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.
(Continued from Part One)
Treatment of whistleblowers was a major topic at the recent Hanford public meeting. There have been reports of a “culture of fear” among Hanford workers which made people reluctant to raise safety issues. In the past, whistleblowers have been demoted and even fired. Of course, a Hanford rep said that that was a thing of the past and he had personally talked to anyone who had a complaint or concern when he started work there a few years ago.
The Vitrification Plant was also a focus of the presentations and discussion period. The plant is intended to convert nuclear waste from the underground tanks into glass logs for permanent storage. The plant is behind schedule and over budget. Construction had to stop because of major technical issues like corrosion of pipes and possible build up of hydrogen gas in the pipes. Extra processing stages are being designed and built to deal with the problem. The Hanford reps were optimistic that this time they would be able to solve all the problems and get the plant working to convert nuclear waste into glass logs for permanent storage. They hope to be starting operations in a few years. I was not as confident as they were given that there are still major design problems and technical challenges to overcome.
There was a pie chart that showed how the five billion Federal dollars are being divided up among Federal nuclear installations around the country. Because Hanford is one of the most radioactively polluted sites in the U.S., it receives about a billion dollars from the U.S. government. That sounds like a lot but the Hanford rep said that about half of that money was used just to “keep the lights on” and pay salaries. I asked whether he was confident that that Federal money would continue to be available. I mentioned that a U.S. program to secure dangerous nuclear materials was being scaled back in the new Federal budget and expressed concern that if there were future financial crises in the U.S., the cleanup money might be reduced or even cut off.
Hanford constructed something called the Central Waste Complex in the middle of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation where drums of waste were stored, some of them outside, exposed to the elements. This was done without a Washington State Permit and so it is an illegal storage area. Even in a legal storage area for such waste, the drums are only supposed to be stored that way for a year. Some of the drums in the Complex have been there eighteen years. The State and DoE are arguing about what must be done.
There has been a great deal of work done at Hanford to clean up the legacy of decades of nuclear weapons development. There are a lot of very capable and dedicated people working there. I believe them when they say that they work hard every day at Hanford to clean up the horrible pollution there and turn the land back into a place that can be used for recreation. They were obviously well prepared for the meeting to reassure the public that everything that can and should be done is being done to clean up the Hanford mess. Unfortunately, given the Hanford track record of illegal activity, delaying action, fighting Washington State orders, lying, endangering workers and incompetence, I am not quite as optimistic as the Hanford reps were at the meeting. We can only hope that Hanford has turned the corner and that the cleanup will proceed safely and efficiently from now on.
Hanford Central Waste Complex:
I attended a public meeting at the Seattle Center last night where representative from Hanford presented information about the current cleanup efforts. These meeting are supposed to be held once a year in Seattle, Portland and Richland but it has been two years since the last round of meetings. It was a small gathering and the number of people who were there because it was their job were about equal to the number of concerned citizens.
There were glossy handout sheets, big posters, video clips and slide shows detailing work being done to clean up different areas of Hanford. The presenters from the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) and the Washington State Department of Ecology were uniformly upbeat. Their opinion was that work is progressing, there have been some problems and some challenges remain but the outlook is rosy and everything is under control. They repeatedly said that there was no danger to the public.
After the official presentation, there were a number of questions from concerned citizens as wells as representatives of public groups such as Hearts of American North West, Physicians for Social Responsibility and Hanford Challenge. As one woman said, she appreciated the fact that some of the presenters did mention problems as well as progress but she would have appreciated more focus on the problems and challenges.
Washington State Representative Gerry Pollet was at the meeting as part of the Heart of American Northwest contingent, an environmental group that has been playing watchdog for the Hanford Cleanup for years. Rep. Pollet was concerned about the fact that while the DoE was voicing commitment to pumping waste out of a few leaking tanks, they had not given any dates for the work on some of the tanks. There has been a dispute between Washington State and DoE over a double walled tank called AY-102 that has been leaking for two years. This is much longer that provided for in Washington State law for dealing with leaking tanks. The State has issued an order for DoE to start pumping out that tank in September. One of the facts that emerged from the discussion was that unless there was a solid deadline for action, it would be difficult to get Federal money for work on the rest of the tanks.
The issue of worker safety was raised with special emphasis on recent injury to Hanford workers when toxic vapors escaped some of the tanks of waste. Over a dozen people had to be treated for the effects of the fumes. I questioned why Hanford representatives had played down the injuries of some of the workers. Hanford said that everyone had recovered and was back at work but I saw television interviews where some workers said that they were suffering long term heath effects and that they had not returned to work. The Hanford reps at the meeting gave the usual party line about how important safety was and that they were doing everything possible to insure health of workers. (Continued in Part Two)
Undergound tanks at Hanford:
Radioactive spike of cesium-137 in ocean off Fukushima. enenews.com
Cancer increase expected on US. West Coast from Fukushima exposures. enenews.com
A binding decision to construct and finance the Hanhikivi nuclear power plant in Finland has been made by the shareholders of Fennovoima, including Russian state nuclear company Rosatom. world-nuclear-news.org
Radioactive spike of cesium-137 in ocean off Fukushima. enenews.com
Cancer increase expected on US. West Coast from Fukushima exposures. enenews.com
A binding decision to construct and finance the Hanhikivi nuclear power plant in Finland has been made by the shareholders of Fennovoima, including Russian state nuclear company Rosatom. world-nuclear-news.org
There has been publicity lately touting the promise of small modular reactors (SMR). As defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency, a “small modular reactor” is a nuclear reactor with an output of less than three hundred megawatts. However, in the general usage of term, any reactor with an output of less than five hundred megawatts is considered to be a small reactor. The current discussion of SMRs refers to reactors that are built in a factory and transported to the site where they will operate. In addition to reducing on-site construction, these SMRs are intended to be more efficient in containment and more secure for nuclear materials.
While the positive attributes of SMRs are attractive, there are also a number of negatives. As with any new reactor design, a great of work, time and money will have to be spent to build and test SMRs before any could be licensed. The big question is whether it will be cheaper and safer to build two SMRs to generate a gigawatt as opposed to building one conventional reactor to generate that same gigawatt. There is also a concern that if there is a problem in the design of the reactors or in the production line in the factory, every SMR produced will have that same problem. There is a lot of money being dedicated to SMR research but some companies have decided that SMRs are not a good bet.
Babcock & Wilcox has a SMR design called “mPower.” They signed a five year agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) for cost matching of one hundred fifty million dollars a year to develop their mPower design with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) as the first customer. They hoped to see the construction of the first unit by 2022. They expected to be able to sign up other customers and to obtain major investment capital for the project.
Now, one year after the contracts were signed, B & W have not been able to find any new customers or to obtain any major investors. As a result, B & W has decided to reduce spending on mPower from one hundred fifty million dollars to a maximum of fifteen million dollars per year. B & W is currently renegotiating the contracts with DoE and the TVA in hopes of finding a way to restructure and continue the program.
The DoE has a four hundred and fifty million dollar commitment to the development of SMRs. mPower was one of two projects that the DoE is been involved in. The other project is based on the “NuScale” design for a forty five megawatt SMR. Westinghouse lost out in the competition for DoE collaboration and is scaling back its work on a two hundred twenty megawatt SMR design.
There are currently SMR development projects in other countries. Argentina is working on their twenty seven megawatt CAREM SMR design in Atucha. China is working on two one hundred and five megawatt HTR SMRs at Shidaowan. Russia is developing two thirty five megawatt KLT-40S SMRs which they intend to install on a barge to create the Akademik Lomonosov floating power plant that can be towed to where ever it is needed.
While these projects are interesting, SMRs are too little and too late to make much of an impact on the global nuclear industry.
Babcock & Wilcox diagram of the mPower Small Modular Reactor:
