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.
Following the nuclear disaster at Fukushima in March of 2011, the U.S. government increased allocation of funding for research into the development of stronger protective coating for nuclear fuel rods. Prior to the disaster, about two million dollars were being spent per year on improving the construction of nuclear fuel rods. Following the disaster, the funding rose to over thirty million a year.
The goal of the new funding is to promote the creation of nuclear fuel rods that are more difficult to damage and melt in extreme conditions. In addition, the protective coating on the nuclear fuel rods must be reformulated to reduce the danger of chemical reactions that make current fuel rods brittle and generate explosive hydrogen gas. The hope is that new fuel rod designs could give plant operators more time to respond to an emergency before explosions or a catastrophic meltdown occur.
Nuclear fuel has not changed significantly for decades. Naturally occurring uranium is mostly U-238 with less than one percent of U-235. Low enriched uranium for current U.S. reactors has had the percent of U-235 boosted to five percent by isotopic separation. Uranium dioxide powder from the fuel fabrication process is compressed into thimble sized pellets. The pellets are inserted into metal tubes up to fifteen feet long. The tubes are composed of a zirconium alloy that resists corrosion in the reactor. They are able to withstand the heat being generated and they separate the fuel pellets from the circulating coolant in the reactor. However, if the cooling systems fail and water level drops to expose the fuel rods to air, the zirconium cladding reacts with the steam to produce hydrogen gas. The reaction that produces hydrogen also produces heat, increasing the loss of coolant.
The Electric Power Research Institute is working on a type of cladding made of molybdenum which can resist higher temperatures that zirconium. The University of Tennessee are coating zirconium cladding with ceramics to increase heat resistance. The Westinghouse Electric Company is working on creating cladding out of silicon carbide. At the University of Illinois, they are attempting to create a new coating that could be applied to standard zirconium fuel rods to prevent hydrogen generation and heat damage. They are also trying to create chemicals that they can add to fuel rods that would migrate out of the rod and form a protective coating if the temperature rises.
Of course, any new approach to fuel rod construction must be economically feasible. Some researchers are hoping to offset the increased cost of new fuel rod design by extending the lifespan of the new fuel rods. Any new fuel rod design will have to be thoroughly tested before implementation. Even with thorough testing, we won’t really know if the new designs are better than current fuel until another nuclear disaster occurs and it might take years of operation before any design problems surface. In any case, it will probably require new regulatory action by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to insure that all U.S. reactors adopt any new fuel rod design.
Nuclear fuel assembly:
Japan budgeted 22 billion yen to increase food export which is 14 times much as budgeted in 2012. fukushima-diary.com
Some 39 months after the multiple explosions at Fukushima, thyroid cancer rates among nearby children have skyrocketed to more than forty times normal. commondreams.org
Three companies have teamed up to develop techniques for freezing radioactive liquids and sludges to aid their handling and clean-up. world-nuclear-news.org
The Japanese NRA reports that there is radioactive marine soil contamination stretches South-West to North-East. fukushima-diary.com
Nuclear-capable Russian bombers were recently intercepted by U.S. fighter jets 50 miles off the northern California coast. nydailynews.com
The Fukushima nuclear disaster occured in March of 2011. In addition to the actual radioactive fallout, there has been a great deal of other fallout including a wave of new safety regulation for the reactors in different countries. In the United States, the EPA is responsible for setting levels of the different kinds of emissions that are allowed for power plants in the United States. Currently, parts of 40 CFR 190 are under revision for emissions from nuclear power plants.
When operating correctly, nuclear power plants have very low emissions of anything other than water vapor. This fact is often promoted when considering the effect of nuclear power generation on global climate change. Unfortunately, when not operated correctly or as a result of accidents, many harmful types of radioactive particles can be released into the environment. There is also little mention of the carbon dioxide released during construction, transportation of fuel and waste, and handling of nuclear waste. There are many places in the world where radioactive materials have been released into the environment rendering large areas unsafe for human use.
Radioactive isotopes of many elements such as plutonium, uranium, radium, strontium, iodine, cesium, carbon, and americium have been explicitly mentioned before in regulations because they can be absorbed by tissue and pose a long term threat to human health. It makes sense to regulate such dangerous products of nuclear processes.
The new rules deal with krypton-85, a radionuclide which has never been of concern. Kr-85 is one of the series of elements known as noble gases. They cannot react with any other element to form chemical compounds. If breathed in or consumed, atoms of Kr-85 just pass on through the body, unable to be absorbed, to interact or to build up in tissue. If released, it quickly dissipates and does not pose a threat to human health. Large amounts of Kr-85 are released into the environment by uranium reprocessing plants.
Dr. Per Peterson, one of America’s most renowned nuclear engineers from UC Berkeley, recently said that, “The major issue is that EPA may be attempting to regulate emissions of krypton-85, a noble gas that disperses so rapidly that it causes no detectable dose to anything anywhere, and no public heath consequence even remotely. There exists no plausible public health or environmental reason to regulate Kr-85 emissions, since they do not and can never have any significant public health or environmental impact.”
There have be charges by critics of the new regulations that setting very low emission standards may be an intentional ploy to make new reactor designs so expensive that nuclear power will not be able to compete in the open market for energy generation. They point out that since Kr-85 poses absolutely no threat to human health or the environment, the EPA should not have authority to regulate emissions. They say that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is the government agency which should have jurisdiction in this matter.
Krypton made to glow by electronic current:
