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 focused on nuclear reactors that utilize nuclear fission to generate power because they have existed and functioned for decades. I have briefly covered some esoteric reactor types such as sodium cooled fast breeder reactors, thorium reactors and small modular reactors although they not proven technologies even after a great deal of research and development. Today I am going to begin a series of posts on the possibility of utilizing nuclear fusion reactors for power generation. My only mention of fusion in the past has been in the context of hydrogen bombs where a fission bomb is used to ignite a fusion reaction.
Nuclear fission occurs when a heavy unstable nucleus breaks apart, releasing energy and leaving behind nuclei of lighter elements which may or may not be radioactive. Nuclear fusion occurs when the nuclei of lighter elements fuse to form heavier elements, releasing energy in the process.
Our sun is powered by nuclear fusion. Hydrogen nuclei fuse to form helium nuclei. This process can continue up the periodic table until it hits iron. There is a mathematical model of fusion called the nuclear packing faction curve. It shows how much energy can be derived from a particular fusion reaction. Hydrogen to helium produces the most energy. with less and less energy as you get to heavier and heavier elements. Beyond the formation of iron, the heavier nuclei actually require energy to fuse instead of producing it. Stars form concentric spheres where heavier and heavier elements form in the core. When iron dominates, new processes take over that sometimes lead to collapse and violent novas. It is in such novas that elements heavier than iron are formed.
When scientists came to understand the nuclear fusion process going on in the sun, they realized that if they could harness fusion for power, it would be able to provide huge amounts of energy for human civilization. Initially, it was thought that the sun was just a glowing ball of gas compressed by gravity to the point where the fusion reaction was initiated. According to existing theories at the time, there would be no internal structure to the gas ball. Unfortunately for the effort to develop fusion for energy production, it turns out that the sun has a great deal of internal structure with a number of different processes happening simultaneously in different zones within sphere. When scientists tried to reproduce the fusion reaction by compressing hydrogen gas, instead of a uniform ball of gas, various sorts of transitory structures emerged which interfered with the fusion process and impeded their progress.
There is an old joke that fusion power is just forty years away but, like a rainbow, as time passes, it remains forty years away. A great deal has been learned about stellar dynamics and the process of nuclear fusion over the past few decades and progress has been made. Recently, for the first time, researchers were able to get more energy out of a fusion reaction than they had put in for very brief time. There is still far to go but a milestone has been passed. In coming posts, I will deal with the physics of, the history of and the prospects for safe and economical generation of electricity via nuclear fusion.
Internal structure of our sun:
In his photography, Michael Rothbart explore the human consequences of environmental contamination at Chernobyl and Fukushima. motherjones.com
Gizmodo’s claim that Fukushima could be in the middle of another meltdown is an unsubstantiated rumor. enenews.com
Texas has been hiding information about the level of radioactivity in drinking water. youtube.com
China’s new Yangjiang nuclear plant connected to the grid Tuesday, state media reported. nuclearstreet.com
New Year’s Day is often seen as a good time to pause in the daily routine and broaden your perspective to cover the year that just passed and the year that is to come. In the past year I have tried to cover as many facets of the global nuclear power sector as possible. There are so many things to keep track of that it has been a bit daunting at times.
TECHNICAL: Older reactors designs are being replaced by newer designs that are supposed to be more efficient, cheaper and safer. Whether or not they really are only time will tell. A new approach with small modular reactors is hailed as a better alternative to the big old power reactors but they will cost more per megawatt than existing reactors.
ENVIRONMENTAL: Mining uranium ore and extracting the uranium is horrible dirty process that causes environmental devastation. Accidents at nuclear reactors can release radioactivity into the environment. The reactor cooling water that is used in huge quantities is released back into the environment causing problems. Nuclear waste consists of toxic heavy metals that will be radioactive for thousands of years posing a major disposal problem. Nuclear power is being promoted as a carbon dioxide free source of energy which would help with climate change but the jury is still out.
HEALTH: Nuclear operators often try to quiet public fears by saying that the radioactivity that they release into the environment is below the level of natural radioactivity. It has been reported recently there is no safe level of radioactivity. Any radioactivity in the environment whether man-made or natural will contribute to birth defects, cancers and other diseases.
GOVERNMENTAL: National governments are obligated to regulate the nuclear industry within their borders but too often the agencies charged with oversight are also charged with promoting the national nuclear agency. This results in conflicts of interest and the regulatory agencies are often captured by the industry they are supposed to regulate. Many reactors are vulnerable to terrorist attacks and nuclear operators often fail security tests.
FINANCIAL: Nuclear power is only competitive with massive government subsidies, loan guaranties and direct contracts. Contracts with locked in price support for the generated electricity are disappearing and cheap natural gas is already shutting down nuclear reactors. Investors are increasingly skeptical.
TRADE: Nations with mature nuclear technology such as France, Russia, China and Japan are aggressively working to make nuclear technology exports a major part of their economic development. They are focused in particular on developing nations such as Bulgaria, Romania, Jordan, and Vietnam.
POLITICAL: Fears of nuclear proliferation have caused the U.N. Security Council to issue sanctions against countries that are building reactors and may be working toward nuclear weapons. International treaties have been drafted to work toward peaceful disarmament.
MILITARY: The U.S. and Russia may be cutting back on the total number of warhead that they have aimed at each other but both are embarking on programs to modernize their nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Recent reports indicate a serious problem with morale and competence of U.S. nuclear missile forces. India and Pakistan are trying to heal their political disagreements to reduce the possibility of nuclear war. Some think that Japan is working to change its constitution in order to develop an offensive nuclear force as a counterbalance to North Korea and China.
CRIME: There is a black market in nuclear technology which seeks to profit by avoiding expensive inspections and quality control. The Japanese crime syndicate Yakuza is heavily involved in the Japanese nuclear industry. Nuclear operators have been caught falsifying inspection reports, failing to adequately train staff, using substandard materials, failing to report important modifications to reactors and disregarding mandatory safety procedures.
I will continue to report on these and other nuclear issues in 2014. I sincerely hope that there are no major nuclear accidents in 2014 but I would not bet on it.
I have written a number of posts about the problems at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Eastern Washington State. After decades of nuclear weapons research and development with too little concern for the fifty six million gallons of radioactive waste they produced, the struggle to clean up the site has not been going well. Buried single walled tanks of waste are leaking and the double walled tanks that were supposed to replace the single walled tanks are starting to leak. Construction of critical sections of a vitrification plant have been halted after billions of dollars were spent because it was discovered that the current design will not work.
An article was recently published in the Seattle Times a man who “managed the development of environmental impact statements for nine Department of Energy Environmental Impact Statements relating to Hanford operations.” The gist of the article was that Hanford had been thoroughly studied and that concern over the waste stored there was overblown. According to the author, if all the waste stored in the tanks were released into the ground, the radioactivity would take at least thirty years to reach the intakes for the Richland municipal water supply and would be below the level considered safe by the Environmental Protection Agency. I accept that this individual and the people he consulted with were competent and professional and they did the best they could at the time with modeling the flow of radioactive waste through the soil and into the Columbia. With respect to the EPA standards for drinking water, there have been some suggestions that the allowed levels of radioactive materials are too high. There is also no mention of bioaccumulation of radioactive substances in the water. Such accumulation could enter the food chain and be a threat to human health.
Activists that are concerned about Hanford have raised some issues that need to be mentioned. As reported previously in my blog, recently there have been public hearings about Hanford because of uranium leaching out of the soil and showing up in the Columbia River. This uranium is left over from millions of gallons of radioactive waste in liquid form being poured directly into unlined trenches near the Columbia River. A great deal of work has been done modeling the processes that determine what amount of uranium should be showing up in the Columbia. However, the models were mistaken and more uranium is showing up than anticipated. At the very least, this should call into question the modeling mentioned by the writer of the article in the Seattle Times.
There is a danger of hydrogen gas being produced by the waste in the underground tanks that could lead to explosions, release of radioactive materials and possible damage to other nearby tanks. This was not mentioned in the Times article.
The article calls for the rapid completion of the vitrification plant. The problem that halted the construction was the fact that the radioactive waste in the tanks varies in chemical composition and physical form. The contents of any particular tank are not well known. Because of the particles of different sizes and the changing viscosity of the contents of the tanks, it has been discovered that trying to run the waste from the tanks through the piping of the vitrification plant could lead to corrosion, leaks and even explosions. In addition, plutonium could form clumps inside the mixing tanks that might be big enough to trigger a spontaneous nuclear reaction.
While I am certain that some Hanford critics are mistaken with how serious the situation is there, I am equally certain that those who say that there is no threat to public health and safety are also mistaken. There is ample evidence that the contents of the tanks are poorly understood and past modeling of ground water movement and industrial engineering have been inadequate.
An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.4 jolted eastern and northeastern Japan. enenews.com
The project to build the 9900 MWe Jaitapur nuclear power plant in India has cleared some significant procedural hurdles by securing coastal permits and purchasing land. world-nuclear-news.org
Chernobyl’s New Safe Confinement (NSC) is a massive construction project that started in 2010 to contain the existing Chernobyl containment structure. nuclearstreet.com
