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.
I have mentioned nuclear batteries in past blog posts. They are especially useful for long term low power devices such as space probes or medical implants. Research into the betavolatic version of nuclear battery technology is over fifty years old. Early cardiac pacemakers used a nuclear battery based on promethium until lower cost lithium ion batteries became available.
Betavoltaics are a type of nuclear battery that utilizes beta particles (high energy electrons). In the conventional designs, the beta particles move through a semiconductor and produce an electric current. The semiconductor material in early betavoltaics was inefficient in producing electricity so high energy and dangerous radioactive isotopes had to be used. As time went by, better and better semiconductor materials were developed and less dangerous radioactive isotopes such as tritium could be used. There was still the problem with the slow degradation of the semiconductor material as it was damaged by the high energy electrons. As the semiconductor deteriorated, the production of electricity decreased.
In 2012, City Labs introduced its NanoTritium betavoltaic power source. This device is configured in the form of an electronic chip that can be plugged into a circuit board. The half life of tritium is about twelve years and City Labs says that it NanoTritium battery can provide energy to electronic devices for up to twenty years. It is sturdy and hermetically sealed with a solid form of tritium that should increase safety and reliability. It can withstand temperatures over a hundred degree Celsius range as well as severe vibrations and a large ranges of altitudes. The NanoTritium battery is the first commercially available betavoltaic nuclear battery for companies that do not have a license to handle radioactive materials. This will make it attractive for a much wider range of applications than the old betavoltaics. The current price of the battery is a few thousand dollars and that is expect to drop with increased production.
Recently, researchers at the University of Missouri announced the development of a new type of betavoltaic battery. Instead of being based on solid semiconductor material that was vulnerable to degradation, the new batteries utilize water. Water can absorb a great deal of nuclear energy, generating free radicals. These ionized versions of hydrogen, oxygen and water molecules make it possible to use the solution to generate power. The new battery utilizes a strontium-90 isotope. A titanium dioxide electrode with structures at the nano level and a platinum coating converts the electrochemical energy in the water into electrons that generate a flow of electricity.
These new betavoltaics could be game-changers for a number of industries as their features such as small size, high output, reliability, safety, cost and relaxed licensing make them candidates for power sources for a wider variety of devices. They could be a boon to medical equipment manufacturers who are constantly inventing new implantable devices that need small reliable long lived batteries.
I have posted before about how close the world came to a nuclear war on several occasions. Sometimes it came down to the decision of one man. One human being who could decide the fate of the entire human race in a matter of moments. Fortunately for us, each time, that individual decided against nuclear suicide. These people were highly trained and had their orders from their superiors but something stopped them at the crucial moment. I like to think that it was a matter of basic humanity. When the choice came, they could not bring themselves to contribute to the death of billions and the end of human civilization.
On September 26, 1983, a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Air Defence Forces named Stanislav Petrov was stationed at Serpukhov, a secret military bunker near Moscow in the U.S.S.R. He was charged with monitoring Oko which was the Soviet Union’s early warning system to detect a nuclear attack. If the Oko system issued an alert of a nuclear attack, Petrov was to report the alert to his superiors. Early in the morning of the 26, one of the satellites in the Oko system reported that the United States had just launched five ballistic missiles toward the U.S.S.R.
Three weeks before the Oko alert on the 26th, the Soviets had shot down a South Korean airliner that strayed into a sensitive area in U.S.S.R. Following the crash of the airliner, rhetoric heated up on both sides and the Cold War got colder. Considering this timeline and the belligerence of both nations, Petrov had to take the Oko launch alert seriously.
Petrov later reported that he had “a funny feeling in my gut” that the Oko launch alert was a false alarm. He pointed out that if the U.S. was going to launch a nuclear attack on the U.S.S.R., it would have launch many more missiles than the five reported. Additionally, the Soviet national radar system was not reporting radar corroboration of the supposed launches. And, finally, he admitted that he did not have full confidence in the Oko alert system when it came to detecting nuclear launches. Petrov reported the Oko alert to his superiors as a false alarm as was later proven to be the case.
Another such episode occurred when the U.S. was blockading Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. A Soviet naval vessel crossed the line that the U.S. had announced and it was being monitored by a U.S. naval vessel. The protocol was to go to high alert if a Soviet vessel crossed the line. The Captain of the U.S. vessel should have informed Washington, D.C. of the incursion in the forbidden zone which would have moved our forces to the high alert status. That would have caused the U.S.S.R. to do the same and World War Three might have been the result. Instead, the Captain of the U.S. vessel decided that the Soviet vessel had strayed off course and simply waited to see what would happen. The Soviet vessel was off course and soon sailed back out of the forbidden zone. The U.S. Captain said that he just couldn’t bring himself to launch a chain of events that might have destroyed human civilization.
Russia inherited the Perimeter automatic retaliatory system from the Soviets. The Perimeter system has a network of sensors to detect nuclear blasts inside Russia. If the system is unable to communicate with Central Command, then it will launch the Russia nuclear arsenal at the United States. I would much prefer to have a human being with common sense and empathy for other people deciding whether to launch a nuclear war.
Oko Satellite:
Nuclear Expert says that ‘mystery’ Fukushima plutonium was found. enenews.com
The Finnish government has decided not to grant Teollisuuden Voima Oyj (TVO) an extension to its 2010 decision in principle for the construction of a fourth unit at the Olkiluoto nuclear power plant. world-nuclear-news.org
