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 often blogged about the problems with spent nuclear fuel in the United States. Estimates are that all the spent nuclear fuel pools in the U.S. will be full in five years unless the spent fuel can be stored elsewhere. There are about fifty thousand tons of spent nuclear fuel in those spent nuclear fuel pools. With no permanent geological repository for spent nuclear fuel, the only alternative at the moment is to build containers and store the spent fuel on site at the reactor. U.S. companies currently use thin walled stainless steel containers which tend to become brittle and crack over time.
Now the Department of Energy is exploring rail transportation of one hundred and fifty ton spent nuclear fuel dry casks so that they will be ready when there is a repository. Best estimate is 2050 for a permanent repository which makes exploring transportation alternatives appear a bit premature. In any case, the Obama administration is considering contracts to develop, test and certify the necessary rail equipment. One question has to do with whether the U.S. government should buy or lease the rail cars. The specifications call for the cars to last thirty years, be able to handle the heavy casks and be used up to eight times a year. Any train utilizing these cars would have to have additional “buffer” cars that would be placed between the cars carrying the radioactive cargo and the crew of the train.
Between 1979 and 2007, the commercial nuclear power industry shipped over two thousand tons of spent nuclear fuel. A company called Progress Energy has shipped spent nuclear fuel by rail. They moved spent nuclear fuel from two of their nuclear power plants to a third plant because there was extra room in the third plant’s spent fuel pool. There was such an backlash against the shipments from environmentalists and local governments that Progress Energy publically announced in 2003 that they were building onsite dry cask storage at the two plants that had been the source of the spent fuel being shipped. When the casks are ready to be filled, the shipments will stop.
The Yucca Mountain Repository in Nevada was supposed to receive shipments of spent nuclear fuel from U.S. power reactors but after a decade of work on the site, the Obama administration cancelled the project in 2009. The U.S. had promised such a repository to nuclear power plant operators by 1999 and was collecting fees for the storage. This year, the government stopped collecting the fee and, in some cases, returned some of the money to reactor operators who had sued.
Recently there have been a number of explosions where single walled tanker cars were being used to move tar sands oil which is more flammable than oil from regular oil wells. The industry knows that the single walled tank cars are dangerous but they have not been willing to spend the money to build safer cars. If standards are set for transportation of spent nuclear waste by rail, can we depend on those standards to be sufficient to protect the public and environment? And, can we depend on industry to follow those standards rigorously? I have my doubts about both of these issues.
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
