear power in his lecture. A reporter who was struck by this omission got up and asked King about nuclear power in the Q & A part of the event. He did not get the answer that he expected. King said that Britain might be able to do without nuclear power and that the priority should be to develop battery systems that could support intermittent renewables such as wind and solar. “We have to keep reassessing the situation”, he said. “I believe that what we need, more than anything, is a surge of activity to develop energy storage capability …. Once we can do that technologically, why would we not just keep with renewables.”
King pointed out that a country like India with lots of sunlight and deserts should go directly into solar energy. He said that solar power was already as much as a quarter the cost of connecting remote villages to the national electrical grid. On the other hand, he pointed out that countries such as Britain and Japan with less sunlight and fewer open spaces might have to include nuclear power if they could not solve the energy storage problems that accompany renewables. In that case, King said that he favored the small modular nuclear reactors that have recently been advocated by Owen Paterson, the former environmental secretary of the U.K. King did say in response to a later questioner that if the costs could be brought down enough, renewable energy sources and energy storage could provide all the electricity that Britain needed.
In the past few years, there have been prominent opponents of nuclear power who have become advocates. This has been primarily a result of concern that we have to reduce the carbon footprint of energy sources if we are to ameliorate global climate change. It is true that the carbon footprint of nuclear power is much lower than fossil fuels but it is still not on par with renewable energy sources which also have many fewer problems than nuclear power. King’s conversion from an advocate to an opponent of nuclear power may be one of the first prominent advocates of nuclear power to switch sides in the debate.
As the cost of renewables and energy storage drops and the problems with nuclear power increase, it is inevitable that nuclear power will be abandoned. The only question is how many more dollars will be spent and how many more lives will be damaged or lost before this happens.
Sir David King:
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said the third reactor (Unit 3) at the Enrico Fermi NPP in Newport, Mi. had passed its latest test. nuclearstreet.com
Plans for a power uprate of over 14% at unit 3 of the Forsmark nuclear power plant in Sweden have been dropped as it is no longer economically feasible, Vattenfall has announced. world-nuclear-news.com
A leaked government report in Germany says the country has more than twice as much radioactive waste to deal with than indicated in previous reports. nuclearstreet.com
Vietnamese officials have chosen Rosatom’s AES-2006 design for the country’s first nuclear power plant at Ninh Thuan, increasing the planned capacity of the four unit plant by about 800 MWe. world-nuclear-news.org
China’s nuclear generating capacity is set to triple over the next six years, according to an energy development plan published by the State Council. world-nuclear-news.org
