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 blogged a lot about the decline of the U.S. nuclear industry. The Fukushima disaster, rising costs, aging reactors, cheap natural gas and other factors have been eroding support and investment for new reactors. Recently a report, Renaissance in Reverse: Competition Pushes Aging U.S. Nuclear Reactors to the Brink of Economic Abandonment, came out and offered some details about the future of the nuclear industry in the United States. A few years ago, there were one hundred and four nuclear power reactors in the United States. Four of those reactors have been designated for permanent closure. Some of the closures were related to technical issues but one happened because the operators could not make a profit and could not find a buyer. Another reactor was shut down because it had become too expensive to fix. In addition there have been cancellations of five projects to increase the output of five reactors because of rising costs.
The report utilizes eleven risk factors to project the future of individual reactors. including cost of electricity greater than the current wholesale market, commissioned before 1974, smaller than seven hundred megawatts, major systems broken, suffering multiple outages, single reactor at power plant, suffering long term outages, multiple safety issues and needing retrofit because of new standards triggered by Fukushima disaster. These risk factors were extracted from Wall Street analyses that were intended for investors who might be considering an investment in nuclear power.
When the hundred operating reactors are tested against these risk factors, over three dozen of the operating U.S. power reactors have four or more of the risk factors. The purpose of this report is to indicate which of the existing reactors are most likely going to be retired soon. A review of the report reveals that many of the problems that suggest retirement are not new but have been around since the beginning of nuclear power generation in the U.S. “The problems are endemic to the technology and the sector.” In addition, the rising cost of keep the aging U.S reactor fleet working and the presence of low cost alternative energy sources including cheap natural gas and renewables will likely continue for the next several decades.
When I criticize nuclear power, proponents offer a number of defenses, some of them sound and some questionable. I always patiently explain that nuclear power is an extremely complex subject with economic issues, health issues, political issues, social issues, environmental issues, technical issues and other considerations. While it might be defendable on some specific challenges, when many factors are taken into account, it becomes obvious that nuclear power is just not a viable choice for the future of U.S. energy generation. The analysis in the report goes a long way toward validating my contention. As the Wall Street Journal analysis found, investing in the replacement of old U.S. power reactors with new nuclear reactors is just not a good bet.
Work has begun towards implementing a way to remove the melted fuel at Fukushima Daiichi. fukuleaks.org
In the United Kingdom, Sellafield Ltd is pressing cutting-edge 3D printing technology into service to help meet the challenges of decommissioning one of the world’s oldest and most complex nuclear sites. world-nuclear-news.org
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:
