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.
Wreckage crashed into nuclear fuel rods at Fukushima Unit 3 spent fuel pool. enenews.com
Russian power engineering R&D institute NIKIET has completed the engineering design for the BREST-300 lead-cooled fast reactor. world-nuclear-news.org
The process of loading fuel assemblies into the reactor core of unit 1 at the Fangjiashan plant in China’s Zhejiang province has begun. world-nuclear-news.org
Dolphins, and whales are more likely to be bathed in radiation from Fukushima than some other sea life. enenews.com
Cavendish Fluor Partnership has been formally awarded the contract by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority to manage 12 UK nuclear sites and their respective decommissioning programs. world-nuclear-news.org
Finland’s Olkiluoto 3 will start operations in 2018, 13 years after work began on the first-of-a-kind EPR, the Areva-Siemens consortium building the plant has informed client Teollisuuden Voima Oyj. world-nuclear-news.org
My Geiger counter is in the shop for maintenance.
Fishermen have resumed catching whitebait off Fukushima Prefecture for the first time in nearly 4 years, although on a trial basis. www3.nhk.or.jp
My Geiger counter is in the shop for maintenance.
The final shipment of used fuel from the UK’s Sizewell A nuclear power plant has been sent for reprocessing at Sellafield, marking the end of a five-year operation to remove all fuel from the site. world-nuclear-news.org
Westinghouse announced Thursday that it will deliver fuel for three reactors at OKG’s Oskarshamn nuclear plant in Sweden. nuclearstreet.com
I have often mentioned that there are serious problems with getting investors interested in nuclear power. Today, I will drill down into this subject a bit more. The International Energy Agency recently published a report on the World Energy Investment Outlook covering the next twenty years.
Annual global spending on energy is estimated to rise from one trillions six hundred million in 2013 to two trillion by 2035. Less than half of the forty trillion that will be spent between 2013 and 2035 will go to meet growth in energy demand. The rest will be spent will be used to ” offset declining production from existing oil and gas fields and to replace power plants and other assets that reach the end of their productive life.”
About sixteen trillion four hundred million dollars of the forty trillion will be spent on electricity. Forty percent of this will be spent on transmission and distribution of electricity. Only six percent of the electricity budget is slated to be spent on nuclear assuming a modest growth in the use of nuclear power. Six percent of electric power investment for nuclear projects does not seem like a lot but there is fierce competition for every dollar spent on electricity.
Nuclear projects use to be considered good investments because the energy was usually presold at a fixed price that guaranteed a good long term return on investment. Recently the turbulence in the energy market including low cost natural gas from fracking has brought an end to this practice. Now nuclear will have to sell into the short term market and may not be price competitive. For the past fifteen years, the U.S. reactors have been burning fuel made from decommissioned Russian nuclear warheads. The cost of this fuel was well below the cost of new uranium fuel. This program just ended so the price of nuclear fuel will rise. By some estimates, the world has already passed peak uranium production.
Many of the world’s power reactors are nearing the end of their original licensed lifetimes. They are becoming more and more expensive to keep operating and some have already been shut down because they could not compete in the energy market. So investing in existing nuclear power plants is problematic. Investing in new reactors is risky because many of the new designs have not been built, tested and approved yet.
Perhaps the biggest reason to be wary of investing in nuclear power is that there will most probably be another major nuclear accident in the next few year. There could be deliberate terrorist attacks on nuclear power plants. Nuclear power plants could be destroyed intentionally or accidentally in regional conflicts. If any of these things happen, the public backlash against nuclear power will definitely make it less attractive as an investment.
Individual nuclear power projects required enormous funding which can be in the billions. Many different factors are involved in investment decisions. In the end, what really matters is the confidence that investors have in profiting from their investment over time. Given the problems discussed above, it is not a mystery why nuclear power is having problems finding investors.
There was a major science meeting recently on Fukushima’s link to wildlife problems on West Coast. enenews.com
Strontium-90 from Fukushima has been found along west coast of North America. enenews.com
The final shipment of used fuel from the UK’s Sizewell A nuclear power plant has been sent for reprocessing at Sellafield, marking the end of a five-year operation to remove all fuel from the site. world-nuclear-news.com
