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.
As information continues to trickle out about the April accident at Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, New Mexico, once again I am going to offer an update. WIPP has been open for fifteen years and is the only repository used to dispose of plutonium contaminated waste from the U.S. nuclear weapons program.
In April, a drum of waste exploded and released radioactive particles into the environment. Research has now suggested that hundreds of drums of waste from the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) were packed with an absorbent that reacts with the nitrate salts in the waste to produce explosive substances. This danger was clearly stated in the packaging for the absorbent. There are emails from subcontractors at LANL asking someone from the lab consider the safety issues that might be associated with the new absorbent but it is not known whether anyone at the lab researched the dangers. In any case, the use of the new absorbent was approved.. The WIPP was closed by the accident and some of the dangerous drums of waste are also still at the LANL while at least a hundred more are in temporary storage in Texas.
When the WIPP was developed in the old salt mine, big open areas called Panels were divided into rooms which were filled with drums of waste. Originally when a Panel was filled with drums, a twelve foot thick explosion isolation wall was used to seal the Panel. Overtime, the Department of Energy reduced the safety requirements for WIPP and the Panels were sealed with a steel bulkhead that was not explosion proof. Eventually, even the steel bulkheads were abandoned.
When Panel Six was totally filled with drums of waste, it was not sealed off as previous Panels had been. The explosion that took place in Panel Seven could have contaminated the waste drums in Panel Six. The Secretary of the New Mexico Department of the Environment has demanded that both Panel Six and Panel Seven be immediately sealed with bulkheads that can withstand explosions in case more of the drums from LANL explode. To make matters worse, there was no detailed record of exactly which drums were stored where in a particular Panel. Electronic records had not been updated when new shipments of drums arrived. This lack of good records impeded the investigation into where the exploding drum had come from.
The LANL has not been forthcoming with answers and documents that involve the actions of the subcontractors, the decision to use that particular absorbent or what testing was done at LANL, if any. They still not confirming that the absorbent is the problem. Questions are being referred to the Department of Energy, the “customer” of LANL.
Prior to 2006, drums of waste bound for WIPP were routinely inspected to insure that the contents of the drums were accurately represented by the manifest that accompanied the shipment. In 2006, the New Mexico Environmental Department changed the rules for inspection so that testing was reduced to a few random drums. While these inspections would not necessarily have caught the drums with the bad absorbent, they do clearly illustrate that the rules for safe handling of waste at WIPP were weakened and even ignored as the years went by. This happened because there were no significant accidents for fifteen years. But it should never have happened. These wastes are very dangerous and they must be treated with respect or more such accidents are guaranteed.
Transuranic Waste Shipment:
I have dealt with the potential and actual impact of natural disasters such as earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes, and tidal waves on nuclear reactors. However, there is another natural danger that is not often raised with respect to endangering nuclear power plants.
Japan is currently debating the restart of some of its fleet of fifty nuclear reactors after all nuclear power plants were shut down following the Fukushima disaster in March of 2011. Fifteen billion dollars has been allocated for hardening Japan’s reactors against natural disasters.
The Ring of Fire is a horseshoe shaped zone of earthquakes and volcanoes around the Pacific Ocean. The Ring of Fire is caused by plate tectonics. Ninety percent of the world’s earthquakes and eighty percent of the world’s largest earthquakes occur around the Ring of Fire. Many active volcanoes are found along the Ring of Fire. Ten percent of the worlds active volcanoes are found in Japan which is part of the Ring of Fire. There are one hundred and ten active volcanoes in Japan.
The Kyushu Electric Power Company’s (KEPC) nuclear power plant at Sendai in Kagoshima Prefecture is in an area where there are active volcanic sites. The Sakurajima volcano is only thirty miles from Sendai. There are five huge calderas in the Sakurajima complex. Caldera forming eruptions are devastating but rare. Some scientists estimate that the odds of such an eruption in Japan in any year is less than one in ten thousand. On the other hand, the head of the agency that monitors Japan’s volcanoes has stated that there is no demonstrated way to predict eruptions.
The Japanese Nuclear Regulatory Authority has stated that, in their estimation, the risk of volcanic activity that might endanger the Sendai plant is negligible. Critics of the NRA report complain that the NRA is overestimating the ability of scientists to predict volcanic eruptions. They point out that while the risk might be small, the damage of such an event could be enormous. KEPC has announced that they will place monitoring gear around the Sakurajima volcano complex and they have plans to move nuclear fuel away from Sendai in case an eruption appears imminent.
The final hurtle in restarting the Japanese reactors lies in convincing the Japanese people that the reactors will be able to operate safely and survive threats from natural disaster such as volcanoes. The cost of keeping the reactors shut down is mounting as Japan spends billions of dollars to purchase other types of fuel to cover the roughly one third of their electricity that was generated by the nuclear power plants.
If the Japanese government approves plans to restart the Sendai reactors, the next step will be for the local citizens and government to engage in a series of public debates over restarting the reactors. The National government has been adamant that it will not restart reactors unless communities near the reactors approve.
Sendai nuclear power station:
