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.
I have covered the world in this blog but sometimes you wind up in your own backyard. Problems at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation are like the rain in Seattle, they just keep coming. The Federal Government and the State of Washington are arguing over the cleanup of Hanford which is the most contaminated radioactive waste site in the country.
Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz is meeting with Washington Governor Jay Inslee and other state officials in Olympia this week. The Director of the Washington State Department of Ecology (WSDoE) and the top nuclear program manager of the state will also attend the meetings. The U.S. Department of Energy (USDoE) owns the Hanford Nuclear Reservation where toxic radioactive waste accumulated for decades as the U.S. nuclear arsenal was developed. The site is regulated by the WSDoE and the Federal EPA. The cleanup has been going on since 1989 when weapons production ended. There have been technical problems, schedule delays, radioactive material leaks from buried tanks, charges of incompetent management and a definite lack of transparency.
One of the topics for the meeting will be problems with execution of a consent decree that was signed by Washington State and the Federal Government. The USDoE has already started missing deadlines associated with startup of the Waste Treatment Plant and other goals. There is a possibility that the State of Washington will take the Federal Government to court over the delays.
There are hundreds of tanks full of radioactive waste buried at Hanford. Most are single-walled tanks some of which are leaking. Double-walled tanks were developed so the waste could be moved into storage that was not supposed to leak. Unfortunately, it turned out that the double walled tanks leak too. A particular double-walled tank known as AY-102 has been leaking for over two years. Washington State law says that leaking tanks need to be emptied within twenty four hours. AY-102 has not been emptied and submitted plans don’t have any provision to pump it out for at least two year.
Washington State said that the Department of Energy’s plan “demonstrates the Federal Government’s lack of commitment to set a firm, near-term schedule for the removal of waste from leaking double-shell Tank AY-102…On initial review, the plan lacks accountability to meet state law.”
Secretary Moniz visited Hanford in June of 2013. During his visit, Moniz met with local officials, whistleblowers, the media and other people with an interest in the Hanford cleanup. There are no such plan for his current visit which reinforces the perception that the Federal process is not transparent or accountable.
I personally attended a briefing thrown by Hanford staff to explain to the public why uranium is still leaking into the Columbia River from Hanford where millions of gallons of radioactive waste was poured into unlined trenches. The Hanford representatives were congenial and knowledgeable. They reassured the audience that they knew the problem, knew the solution and had a schedule for the work. Unfortunately, it turned out that there were also knowledgeable people in the audience who repeatedly called out the Hanford people on thing they were not saying and problems with their analysis and plans. I saw firsthand the lack of transparency and accountability at Hanford. After all the money that the U.S. Government spent on nuclear weapons, apparently they are either too stingy or too incompetent to clean up the mess they left at Hanford.
Activists have been fighting against nuclear weapons for decades. With the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, it seemed that nuclear disarmament had a real chance. A number of international treaties had been signed over the decades to encourage nuclear armed nations to get rid of their nuclear weapons and to try to prevent non-nuclear nations from getting nuclear weapons. The U.S. and the Soviet Union/Russians had the biggest nuclear arsenals. Tens of thousands of warheads were built. This is a massive case of overkill because it is estimated that a hundred nuclear warheads could cause a nuclear winter and destroy human civilization.
Today, the U.S. and the Russians have about fifteen hundred warheads ready to launch and another three thousand warheads in reserve. A few other nations have a hundred or more warheads but the overall threat of nuclear war has been receding. As a matter of fact, U.S. nuclear power reactors have been running on fuel created by converted weapons-grade plutonium from Russian nukes for the last fifteen years.
President Obama wrote his senior thesis about the nuclear arms race and the nuclear freeze campaign. Early in his first term as President, Obama said “So today, I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” This was a very promising sign to the anti-nuclear weapons crowd after years of the belligerence of the Bush Administration. And, Obama did move forward with the New Start Treaty that lowered the ceiling for deployed nuclear weapons to fifteen hundred warheads as mentioned above. The New Start Treaty also imposed limits on the different delivery systems that can deploy nuclear warheads.
However, the Obama State Department has been reluctant to seek ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty because they are concerned that there would not be enough votes to pass it. The State Department has not been applying the pressure necessary to get Pakistan to stop building nuclear warheads. There appears to inconsistency in the Obama administration’s efforts on behalf of nuclear disarmament.
Obama has just released his fiscal budget for 2015. The budget calls for more spending on design, maintenance, and production of nuclear weapons than Reagan spent in 1985 which was the historical maximum for U.S. government nuclear weapons expenditures. The budget request for nuclear weapons is seven percent bigger for 2016. Obama’s Opportunity, Growth and Security Initiative (OGSI) calls for spending an additional five hundred million dollars on nuclear warheads. Russia has recently been spending more on nuclear weapons systems.
Despite some progress in nuclear disarmament, it would appear that more money will be spent on weapons systems whose use would end human civilization. There are many more pressing needs in our country which would benefit from increased spending. Now that the U.S. and Russia are at odds over Russia’s takeover of Crimea, it is even more important than ever to find a way to step back from the brink of nuclear war and get rid of these horrible weapons.
Los Alamos Study Group graph:
Activists have been fighting against nuclear weapons for decades. With the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, it seemed that nuclear disarmament had a real chance. A number of international treaties had been signed over the decades to encourage nuclear armed nations to get rid of their nuclear weapons and to try to prevent non-nuclear nations from getting nuclear weapons. The U.S. and the Soviet Union/Russians had the biggest nuclear arsenals. Tens of thousands of warheads were built. This is a massive case of overkill because it is estimated that a hundred nuclear warheads could cause a nuclear winter and destroy human civilization.
Today, the U.S. and the Russians have about fifteen hundred warheads ready to launch and another three thousand warheads in reserve. A few other nations have a hundred or more warheads but the overall threat of nuclear war has been receding. As a matter of fact, U.S. nuclear power reactors have been running on fuel created by converted weapons-grade plutonium from Russian nukes for the last fifteen years.
President Obama wrote his senior thesis about the nuclear arms race and the nuclear freeze campaign. Early in his first term as President, Obama said “So today, I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” This was a very promising sign to the anti-nuclear weapons crowd after years of the belligerence of the Bush Administration. And, Obama did move forward with the New Start Treaty that lowered the ceiling for deployed nuclear weapons to fifteen hundred warheads as mentioned above. The New Start Treaty also imposed limits on the different delivery systems that can deploy nuclear warheads.
However, the Obama State Department has been reluctant to seek ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty because they are concerned that there would not be enough votes to pass it. The State Department has not been applying the pressure necessary to get Pakistan to stop building nuclear warheads. There appears to inconsistency in the Obama administration’s efforts on behalf of nuclear disarmament.
Obama has just released his fiscal budget for 2015. The budget calls for more spending on design, maintenance, and production of nuclear weapons than Reagan spent in 1985 which was the historical maximum for U.S. government nuclear weapons expenditures. The budget request for nuclear weapons is seven percent bigger for 2016. Obama’s Opportunity, Growth and Security Initiative (OGSI) calls for spending an additional five hundred million dollars on nuclear warheads. Russia has recently been spending more on nuclear weapons systems.
Despite some progress in nuclear disarmament, it would appear that more money will be spent on weapons systems whose use would end human civilization. There are many more pressing needs in our country which would benefit from increased spending. Now that the U.S. and Russia are at odds over Russia’s takeover of Crimea, it is even more important than ever to find a way to step back from the brink of nuclear war and get rid of these horrible weapons.
Los Alamos Study Group graph:
I have remarked in previous blog posts that nuclear regulation is often inconsistent and insufficient. Many national regulatory agencies have been “captured” by the industry that they are suppose to regulate. In the last four years, there has been a decline in the number of events that caused the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to stage “special inspections” at U.S. nuclear power plants. In 2010, there were nineteen such events but in 2013, there were only fourteen. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) calls these events “near misses.” I certainly hope that they are exaggerating.
For the most part, the NRC does a good job of enforcing safety regulations at the one hundred U.S. nuclear power plants. This enforcement protects workers and the public from exposure to radiation. Recently, the NRC has increased oversight on the U.S. fleet of reactors, many of which have passed or are nearing their original projected lifespan.
A UCS recent report criticizes the NRC for not requiring that spent nuclear fuel at nuclear power plants be transferred from the spent fuel pools to dry cask storage. This is a serious problem because it is estimated that all the spent fuel pools in the U.S. will be full within four years. However there are problems with dry cask storage. The current design does not monitor the contents and there have been buildups of explosive gases in some casks. Work is proceeding on new casks designs to solve these problems but the first prototypes will not be ready for testing until 2017. In addition, nuclear utility companies have been paying into a fund for the permanent disposal of spent fuel. A repository was supposed to be provided by the U.S. government by 1999. There is no repository in sight and two nuclear utility operators have just been allowed to recover some of the money that they have paid out.
The law governing the use of the fund prohibits money being spent on temporary storage which is exactly what is currently needed.
The UCS report also complains that the NRC is not enforcing fire protection standards at around half of the U.S. reactors. There have been fires at many U.S. nuclear power plants. In January of this year, there was a fire at the Duke Energy Harris nuclear power plant in North Carolina which caused the operators to shut down the reactor. This particular power plant had been shut down recently due to design flaws found in the reactor. It was also shut down in May of last year because corrosion was found in the reactor vessel. Here is a good example of a reactor with multiple problems that should probably be shut down permanently. There was a fire in February at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, New Mexico. Plutonium contaminated waste from nuclear weapons production is stored there. Some investigator say that this fire was preventable. A truck caught fire a half mile underground. The truck was almost thirty years old. Investigators say that it was not been maintained properly and that it had no automatic fire suppression system.
Some critics of nuclear power say that it is not a question of “if” there will be another serious accident at a nuclear reactor but only a matter of “when.” They may be wrong but I fear that they are not. One more major accident at nuclear power reactor may be the final nail in the coffin of nuclear power generation. In the meantime, the NRC should be pressured to increase their surveillance and regulation of U.S. reactors.
Duke Energy’s Shearon Harris Nuclear Power Plant:
