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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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 = 98 nanosieverts per hour
I have blogged a lot about the aging U.S. nuclear power reactors. Most of them were built decades ago and are nearing or have already passed their initial forty year licenses. There does not seem to be much interest among investors and utilities in building new nuclear power reactors. The U.S. has a guaranteed loan pool of about twenty billion dollars that was created seven years ago. Since creation, the fund has only found one power company interested in building two new reactors at the Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia. This company got an eight billion dollar loan. There is still over twelve billion in the fund but, for the moment, no other takers.
With lack of interesting in building new reactors, the nuclear power industry in the United States is working on extending the lifespan of the current nuclear power reactors. The owners of seven old power reactors in Pennsylvania, Virginia and South Carolina are going to ask the U.S. government for permission to extend the lifespan of their reactors to eighty years, twice the original licensed lifespan. They claim that it will be more economical to keep the old reactors going rather than build more new reactors. Critics of the plan say that many of the reactors were built on designs that were decades older than the reactors. They point out that it may be difficult to keep the old reactors going as long as eighty years.
After decades of exposure to radiation, some metal reactor parts become brittle and are more likely to crack when subjected to stress. One big concern is that some of the piping in the cooling system of a reactor could crack and leak which might trigger the emergency cooling system to dump large amounts of water into the reactor. The reactor could keep operating but the temperature drop could induce what is called “pressurized thermal shock.” This could crack open the reactor containment vessel and release radioactive materials into the environment.
Supporters of extending the lifespan of these old reactors say that they will carefully monitor the steel, concrete, cable insulation as well as other critical components. Small pieces of metal called “coupons” are kept inside the reactor and removed one at a time to check for brittleness. Unfortunately, some of the reactors have run out of coupons and their operators are trying to figure out another way to check for brittleness. In other cases, the operators have placed coupons closer to the reactor core to “age them faster.”
The consensus of the Nuclear Regulator Commissioners and the nuclear power industry is that these old reactors can continue to operate for decades more with adequate monitoring. Currently, the owners of many old reactors have filed for and been granted twenty year extensions of their forty year licenses. No requests have been denied but some requests are still under review. There is a new push for another round of twenty year extensions which would bring the licensed life of a reactor to eighty years.
My big concern is that the nuclear industry has a poor record of adhering to regulations on nuclear safety and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has a very poor record of monitoring and enforcing such adherence. As the U.S. power reactors age, the odds of a nasty accident increase. Extending reactors life spans to eighty years is a very bad idea.
Microscopic images of samples of stainless steel. The top sample shows steel with its normal integrity. The bottom image shows steel that has been made brittle by exposure to radiation.
Fukushima nuclear waste detected off U.S. West Coast, from California to Canada. enenews.com
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has accepted the Department of Energy’s design for an underground geologic nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. world-nuclear-news.org
Over half the 52,060 used nuclear fuel elements at the former Magnox nuclear power plant at Oldbury in the UK have now been removed from site, two and a half years after the plant generated its last power. world-nuclear-news.org
I have been blogging this week about experimental fusion reactors. I got excited reading about the Bussard Polywell reactor. It has three excellent features. Based on hydrogen and boron-11 fuel, it does not consume radioactive fuel, it does not produce neutrons during operation and it does not produce radioactive waste. The developers of the Bussard Polywell say that they are confident that they can build a prototype 100 megawatt nuclear fusion reactor for about three hundred and fifty million dollars. This is a very small amount of money compared to the billions that are subsidizing the nuclear fission industry. But then I had to ask why one was not being built if it was such a good design.
The original idea for this type of reactor design was from a paper by a Russian physicist named Lavrent’ev published in 1974. Robert Bussard started a company to pursue the Polywell concept in 1985. In 1992 and 1994, he received funding from the U.S. Navy as well as two small grants from NASA and LANL. IN 1995, a paper was published by Todd Rider that offered a detailed criticism of the Polywell design. Because no operational device existed, Rider had to use theoretical estimates from other fusion research. After making a set of assumptions about the operation of the reactor including such factors as loss of ions due to upscattering, ion thermalization rate, energy loss due to x-ray emissions and the fusion rate, Rider concluded that the design had “fundamental flaws.”
Bussard responded that the Polywell plasma had a different structure, temperature distribution and well profile than the operational parameters that had been assumed by Rider. He questioned other assumptions made by Rider and concluded that his design would produce net useful energy. Other researchers also questioned Rider’s assumptions, calculation and conclusions. They pointed out that there were aspects of the Polywell design and operation that Rider did not address that undermined his conclusions.
I do not have the mathematical and physics background that would enable me to review Rider’s critique and Bussard’s answers. I would assume but cannot document that twenty years of work on experimental devices by the Polywell team should have experimentally answered some of the criticisms posed by Rider. However, the existence of a detail critique, even if flawed has had a corrosive effect on support for the project over the years.
Bussard continued to receive funding from the U.S. Navy from 1999 to 2006. He died in late 2007 while seeking funding to continue his work. In 2007, the Navy renewed funding and the project continued up to the present. The Polywell company is now seeking funds to build a full-scale model. Part of the problem with getting more money from the Navy lies in the fact that most of the nuclear research funded by the U.S. government is handled by the U.S. Department of Energy which supports the tokomak approach to nuclear fusion.
Considering how important this device could be if it works and the enormous amount of money the U.S. government spends on nuclear research, subsidies and loan guarantees, it would make sense to allocate the funds to build one. Assuming, of course, that the theoretical challenges from Rider and other have been successfully answered.
Diagram of a basic Polywell design:
