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 recently wrote about the more than twelve billion dollars of loan guarantees that the U.S. government is handing out to the nuclear industry for the construction of more reactors. Part of the reason for these guarantees is that investors are very skeptical about nuclear power and some of these projects might not be able to finance themselves without the involvement of the government. This pattern is not unique to the United States.
Britain wants to build a new nuclear reactor at the Hinkley Point Nuclear Power Station. They are going to be retiring aging nuclear plants and want to stop using coal because of carbon release. The Hinkley Point reactor will be the first new nuclear power reactor built in the U.K. in twenty years. Britain considers nuclear power good way to reduce their carbon dioxide emission.
Since the U.K. is part of the European Union, there is a E.U. Commission that monitors state subsidies in member states. Critics of the Hinkley Point reactor project have charged that Britain is breaking the rules about how and much state aid can be given to such a project. The Commission has just ruled that the Hinkley Point plan does not break the rules and that Britain is free to proceed.
EDF Energy, the company that wants to build the reactor, estimated that the cost would be about twenty six billion dollars. On the other hand, the European Commission claims that by completion of the reactor in 2023, the cost will be more like thirty eight billion dollars and there is a possibility of a further sixteen billion dollars in charges.
A very critical report on the original subsidy arrangement between EDF and the U.K. Department of Energy and Climate Change was issued by a E.U. competition Commissioner. Following further negotiation, the Commissioner said that there had been sufficient changes to the subsidy agreement so that it limited distortions of the competition in the European single market.
The new subsidy arrangement guarantees that the company building and operating the reactor will receive about one hundred and fifty dollars per megawatt hour for the entire thirty five year projected lifespan of the new nuclear power reactor. This price is twice the current price of electricity in Britain. The increased cost is justified by the claim that fossil fuel costs will rise sharply in the near future and that the nuclear reactor will emit much less carbon dioxide than fossil fuels. Hinkley Plant will be able to provide about seven percent of the electricity for Britain.
The Austrian Chancellor has stated that the Hinkley Point decision sets a bad precedent. Previously, guaranteed prices for electricity in the E.U. were reserved for renewable sustainable sources of energy such as wind and solar. He rejected the claim that nuclear power was sustainable or a good way to fight climate change. He also said that Austria was considering bringing a law suit against the subsidy decision.
Critics in Britain say that this arrangement will punish consumers with unnecessary high prices for electricity for decades. Some critics say that the British government is not competent when it comes to making complex commercial arrangements. Other countries are abandoning such price guarantees for new nuclear power reactors because of the uncertainty and turbulence in the global energy market. I think that Britain is making a bad mistake in guaranteeing a high fixed price for Hinkley Point electricity over thirty years. EDF and the British government will be lucky if both they and this agreement last for the expected thirty years.
Hinkley Point Nuclear Power Plant:
I have written many posts about the Hanford Nuclear Reservation near Richland, Washington. It is one of the most radioactively polluted areas in the world. After decades of plutonium production for the U.S. nuclear arsenal, a great deal of cleanup still remains to be done. The U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) is responsible for cleaning up the site but they have consistently broken agreements, missed deadlines, lied, broken laws and generally behaved in a very irresponsible manner. The State of Washington has been trying to get the DoE to deliver on its responsibilities for years which has, at time, led to court battles.
In a 2010 consent decree agreement between the State of Washington and the DoE, the DoE accepted deadlines for the completion of a vitrification plant by 2022 to incorporate high-level nuclear wastes into glass logs for permanent disposal. In addition, there were also deadlines for removing liquid nuclear waste from single walled storage tanks because the tanks were leaking. The DoE has been complaining since 2011 that it cannot meet all agreed upon deadlines. It is now 2014 and the DoE has missed many of the deadlines specified in the 2010 consent agreement and have announced that it is likely that many more deadlines will be missed. The vitrification plant construction has been suspended because of problems with the design. Single walled tanks are still leaking into the soil at Hanford.
The Governor of Washington, Jay Inslee, “The simple fact is the Department of Energy has failed to meet important deadlines. We need much stronger accountability to ensure our citizens are protected and the Hanford site is cleaned up.” He announced a few days ago that the state is going to file a motion in federal court against the DoE. He and Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson are going to ask the federal court to impose new requirements for constructing double-walled tanks to replace the current leaking single-walled tanks.
Representatives of the DoE have said that ” We are disappointed that the parties could not agree on a reasonable, achievable path forward…The department hopes for an expeditious resolution of this matter…In the near term, we will continue to move forward as expeditiously as practicable to begin treating tank waste at Hanford, and will continue to work with the state and key stakeholders to accomplish this important mission.” This is the sort of bureaucratic that says nothing. It could have been said by the DoE at any time in the last decade in response to criticisms of its handling of the Hanford cleanup. The citizens of the State of Washington do not need vacuous and generic soothing statements from a federal agency. What the citizens need is swift action and thorough accountability in cleaning up the mess that the Pentagon left at Hanford. With a military budget in the hundreds of billions of dollars, the U.S. government can afford to spend more than the two billion dollars a year they currently spending to clean up Hanford.
Hanford Nuclear Reservation:
The proponents of nuclear power like to say that a properly functioning nuclear power plant is no threat to public health. Dangerous radiation from materials in a nuclear reactor is invisible. Part of the problem with verifying the safety of a reactor is that fact the biological damage from radiation can take decades to reveal itself in the form of cancer. In serious accidents, we know that dangerous radiation can be released but what damage it may cause to public health is very hard to pin down. Recent research has indicated that perhaps properly functioning nuclear power plants are not as safe as has been claimed.
When numbers are given for radiation released from a properly functioning nuclear power plant, they are usually based on the average release over a year of operation. The daily or hourly emissions are not shared with the public. The problem with this measurement system is that fact that different amounts of radiation are released at different times. While the annual average release from a nuclear power plant may be within the limit set by the NRC, there are times during normal operation when radiation releases from a nuclear plant may exceed what are considered to be safe levels.
When a nuclear power reactor is opened for refueling every twelve to eighteen months, a large volume of radioactive gas is released into the atmosphere and forms a plume downwind of the reactor that can last up to twelve hours. This spike of radioactivity is above the normal and accepted level of radiation release. However, the released radiation is invisible and the public in the vicinity wis not warned of when the radioactive gas is going to be released.
In late 2011, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War began tracking the radioactive gas released from the Gundremmingen Nuclear Power Plant in South Germany at half hour intervals. This research showed that while the daily emission of radioactive gases is usually very low and well within the mandated maximum levels, when the reactor was refueled, the release of radioactive gases including noble gases, tritium, carbon-14, iodine-131 increased sharply to more than five hundred times the usual daily release.
After this study, the German government compelled the nuclear regulators to release the non-averaged data for radiation release from Germany’s nuclear power plant. It appears that the public exposure during the refueling spikes can be from twenty to one hundred times the small averaged annual exposure that has been reported in the past. While there are many factors that contribute to the exact dose that any particular person living near a nuclear power plant may experience, in general, it can be said that some members of the public may be exposed to dangerous level of radioactivity during normal nuclear power plant operation.
Statistical analysis of the health of the public living near a nuclear power plant has sometimes shown an increase in infant leukemia. Because of uncertainties about radiation release and exposure dose levels, causation of the increase in leukemia cases has been difficult to identify. It turns out that fetuses of pregnant women are especially vulnerable to radiation exposure during part of the pregnancy. If a pregnant woman is downwind of a refueling nuclear power plant, it may be that the radiation spike causes infant leukemia. With the reluctance of the nuclear industry to provide detailed information on the hourly release of radioactive materials, it is difficult to assess just how dangerous a normally operating nuclear power plant may be to the people living near it.
