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.
I have recently been posting about the undetermined release of radioactive materials from the Waste Isolation Pilot Project near Carlsbad, New Mexico. In February, there was an event that released plutonium and americium into the atmosphere. Despite months of investigation, the ultimate cause of the radiation release still has not been determined. The WIPP is the only repository for low level waste, tools, clothing, etc. generated by the production of nuclear weapons for the U.S. arsenal. It is located in an old salt mine. Since the radiation release, the WIPP has been closed and there are estimations that it may remain closed for up to three years.
A new theory has been proposed to explain the radiation release. The waste shipped to the WIPP is contained in sealed drums. WIPP will not accept any liquid waste so some substance has to be added to any drum containing liquid to soak it up. In the past, the substance added was an inorganic clay-based absorbent similar to commercial cat litter. Such absorbents have been used to soak up chemical spill for many years. In the nuclear industry, these clay absorbents were routinely used to soak up liquids that were used to clean laboratories. The silicate minerals in the clay bound to and stabilized ammonia nitrates in the waste water.
Recently, a change was made to an organic absorbent made from wheat which is also used in commercial cat litter. It has been suggested that the new organic absorbent may have caused a chemical reaction that allowed nitrate salts to dry out instead of being bound and stabilized. These unstable nitrate salts could have caused a “mild” explosion that broke open some of the drums and released the radioactive isotopes. There is some evidence of melted seals on some drums of waste which suggests that something in or near the drums generated heat.
Inspectors of the sealed drums would not have seen anything that would have alerted them to the problem. The testing that is done for the buildup of gases above the materials in the drums before they are stored would also have given no indication of the problem.
There are drums that contain the new absorbent in the WIPP and more are piling up at temporary locations until the cause of the February radiation release has been determined. Environmental experts demand that those drums which are outside of the WIPP be moved inside and that drums in temporary storage be shipped to the WIPP. If the room is properly sealed as soon as the drums are stored, that should prevent a future radiation release. If the drums in temporary storage are not moved to the WIPP and sealed in then there may be more explosions in less secure places, releasing much more radiation into the environment.
The experts think that the absorbent explanation is the most likely cause of the radiation release but are not completely sure. In any case, this situation is illustrative of how complex nuclear technology can be. Apparently no one really investigated what organic absorbent could do before putting it into the drums. How many other bad decisions based on incomplete information will result in dangerous accidents?
Drums of low-level waste diverted from the WIPP to temporary storage in Texas:
China’s central government announced Monday that it is forming a fast-response team to assist in emergencies at civilian nuclear facilities. nuclearstreet.com
The Abe government in Japan is dedicated to nuclear power for the generation of electricity. Aside from safety issues raised by the Fukushima accident, one of the big problems that Japan has always had is its lack of fuel for energy. There are no significant deposits of coal or oil in the Japanese archipelago. One of the reasons that Japan attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor was the fact the U.S. had placed an embargo on oil shipments to Japan. Japan had about fifty operational nuclear power reactors before the Fukushima disaster. Some will probably be restarted but as much as one third may never be operated again because of safety concerns. Like coal and oil, Japan has to import nuclear fuel for the reactors from abroad.
In addition to uranium, light water nuclear reactors can also be fueled with a mixture of uranium and plutonium referred to as MOX. Recovered plutonium is mixed with uranium to create MOX fuel which can be used in fast breeder reactors to create more fissile material as well as for fuel in light water reactors. There were plans to use MOX to fuel the Japanese reactor at Hamaoka in the Shizuoka Prefecture before the Fukushima disaster. Now the Governor of Shizuoka demands that Chubu Electric Power Company start over again to get permission from local jurisdictions before fueling the reactor with MOX. He also said that nuclear power plants should move spent fuel from cooling pools to dry cask storage.
Japan has a major reprocessing operation at Rokkasho at the northeastern tip of the island of Honshu. It includes a high level nuclear waste monitoring facility, a MOX fuel fabrication plant, a uranium enrichment plant and a land fill for low level nuclear waste. Technical problems delayed completion of the plant as well as tripled the original estimation of construction costs. The plant is now compete but will not open until late 2014 because of additional safety requirements following the Fukushima disaster. There have been major protests against starting operations at the plant and petitions against the plant with almost a million signatures.
One of the big concerns is that if the Rokkasho reprocessing plant is not restarted, then the three thousand tons of spent fuel that has been shipped there from reactors all over Japan will have to be returned to the nuclear power plants that sent it. With spent fuel pools already crowded with fuel rods, such a return policy could lead to overloading the pools to the point where the reactors would have to be shut down because they have no place to put the spent fuel when it comes out of the reactors.
The Abe government Basic Energy Plan calls for the continued pursuit of a Japanese nuclear fuel cycle that would place less reliance on foreign sources of fuel but there are many uncertainties and unanswered questions about the viability of their scheme to reprocess their spent fuel into MOX.
Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant:
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The Abe government in Japan is dedicated to nuclear power for the generation of electricity. Aside from safety issues raised by the Fukushima accident, one of the big problems that Japan has always had is its lack of fuel for energy. There are no significant deposits of coal or oil in the Japanese archipelago. One of the reasons that Japan attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor was the fact the U.S. had placed an embargo on oil shipments to Japan. Japan had about fifty operational nuclear power reactors before the Fukushima disaster. Some will probably be restarted but as much as one third may never be operated again because of safety concerns. Like coal and oil, Japan has to import nuclear fuel for the reactors from abroad.
In addition to uranium, light water nuclear reactors can also be fueled with a mixture of uranium and plutonium referred to as MOX. Recovered plutonium is mixed with uranium to create MOX fuel which can be used in fast breeder reactors to create more fissile material as well as for fuel in light water reactors. There were plans to use MOX to fuel the Japanese reactor at Hamaoka in the Shizuoka Prefecture before the Fukushima disaster. Now the Governor of Shizuoka demands that Chubu Electric Power Company start over again to get permission from local jurisdictions before fueling the reactor with MOX. He also said that nuclear power plants should move spent fuel from cooling pools to dry cask storage.
Japan has a major reprocessing operation at Rokkasho at the northeastern tip of the island of Honshu. It includes a high level nuclear waste monitoring facility, a MOX fuel fabrication plant, a uranium enrichment plant and a land fill for low level nuclear waste. Technical problems delayed completion of the plant as well as tripled the original estimation of construction costs. The plant is now compete but will not open until late 2014 because of additional safety requirements following the Fukushima disaster. There have been major protests against starting operations at the plant and petitions against the plant with almost a million signatures.
One of the big concerns is that if the Rokkasho reprocessing plant is not restarted, then the three thousand tons of spent fuel that has been shipped there from reactors all over Japan will have to be returned to the nuclear power plants that sent it. With spent fuel pools already crowded with fuel rods, such a return policy could lead to overloading the pools to the point where the reactors would have to be shut down because they have no place to put the spent fuel when it comes out of the reactors.
The Abe government Basic Energy Plan calls for the continued pursuit of a Japanese nuclear fuel cycle that would place less reliance on foreign sources of fuel but there are many uncertainties and unanswered questions about the viability of their scheme to reprocess their spent fuel into MOX.
Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant:
In 1859, a huge solar storm injected so much energy into the atmosphere of the Earth that it caused major damage to the early power grid and the telegraph system in the United States. Some telegraph operators were shocked by arching electricity in their equipment. Fires broke out and generating systems crashed. This was referred to as the Carrington Event. Since that time, we have built an amazing but vulnerable civilization based on electrical power.
Recently, a huge solar flare just missed the Earth. Had it happened a week before, it might have cause serious damage to our electrical infrastructure as well as the shell of satellites orbiting the earth. The sun has eleven year cycles of solar activity. There are larger fluctuations in solar output that play out over decades and centuries. Historical records suggest that Carrington Events happen about every five hundred years so we will have a new Carrington type event eventually.
If we have a Carrington Event now, it could fry the entire electrical grid including generators, transmission lines, motors, electronics, etc. Without electricity and electronics, our civilization will collapse. We need electricity for manufacture, transportation and storage of food. It is estimated that most supermarkets in most cities have about a week or two worth of food. Without restocking, the food will disappear in weeks. We need electricity to treat water and sewage so drinking water and sewage systems will fail. We do have emergency generators but they generally run on diesel fuel. Once their onsite fuel is consumed within days of the disaster, there will be no more fuel because electricity is needed to pump the fuel out of tanks. Industry needs electricity to function so there will be no way to rebuild our electrical infrastructure. With cascading failures of energy, food, water, industry, transportation, etc. it is likely that billions of people will die in the first year and the rest of the human race will become hunter gatherers living in the ruins.
We have a hundred operating nuclear power reactors in the United States. They all have spent fuel pools where old fuel rods are cooled with water for years as they become less radioactive. Most of the spent fuel pools in the United States are rapidly filling up. If there was a Carrington Event, the national grid that supplies the electricity for the pumps that circulate the cooling water in the spent fuel pools will be gone. Emergency diesel generator will kick in automatically. Within hours or days, the emergency supply of diesel fuel will fail. What little fuel remains in the cities will be used by emergency vehicles and the military fighting fires and civil disorder. The spent fuel pools will heat the remaining water and it will boil off. Radioactive steam will be released. Once exposed to the air, many of the spent fuel rods will spontaneously burst into flame. Hydrogen gas generated by the cladding on the fuel rods will explode, blowing up the buildings housing the spent fuel pools. Smoke, steam and radioactive particles will spew out across the landscape. The Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine in 1986 irradiated an area the size of Alabama. One hundred burning spent fuel pools would likely cover the whole United States with radioactive fallout.
So, in addition to the destruction of our civilization by a Carrington Event, there will be a cloud of radioactive particles falling on the survivors in the ruins and shortening their already wretched lives. Unlike other problems that can arise at particular nuclear power plants, this disaster will be universal. There is no way that we can prevent a Carrington Event which could happen at any time. And, given the guaranteed destruction of human civilization, the burning spent fuel pools will only be adding insult to injury for the few survivors. We may be able to harden our electrical grid and our electronics to the point where they could survive a Carrington Event if we have enough time but only time will tell.
