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 don’t do anything special on Memorial Day but I do take time to reflect on the men and women who serve in our military. I don’t always agree with the foreign policy decisions of our government when it comes to sending troops into harm’s way but I do respect the courage and dedication of our troops. I know that sometimes it is deemed necessary for larger strategic goals to sacrifice soldiers but I would hope that our military at least equips our troops for the battles they face and that they are honest about the threats present in combat situations. I blog about nuclear affairs so today’s post is going to be about nuclear issues and our troops.
During early testing of atomic bombs, a fourteen kiloton nuclear device was dropped from a plane over a testing ground. Troops stationed in trenches were close enough to be hit with the shockwave from the blast. Following the detonation, the troops climbed out of their trenches at walked around in the area of the blast. These troops were not issued protective gear and were just wearing normal uniforms.
Following the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, American troops were sent into those destroyed cities without proper safety equipment to protect them from the radiation and without being adequately briefed with respect to radiation hazards.
In 1957, soldiers at the Yucca Flats test site in Nevada were issued gas masks and told to face away from the detonation of an atomic bomb twenty miles away. One soldier reported that the flash of light from the blast was so intense that he could literally see though his own arm and through the head of a soldier near him.
It has been reported that between 1943 and 1967, over a million U.S. troops and lesser numbers of troops from other nations were exposed to radiation from military tests and the cleanup of Japanese cities that were bombed. Sometimes they were less than a thousand yards away from ground zero. Often these soldiers were told not to discuss any health issues that might have been connected to radiation exposure with anyone including their doctors.
Thousands of sailors on the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier were sent to Fukushima to help in the aftermath of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdowns that occured in March of 2011. They were not told how dangerous the situation was or how much radiation they were going to be exposed to. Now many are ill and are suing the U.S. Government while being told that their health problems couldn’t possibly have been caused by radiation from Fukushima.
Radiation exposure can cause immediate problems depending on the dosage but low doses can cause damage that is hard to detect until years or decades later when cancers forms. Since the 1960s veterans who have health problems that might have been connected to their exposure to radiation have fought to receive treatment from the Veterans Administration. Repeatedly such individuals were assured that they could not have become ill because of radiation exposure. This has been proven not to be true but veterans with radiation related health issues are still fighting for treatment.
It is ironic and tragic that the scandal at the Veterans Administration hit the national headlines near Memorial Day. On Memorial Day, it is not just those who died in service to our country who should be honored but also those who served and are still living burdened by the injuries they received while serving. Every soldier deserves to be equipped for and informed about the dangers he or she will face. And every soldier deserves to have timely medical treatment for any injury received while on duty, even if it takes decades for the injury to become known.
The Fukushima prefectural government opened a Fukushima food promotion shop “Midette” in Nihonbashi on 4/13/2014. fukushima-diary.com
Nuclear power plants across the United States are building or expanding storage facilities to hold their spent fuel. theepochtimes.com
I just posted another update a few days ago about the situation at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, New Mexico. They believe that they now understand what caused the release of plutonium and americium into the environment in February. A new type of absorbent was added to drums of waste from the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). This absorbent did not adequately lock up the ammonium nitrates in the liquid in the drums. The dried nitrate salts that resulted were unstable and caused one of the drums at Carlsbad to explode.
It was known at that time that there were at least two of the drums with the wrong absorbent at WIPP. After studying the drums brought to WIPP for storage from LANL it turns out that there are at about three hundred and seventy of the problem drums now at the WIPP. The operators have been ordered to immediately draw up plans to permanently seal off the rooms at the WIPP where the problem drums are stored before any more of them explode.
In my recent post, I mentioned that there were at least fifty seven of the problem drums with the new absorbent still at LANL. There are plans to move the drums under the cover of a dome to prevent radioactive release if they explode. The drums will be monitored constantly for any increase in their temperature.
When WIPP was shut down after the radiation release in February, drums of waste from LANL were shipped to a temporary storage site in Texas. The site is operated by Waste Control Specialists on the Texas – New Mexico border. The waste is stored in an air-conditioned building and monitored twenty four hours a day. Now it turns out that there are over a hundred of the problem drums from LANL at the Texas site. The drums are wrapped in clusters of seven and then placed in containers. If any explosions occur in those drums, it might result in the release of radioactive materials into the environment.
What began as an accidental release of radioactive particles into the atmosphere with unknown cause in February has now escalated into a full-blown crisis with over five hundred drums of unstable and potentially explosive nuclear waste in the LANL, the WIPP and the Texas sites. All of this as a result of the change of an absorbent added to the drums. Someone should have been responsible for determining that the new absorbent would perform the main function that it was intended for.
The nuclear industry spends a lot of money assuring the public that nuclear power is safe. They say that the Fukushima disaster was a case of old technology, poor planning and natural disaster. They assure us that new reactors will be much safer and reliable. Unfortunately, as the accident at the WIPP illustrates, there problems that arise because someone changes something in the nuclear fuel cycle without fully testing what they have changed. And here we are with another nuclear crisis.
Los Alamos National Laboratory:
Operators shut down unit 2 at FirstEnergy’s Beaver Valley nuclear plant this week after encountering an issue with a pump during startup. nuclearstreet.com
