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.
Earlier this week, leaders from nuclear nations met for the Nuclear Security Summit at the World Forum in the Hague, Netherlands to discuss ways to reduce the global threat of nuclear terrorism. Three such meetings have been held since 2010 organized by the United States. At the first meeting in 2010, a deadline of 2013 was set “to secure all vulnerable nuclear material around the world within four years.” Although this has not been completely accomplished, since 2010 ten countries have gotten rid of their stockpiles of plutonium and highly enriched uranium including Chile, Serbia, Turkey, Austria, Mexico, Sweden, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Vietnam. It was announced at this week’s meeting that a new deadline of 2016 would be set to secure vulnerable nuclear materials.
The Nuclear Threat Initiative think-tank in Washington, D.C. published a report before the meeting that said almost two thousand metric tons of nuclear material that could be used to create nuclear weapons still exists around the world. Some of this nuclear material has very poor secured according to the report.
This week’s meeting will be dedicated “to improving security for global stocks of other radiological isotopes including cobalt 60 and caesium 137 which are used in industry, research and medicine but which could be used in a “dirty bomb” to irradiate a large urban area.” The International Atomic Energy Agency reported last year that, on average, there may be as many as one hundred thefts of small amounts nuclear materials every year. The small quantities stolen to date do not pose a serious threat.
At this week’s meeting, Japan pledged to ship six hundred sixty pounds of weapons-grade plutonium and four hundred forty pounds of highly enriched uranium to the United States. The U.S. had requested that Japan ship their weapons-grade radioactive materials to the U.S. for disposal. China has been complaining lately that it feared the Japanese were going to use the materials to create nuclear weapons. Belgium and Italy have also signed agreements with the U.S. to remove their stockpiles of surplus fissile materials that might be a threat if they fall into the wrong hands.
The Ploughshares Fund is an organization dedicated to nuclear disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation. The head of the Fund applauds the cooperative framework established by the series of meetings but says that much remains to be done. He points out that the current efforts are not sufficiently urgent to match the threat. There are terrorist groups in the world who are actively seeking nuclear materials to create weapons. The big question is whether or not all nuclear materials will be secured before terrorists managed to get their hands of sufficient nuclear materials to construct a weapon. The Ploughshare Fund sees the securing of nuclear materials as a race against time.
I applaud the work of the Ploughshare Fund and the meetings that are being held but I am afraid that they may not be enough. Russia is working on breeder reactors to generate plutonium which they intend to use for nuclear fuel domestically and for export. This will significantly increase the amount of weapons-grade material that will have to be protected in storage and during transportation. In addition, reactors are being built in third world countries that have corrupt governments which are unlikely to properly regulate and secure nuclear materials. Greater global efforts to increase nuclear security will be necessary to protect our civilization.
World Forum in the Hague, Netherlands:
In previous blogs, I have discussed the fact that a few nations are hoping to make nuclear technology and fuel exports a major source of revenue. France, Russia, South Korea, Japan and the United States are involved in this competition to bring their nuclear products to the nuclear market.
The U.S. Department of Commerce predicts that the international market for nuclear technology and fuel will grow from the current five hundred billion dollars to seven hundred forty billion dollars in the next decade. They estimate that every billion dollars worth of nuclear exports will require the creation of five thousand domestic manufacturing jobs in the exporting country. The Nuclear Energy Institute reports that there are seventy one new nuclear power plants currently under construction in the world. In addition, there are one hundred sixty nuclear power plants either being licensed or in the advanced stages of planning.
While Germany and other nuclear nations are rethinking their dependence on nuclear power for generating electricity, third world countries are increasingly attracted to nuclear power. Nuclear powers are often providing foreign aid in the form of loans to third world countries. In turn, the recipient countries are pouring those loans back into nuclear technology from companies in the loaning country.
The U. S. is currently the largest producer of nuclear technology in the world. However, the U.S. nuclear industry has been declining for years. While safety and rising costs have impacted new nuclear projects, cheap natural gas has made nuclear power generation much less attractive to U.S. utilities. There seems to be little domestic support for development of major nuclear export capability.
Russia is perhaps the most aggressive and heavily invested of all the nuclear exporting countries. Thirty seven percent of the new nuclear facilities in the world are being built by Russia. They intend to double their own domestic nuclear power generation by 2020. Their nuclear exports to third world countries are scoring them points in terms of fostering diplomatic and economic ties. Russian nuclear technology is being exported to countries such as Hungary, Venezuela, Turkey and Iran.
In the context of geopolitical influence, U.S. supporters of nuclear power complain that the U.S. is allowing Russia to gain global influence through nuclear exports. They say that U.S. companies cannot compete with Russian companies that get heavy subsidies from the Russian government. Critics of nuclear power point out that the Russian emphasis on breeder reactors and plutonium for nuclear fuel increase the possibility of plutonium being diverted to nuclear weapons production.
Russia has a horrible record on the control of nuclear pollution and power plant waste. They almost certainly will have major nuclear accidents in the future. Some of the third world countries that are seeking nuclear power have very corrupt governments which guarantees that there will be major nuclear accidents in those countries that adopt nuclear power but fail to regulate it successfully.
Eastern Europe has already suffered energy shortages when political disputes with Russia have resulted in a cutback of natural gas flow. Nuclear power exports to the third would will give the exporting countries enormous leverage to influence the foreign policies of the receiving countries. Totally aside from deliberate political machinations, any nuclear manufacturing and/or supply problems in Russia could be devastating to third world countries dependent on Russian nuclear technology and/or nuclear fuel.
The United States would be better off helping third world countries achieve sustainable alternative energy systems than trying to create leverage with nuclear exports as Russia is doing.
Hungary’s Paks nuclear power plant:
From TEPCO’s own data, their contaminated water storage at Fukushima is already 91% full and may overflow by May. fukushima-diary.com
Groundwater 30 feet under Fukushima is highly radioactive. fukushima-diary.com
A number of new nuclear power reactors in China are approaching start-up. world-nuclear-news.com
I have blogged before about the problems at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, New Mexico. This is the only national geological repository for waste generated in the U.S. nuclear weapons program including tools, clothing and other objects that have been contaminated by plutonium and other radioactive isotopes. Around eighteen shipments of waste had been coming to the repository every week. Since 1999, over two million cubic feet of nuclear waste has been stored at the repository. The waste is stored two thousand feet underground in an ancient salt bed. Eventually, the salt around the waste facility is expected to collapse and embed the waste.
Back in February there was a truck fire underground. Then less than two weeks later, something else happened that released radioactive materials including plutonium into the environment. Seventeen workers were exposed. Some of the contamination was detected in the town of Carlsbad. It is still unclear exactly what happened in the repository. The two main possibilities seem to be that a drum of waste generated gases which exploded or the part of the ceiling collapsed onto the drums of waste. It is still too radioactive in the repository for investigators to ascertain exactly what happened. While the repository is shut down during the investigation, new shipments of waste are being diverted to a temporary dump in Texas.
It turns out that there are more than one hundred operating oil and natural gas wells within a mile of the sixteen mile square WIPP site. There are also fracking wells near WIPP. This could be a major problem if fracking fluids penetrate the salt deposit that contains the waste repository. One of the first things considered in selecting a site for a geological waste repository is the degree to which ground water moves through the underground volume being considered. While the original survey of the site found little evidence of ground water penetration, the fracking operations are pumping a mixture of water, sand and toxic chemicals under high pressure which is intended to penetrate the rock strata and force cracks open to release natural gas trapped in the rock. Obviously, fracking near a nuclear waste depository is not a good idea.
Another of the things checked when considering a geological nuclear waste repository is the question of whether the area being considered is seismically active. It has been discovered that fracking can cause earthquakes in places that never experienced them. Perhaps a fracking earthquake recently brought down part of the ceiling at the WIPP.
One critic of the administration of WIPP claims that there has been more efforts to expand the site to take even more waste than to foster a culture of safety to insure that the waste that is stored there is safely contained. Another critic points out that the WIPP was placed in an area that was known to contain accessible hydrocarbon resources. Such areas are not supposed to be considered when siting a nuclear waste repository. It would appear that it was a poor decision to locate WIPP near Carlsbad where future oil and gas wells were likely to be drilled. The residents of southern New Mexico were against locating the WIPP near Carlsbad by a three to one ratio. Local politicians and businessmen strongly supported the WIPP location and overrode the objections of the citizens of the area.
As usual, the authorities are saying that the released radioactive materials pose no threat to public safety. WIPP is shut down for an indeterminate period while waste piles up at laboratories and other facilities or in temporary storage. It may turn out that the WIPP will be deemed unsafe and will be shut down permanently. In that case, we can only hope that the next such repository is placed in a much more suitable location.
