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.
Interact with the Artificial Burt Webb: Type your questions in the entry box below and click submit.
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.
James Doyle spent seventeen years as a nuclear policy specialist at the U.S. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The LANL receives about two billion dollars each year for work that includes nuclear weapons development. Last year Doyle published an article titled “Why Eliminate Nuclear Weapons?” in the journal Survival: Global Politics and Strategy. This journal is published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies in the U.K. Following the publication of this article, Doyle lost his job at LANL.
Doyle’s article pointed out that nuclear weapons no longer provided strategic utility or value as a deterrent for war. He said that eliminating nuclear weapons would strongly increase international security. He also said that he thought that now was a good time to hold serious discussions about global nuclear disarmament. Although President Obama supports nuclear disarmament, he did not think that it would happen in his lifetime. Doyle suggested that it should be possible to achieve total nuclear armament in thirty four years which would mean that the world would have eliminated nuclear weapons before the one hundredth anniversary of the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the Second World War. There are still advocate for nuclear weapons but many respected voices in the world of global security agree publicly with the ideas expressed in Doyle’s article.
Doyle’s dismissal from LANL is detailed in a report by the Center for Public Integrity. Because Doyle wrote his article at home outside of working hours, he was not obligated to show the article to LANL for what is called a “classification” review. However, Doyle did submit the article to LANL for review. One of Doyle’s coworkers said that while the scientists at LANL had no problem with the article, LANL management was upset. Doyle published his article on February 1st of 2013, having been told by the staff who handled classification reviews that there was no classified information in his article.
Around the time of the publication of the article, the LANL and their Republican allies on the House Armed Services Committee were trying to get funding for a new multibillion dollar facility at LANL. This new facility would manufacture the small plutonium spheres that form the heart of nuclear warheads. Despite resistance against the new facility from the Obama administration, a Republican Congressman managed to get an amendment attached to the bill for the project. According to the amendment, the facility had to be completed by 2024. Obama did sign the bill including the amendment. Appropriation of funds for the facility is still being debated. Obviously, a call for total nuclear disarmament could have a negative effect on support for the planned facility.
Five days after the article was published, Doyle was told that senior LANL managers wanted copies of all of the more than one hundred articles that he had written during his time at the LANL. On that same day, Doyle was told that his article did contain classified information. Seven days after the publication of the article, the head of the classification review department told Doyle that his article needed to be withdrawn from publication because it contained classified information. Doyle was forced to give up his home computer so that all copies of his article could be erased. In addition, he lost his high-level security clearance. Doyle fought back for several months, protesting his treatment and the reclassification of his article by the LANL.
Doyle was ultimate fired from his position at LANL on July 8th, 2014. LANL representatives claim that it all just part of a regular planned program of layoffs at the lab. Doyle and his supporters are skeptical of the LANL excuse and say that Doyle was fired improperly for political reasons. After all, his article was supporting the publicly expressed policy position of the U.S. President with respect to nuclear disarmament.
Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory:
The Asahi Shimbun, Japan’s second-largest daily newspaper, retracted an influential news report on the Fukushima nuclear disaster on Thursday after weeks of criticism from other news organizations. rallyagainstomalley.com
Plutonium found in Carlsbad, New Mexico nearly 30 miles from US WIPP nuclear site. enenews.com
The Asahi Shimbun, Japan’s second-largest daily newspaper, retracted an influential news report on the Fukushima nuclear disaster on Thursday after weeks of criticism from other news organizations. rallyagainstomalley.com
Plutonium found in Carlsbad, New Mexico nearly 30 miles from US WIPP nuclear site. enenews.com
I have blogged in the past about the employment situation at Fukushima. Layers and layers of subcontractors exist between the nuclear companies and the people hired to work at nuclear plants. Organized crime in Japan is involved in contracting staffing at nuclear power reactors. There are no background checks for people working at nuclear power plants and desperate people from the margins of society wind up working a nuclear power plants. There have been reports that these desperate people form a sort of second class of workers at nuclear power plants who are poorly equipped, poorly trained and financially exploited by subcontractors. There have also been reports highly skilled workers are leaving the dangerous jobs at Fukushima for other less hazardous positions in the nuclear industry. Now there are lawsuits from workers at Fukushima saying that they are not being paid what they are entitled to.
Four Fukushima workers are suing TEPCO because they say that they were not paid promised hazard pay above and beyond their regular salaries. This is the first such law suit against TEPCO. The workers wore masks in court because they are afraid of retaliation from their employers. Six hundred thousand dollars in unpaid wages is being sought from TEPCO and some of their partner firms. The lawyer for the four who brought the suit said that it was possible that there would be more laws suits from workers among the six thousand employed in the estimated forty year clean-up of the Fukushima disaster site. The lawyer stated that TEPCO has promised but not delivered hazard pay and that skilled workers were leaving the clean-up project which is now being handled by the less skilled.
TEPCO announced last year that it would double daily danger pay to two hundred dollars per worker because of the danger involved in dealing with the uncontrolled flow of radioactive water and the decommissioning of the reactors that experienced core meltdowns at Fukushima. However, the promised hazard pay is being held up by some of the eight hundred subcontractors who sent workers to Fukushima. The subcontractors claim that their businesses will fail if they are not allowed to divert the hazardous pay. TEPCO is already expected to pay over forty eight billion dollars as compensation to the people around Fukushima whose lives were impacted by the Fukushima disaster. Additional billions of dollars will be required to complete the forty year decontamination and decommissioning at Fukushima. A citizens’ judicial panel recently decided that three former executives of TEPCO should face criminal charges because of their actions leading up to, during and following the Fukushima disaster.
Considering the costs that are piling up, it is obvious that TEPCO will be under serious economic stress in the coming years. I wonder how long it will be until TEPCO declares bankruptcy. I expect that if and when they do, the burden of the continuing clean up will fall on the Japanese government and the Japanese taxpayers. And, should the government decide that it does not have the funds to continue the clean-up, the Fukushima site may become a permanent threat to human health and the environment in Japan.
Fukushima workers:
TEPCO announced the completion of the installation of an 80 meter wide underground zeolite wall at Fukushima Daiichi. fukuleaks.org
Educating the public on the risks of radiation should be a long-term process and not just take place in the aftermath of a major nuclear accident, a panel of radiation protection experts agreed. world-nuclear-news.org
