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.
Dr. Strangelove was a 1964 black comedy about the cold war conceived, co-written and directed by the brilliant director Stanley Kubrick. A U.S. Air Force general goes insane and dispatches his bombers to the Soviet Union. The U.S. managed to recall or shoot down all but one of the bombers which ultimately drops a bomb on the Soviet Union. The punch line of the film is that the Soviet Union had constructed a “doomsday” device that will trigger automatically if a nuclear bomb is dropped on the Soviet Union but the rest of the world did not know about it. The film ends with the destruction of the world. It turns out that the plot of the film was not as preposterous as some might think.
Prior to the 1980s, it was assumed by the Soviets that they would have at least thirty minutes warning if the U.S. attempted to launch a first strike against the Soviet Union. This would provide enough time for a retaliatory launch by the Soviets. However, with the increasing accuracy of U.S. submarine missiles during the 1980s, the Soviets had to reconsider their ability to launch a retaliatory strike before the U.S. missiles hit their targets and disabled the Soviet nuclear capacity. U.S. submarines could approach the coast of the Soviet Union and launch missiles that could strike their targets within three minutes. This meant that Soviet missiles could be destroyed in their silos before they could launch.
After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian military sources admitted that the Soviet Union had developed a fail-safe method of insuring that the Soviet Union could survive a first strike nuclear attack and retaliate successfully. The system is called Perimeter (also known as Dead Hand). Perimeter would automatically launch all missiles, triggered by a combination of light, radioactivity and overpressure, even if every nuclear command center and all of their leaders were destroyed. This system is similar to the doomsday device in Dr. Strangelove. Apparently the system still exists and is fully operational.
The post-Soviet Russian military sources claimed that the system would only be activated in case of a major international crisis and would be not be left on all the time. One of the reasons given for the development and deployment of the Perimeter system was that it would tend to lessen the risk of an accidental launch by panicked officers in a time of international tension. The reasoning was that if military planners could be assured that no matter what happened, if the Soviet Union had been attacked, a successful retaliation could be carried out there would be less inclination to launch missiles in ambiguous circumstances.
Of course, the possibility exists that a nuclear detonation within the Soviet Union coupled with a sabotage of communication systems might result in Perimeter launching an all out nuclear attack on the United States. It would certainly be better for the world if global nuclear disarmament were carried out and the Perimeter system permanently disabled. As I have pointed out in past blog posts, if either the U.S. or Russia launched only ten percent of their nuclear arsenals, the resultant nuclear winter would end human civilization. No one “wins” a nuclear war.
Japanese school children are being sent into a contaminated area for a field trip to plant rice. fukushima-diary.com
More than 3,000 evacuees die since Fukushima disaster. www3.nhk.or.jp
A ceremony has been held to mark the official start of uranium mining operations at the Husab project in Namibia. world-nuclear-news.org
Strange deaths have been plaguing the India nuclear scientists for a decade. In 2004, there were allegations that an armed group tried to abduct an official with India’s Nuclear Power Corporation (NPC) but the man escaped. In 2009, an employee of NPC named Ravi Mule was murdered. The police were unable to make any progress in the case and his family was left to investigate on their own. Weeks later, the body of Lokanathan Mahalingam, another nuclear scientist was found in the same forest where the attempted abduction occurred five years earlier. A forensic laboratory issued a report claiming that Mahalingam’s death was a suicide but this judgment was challenged by people in India and Pakistani officials. In 2011, a former scientist named Uma Rao was found dead. The official ruling was suicide but once again there was no evidence that Rao was suicidal and his family contested the ruling.
In October of 2013, two of the top engineers for India’s first nuclear powered submarine were found dead with their bodies laying on railroad tracks. The bodies were recovered before being run over by trains. There were no marks on the bodies raising the suggestion that they had been poisoned before being placed on the tracks. The official ruling was that it was all an unfortunate accident. A journalist who has been following the case has reported that there was no evidence of depression or other family problems that could have been the cause of suicide.
If the police cannot make sense of a death, they may label it as unexplained. Once a case has been given this label, there is often little further attempt to solve it. One man died with hemorrhaging inside his skull. There were no cuts, bruises or other signs of injuries to his head so the case was labeled unexplained and further investigations not vigorously pursued.
Critics of the police investigation of deaths of the two nuclear submarine engineers say that the police gave up too soon. They point out that the suicide or murder of two men working on such an important Indian military project should have generated much more publicity and should have been investigated more vigorously. They point to the explosions that sunk an Indian submarine in 2013 as possible deliberate sabotage and complain that it has been inadequately investigated. Whistleblowers in the nuclear industry are afraid that they are being targeted and many are leaving India to work in other countries.
There have been a number of obvious murders of nuclear scientists in Iran. Someone is trying to slow down or stop Iranian nuclear research and development. There are accusations that the United States and/or Israel are behind the murders. Those who fear that Indian scientists are also being targeted say that it could be the United States, China or Pakistan who are trying to interfere with the Indian nuclear program.
These deaths may be coincidental suicides and accidents but they certainly appear to be suspicious. It may be that the Indian government has some idea of who is doing it but is not going public with their suspicions for reasons of national security.
Rolls-Royce plans to focus more on civilian nuclear power following the sale of its gas turbine and compressor business to Siemens. nuclearstreet.com
The Obama administration on Thursday submitted to Congress a nuclear trade accord with Vietnam after a reported Tuesday signing ceremony. nationaljournal.com
Hanford is the gift that keeps on giving. I could blog about nothing but the cleanup work at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation and never run out of material. Recently there have been a series of Hanford Cleanup public meeting in Seattle, Portland and Richland. Well prepared officials from Hanford came to the meetings with slide shows and glossy handouts explaining how well everything is going. One thing that they failed to mention is the explosion at the Hanford Plutonium Finishing Plant (PFP) during demolition work a couple of weeks ago. The PFP may be the most radioactively contaminated building in the United States.
Workers at the Plutonium Finishing Plant reported that they first saw a spark and then flames shot out of a pipe that workers cutting into. Hanford management said that the incident was just a small pop but the workers who witnessed it said that it was a loud blast that was more like a shotgun being fired. The pipe was contained in a special structure to prevent worker exposure. However, if the pipe broke there was a possibility that workers could have inhaled particles of plutonium which could have had deadly consequences.
CH2M HILL Plateau Remediation Company(CHPRC) is the prime contractor for the environmental cleanup of the Central Plateau at the Hanford Site. A union representative suggested that CHPRC was downplaying the seriousness of the incident to avoid fines and litigation that could delay work..They feel that CHPRC is more interested in schedules and budgets that worker safety. The union representative also said that when workers express concerns about risks and safety, it “falls on deaf ears.” There have been charges that CHPRC has decided that they do not want experienced workers at the PFP because experienced workers raise too many uncomfortable questions.
CHPRC issued a stop order for pipe cutting following the incident. Some workers have said that they don’t think enough is being done to insure their future safety when work on the pipes resumes. CHPRC pointed out that the workers responded appropriately and no one was exposed to the plutonium in the pipe. They also said that there was no evidence of a release of radioactive materials from the pipe. For the time being the use of the mechanical pipe cutting equipment will be halted until it can be determined exactly what caused the explosion.
The U.S. Department of Energy has issued a statement that they are monitoring the response of CHPRC to the incident and will continue to do so until the cause has been determined and steps are taken to prevent a recurrence.
Recently there was an explosive release of vapors from waste storage tanks at Hanford. Twenty four workers were briefly hospitalized and treated for exposure to toxic fumes. Hanford management said that no one sustained serious injuries and all have returned to work. Some of the workers who were hospitalized have disagreed with the Hanford announcement saying that everyone has not returned to work and at least one man sustained injuries that will cause long term health problems.
Over and over Hanford management has been accused of putting budgets and schedules ahead of worker safety and downplaying the seriousness of any accidents. These are just two of the most recent incidents. While I agree that the contamination at Hanford must be cleaned up as quickly as possible, it should not be at the cost of workers’ health and lives.
Unit 1 at Maryland’s Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant returned to service over the weekend following an automatic reactor trip Thursday. nuclearstreet.com
The company building the world’s first AP1000 reactors in China has filed for a $2.6 billion IPO to raise capital for further nuclear plant construction. nuclearstreet.com
The G7 group of industrialized nations has focused on energy security, prioritizing low-carbon sources including nuclear power for deployment in an effort to establish resilient low-carbon power systems. world-nuclear-news.org
