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.
Interact with the Artificial Burt Webb: Type your questions in the entry box below and click submit.
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.
In 1937, an artificial island called Treasure Island was built from fill and sand for the 1939-1940 Golden Gate International Exposition to celebrate the recently completed Golden Gate Bridge and the Oakland Bay Bridge. Treasure Island was purchased by the U.S. Navy during World War II for use as a naval training academy.
In 1946, the Navy detonated atomic bombs on the Bikini Atoll. Ships that were present in the area of the tests were damaged by the blasts and coated with radioactive calcium by fallout. Some of these ships came back to San Francisco. One of the contaminated ships from the Bikini tests was used as a class room on Treasure Island to prepare naval recruits for nuclear warfare. Some of the recruits expressed concerns about exposure to radioactive contamination.
In 1950, a student at the Damage Control Training Center on Treasure Island spilled radium-226. The Navy decontaminated the building and shipped dozens of barrels of the resulting waste out to sea. The building remained seriously contaminated even after the cleanup. In 1955, memos about Treasure Island mention that there was a shortage of staff and poor record-keeping.
In 1956, a barge designated as YFNB-29 arrived at Treasure Island covered in radioactive rust. A handwritten note stated that bilge pumps, salt water lines and diesel engines must not be worked on without a radiological survey and radiation safety precautions. In 1957, a mocked-up landlocked ship called the U.S.S. Pandemonium is fitted with equipment to raise and lower samples of cesium-137 so sailors can rehearse using radiation detection devices.
In 1966, the Navy built a Damage Control School on Treasure Island and rebuilt the Pandemonium so it could be issued a license to store cesium-137 in a vault on the island. In 1972, the chief of naval technical training for Treasure Island filed an application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for renewal of a license to store twelve radioactive samples on the Island including cobal-60 and cesium 137. In 1974, Navy Radiological Affairs Support officers visited the island and found samples of cesium-137, plutonium, and “a number of miscellaneous radioluminescent devices, held in a plastic bag.” The inspectors ordered that these samples and devices be disposed of according to standard procedures which allowed them to be buried on the island.
In 1982, the Navy issues a manual that explained the proper use of radioactive material in the classrooms on Treasure Island. The manual covered plutonium, tritium and cesium-137. There are warnings in the manual for the students to avoid being exposed to leaking radiation for nuclear materials. In 1986, inspectors from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the National Institutes of Health and the Navy’s Radiological Affairs Support Office visited Treasure Island. The inspectors informed officials on the island that they had not followed radioactive safety protocol. The Treasure Island staff had failed to routinely check for leakage of plutonium, cesium and other materials. In 1988, a report of an inspection by the Naval Facilities Engineering Command discussed potential radioactive contaminants such as potassium-42, sodium-24, radium-226, cesium-137 and plutonium-239 on the island.
In 1993, there was an inventory of all radioactive materials on Treasure Island. In all ninety eight radioactive samples were listed including cesium-137, plutonium-239, strontium-90, cadmium-109 and cobalt-60. In 1997, following the decommissioning of the Naval facilities on Treasure Island, The Treasure Island Citizens Reuse Committee began planning for redevelopment of the island including apartments, commercial development and open spaces.
Treasure Island under construction:
TEPCO considers tracking workers by location in Fukushima plant which has been having a series of suspicious “accidents.” fukushima-diary.com
On 4/23/2014, TEPCO announced that they had received the 27th financial support from the Nuclear Damage Liability Facilitation Fund . fukushima-diary.com
A mining license for the Retortillo deposit in western Spain has been granted to Berkeley Resources by the regional government of Castilla and León. world-nuclear-news.org
DTE Energy’s Fermi 2 nuclear plant on Lake Erie has restarted after an unplanned outage to replace a transformer. nuclearstreet.com
Today I am going to blog about problems with the military handling of nuclear materials in the United Kingdom.
In 2010, the MoD reported that there had been sixteen crashed involving U.K. nuclear submarines since 1988 with half of the accidents occurring in the waters off Scotland. Critics in Parliament demanded to know why there were repeated groundings of nuclear submarines and suggested that the MoD was not learning from its failures. In addition to the submarine crashes, the report discusses the handling of over two hundred Trident warheads which has been “plagued by confusion, shortcomings and non-compliance with regulations” according to MoD internal safety agents.
The reports were produced between 2005 and 2006 and the MoD had been trying to keep them secret. They cover dozens of problems “ensuring the safety of the weapons program.” The worst problems were at the Faslane nuclear submarine base and the Coulport nuclear bomb storage facility in Argyll. Shortage of resources were mentioned as well as “an apparent lack of understanding of the needs of regulators.” There were difficulties with replacing key warhead components and the use of a controversial lift system for raising submarines out of the water.
A recent report from the Ministry of Defence mentions on two hundred and sixty two safety incidents that have been reported at the Clyde naval bases on the coast of Scotland over the past five years. The reported incidences occurred at the Faslane nuclear submarine base and the Coulport nuclear bomb storage facility in Argyll. More than three quarters of the incidence involve human error. Although the MoD report does not give details on the incidences, previous reports have mentioned radioactive contamination, small fires, and failure to follow safety rules. The report does not give any numbers for incidences directly involving nuclear weapons. However, the report does mention “false alarms and systems failures” with an “environmental hazard detection system” for the warheads.
The Scottish National Party (SNP) which supports independence from the United Kingdom and is strongly opposed to nuclear weapons jumped on the report to bolster their call for the removal of the Clyde naval bases from Scotland. A spokesman said that the report was “chilling” and “shocking.” He said that it showed that the report showed that safety at the naval bases was not sufficient. He criticized plans to increase the number of submarines at Faslane by seven Astute-class subs as irresponsible in view of their inability to safely deal with the submarines that are already based there. If Scotland votes for independence, the SNP will demand that the Clyde naval base be shut down and all nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons infrastructure be removed from Scottish soil. The MoD has warned that that would be very difficult.
United Kingdom Astute Class nuclear submarine:
Last week I wrote a couple of posts about the public presentation by representatives of the U.S. Department of Energy and Washington State with respect to the cleanup of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. In the blog posts, I mentioned that there was a serious legal conflict between the U.S. DoE and Washington over the cleanup of all the radioactive wastes polluting the site from decades of work on nuclear weapons for the United States arsenal.
In 2010, a Federal Court consent decree had set strict milestones for the cleanup. Since then, the U.S. DoE has said that the required actions could not be carried out on the required schedule because of the scientific complexity of the situation at Hanford. It proposed that the hard deadlines for specific action in the consent decree be replaced with “future unspecified milestones to be set on an open-ended rolling basis.” Washington State had been threatening to take the U.S. DoE back to court to force the U.S. DoE to carry out the work on the schedule set by the court. Washington State also proposed a new set of deadlines and demanded that all cleanup work be carried out by 2047.
On Friday of last week, the State and the Federal government rejected each other’s proposals. The U.S. DoE proposal had requested the elimination of many of the deadlines included in the Federal Court decision. This was totally unacceptable to the State and the State rejected the U.S. DoE proposal. Later in the day, the U.S. Justice Department sent a letter to the Washington State Department of Ecology. In the letter, the Justice Department rejected the Washington State proposal to accelerate the cleanup. The U.S. DoE had said that the Washington State proposal ignored technical realities and budget problems at the U.S. DoE.
One major problem at Hanford concerns the Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) which I have covered in previous blog posts. The Waste Treatment Plant is intended to incorporate the waste from the underground tanks in glass logs which will then be buried. Construction on the plant was halted because the original design did not take into accounts corrosion in the pipes and hydrogen gas buildup. There has been extensive redesign for the plant including the creation of whole new processing stages and alternative processing pathways. The consent decree requires that the WTP be fully operational by 2022.
The U.S. DoE has said that ” setting deadlines that likely will be missed creates false expectations in the community and with the State, and erodes confidence in the cleanup work.” The cleanup has been in process for decades and has been repeatedly plagued by incompetence, illegal behavior on the part of U.S. DoE, accidents, lies and missed deadlines. At this point, I don’t think that there is much confidence left in the community and the State. Washington State has the option of invoking a forty day process of negotiation as provided for in the consent decree. If an agreement between U.S. DoE and the State of Washington cannot be reached in such negotiations, then Washington State may request that the Federal Court order the U.S. DoE to adhere to the State proposal. Given the history of Hanford, I would not be surprised to see this case back in Federal Court.
