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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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.
Today I am going to discuss the promotion of nuclear power by the United States Department of Energy (USDOE). The U.S. Secretary of Energy Moniz is currently advocating for the use of nuclear power as a clean CO2 free energy source for industrial operations. This suggestion for expansion of nuclear power beyond commerical urban power generation is a welcome boost for the U.S. nuclear industry.
Monitz spoke at the Future of Advanced Nuclear Technologies conference about what are referred to as “fouth generation” nuclear reactors, especially the small modular reactors (SMR), that are currently under development. They are supposed to be simpler, easier to build, safer and even portable alternatives to today’s giant power reactors. They are being designed to operate at higher temperature than standard power reactors. Some of the uses being proposed are “process heat, water desalinization, hydrogen production, petroleum production and refining.”
The US DOE is in the process of doling out the next portion of its four hundred and fifty two million dollar grant program for the development of SMRs. It is hoped that these SMRs can be built on an assembly line and moved to the location where they will be used. There are several companies competing for the grant money including General Atomics, X-Energy, NuScale and Westinghouse. Many of the proposed designs are supposed to be able to operate between six hundred degrees and nine hundred degrees Celsius, which is much higher than the operating temperature of the current nuclear power reactors. Such high temperature reactors could also generate electricity at a lower cost than conventional reactors.
The Chinese are leading the way in the development of next generation nuclear reactors such as molten salt and pebble bed reactors. They have stated their intention to use such reactors for “hydrogen production, gasifying coal, methanol production and other industrial uses.” China hopes to have a two megawatt pilot pebble bed reactor by 2015 and a one hundred megawatt pebble bed reactor by 2024. Considering the agressive Chinese reactor construction program currently underway, it appears that they are not devoting major resources to the new type of reactors or they have not finished research and development of the new designs.
The Obama Administration states that nuclear energy must be part of the mix of new energy sources that are intended to mitigate the climate change being caused by the CO2 being produced by the burning of fossil fuels. The new generation of reactors are also seen as a way to utilize nuclear power while not adding to the risk of the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
While I applaud the desire to find CO2 free sources of energy and to reduce the risk of nuclear proliferation, I am skeptical that the SMRs will be the cheap troublefree energy source that they are claimed to be. It has taken us decades to understand what happens in conventional nuclear reactors. There will be a similar learning curve for the new SMRs. If they are widely deployed before we understand exactly what effect the higher temperatures have on construction materials over a period of decades, it is almost guaranteed that there will be accidents and shutdowns that will make the SMRs much less attractive as a new power source.
The story of Fukushima should be on the front pages of every newspaper in the world. counterpunch.org
Romanian national nuclear company Nuclearelectrica has signed a letter of intent towards the development of two units at its Cernavoda nuclear power plant with China General Nuclear (CGN). world-nuclear-news.org
I have written several blogs about the stuggle of permanent members of the U.N. Security Council have had trying to make a deal with Iran about its nuclear program. Sunday, Iran signed a six months deal with the U.N. after intense negotiations in Geneva.
Iran has agreed to limit uranium enrichment to the three and one half percent necessary for creating nuclear fuels for nuclear power reactors. They have agreed not to purchase any more enrichment centrifuges. The current Iranian stockpile of uranium enriched to twenty percent must be mixed with natural uranium to dilute it to three and one half percent so it can be used as nuclear fuel. Iran has also agreed to halt work on the new reactor at Arak that could eventually produce plutonium. Although Iran claims that the Arak reactor will be used to produce isotopes of medical use, the U.N. fears that Iran could use the facility to make nuclear weapons. All Iran nuclear facilites are to be open to daily inspections by the U.N.
In return, the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council have agree to unfreeze eight billion dollars of Iranian oil revenues in their banks. They have also agreed that some trade sanctions will be lifted and there will be no addional trade sanctions imposed on Iran during the six month duration of the deal. The U.N. members believe that this deal will lead to a permanent deal that would insure that Iran never develops nuclear weapons.
The U.S. Congress will have to ratify the agreement with Iran and there is sure to be a heated debate. Critics of the deal in the U.S. Congress say that these measures are not sufficient to stop Iran’s development of nuclear weapons. Some Congressmen are even suggesting harsher sanctions to force Iran to end its nuclear program completely.
The Israelian Prime Minister says that this deal is a big mistake. He is afraid that Iran is not sincere and that they will continue enhancing uranium for the production of nuclear weapons. Israel wanted to see all of Iranian the centrifuges destroyed. Representatives of the Israeli government are angry that they were not included in the final negotiations. Israel feels threatened by Iran and has vowed to do what ever it takes to insure that Iran never manufactures nuclear weapons. This includes the possibilty of a unilateral Israeli military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Saudi Arabia has also criticised the deal with the Iranians. They also complain that they were not included in the final negotiations. They are enemies of the Iranian regime and they feel that the failure of the United States to intervene in the Syrian civial war and the intermim deal with the Iranians indicated that the U.S. can no longer be viewed as a strong ally. They have recently announced that they intend to “go it alone” in formulating their future foreign policy.
Supporters of the Iranian deal hope that it will lead to the signing of a permanent deal in the near future. Allowing Iran to return to the international trading community would have a positive impact on Middle Eastern economic activity.
There are serious concerns in U.S. about Fukushima radioactive material coming to our shores. enenews.com
Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station had three violations during a routine check by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. plymouth.patch.com
A reactor at the Chalk River site in Canada returned to service Friday, ending a supply interruption of the medical isotope molybdenum-99. nuclearstreet.com
I have blogged extensively about the problems of permanent disposal of nuclear waste in the United States. The U.S. is not the only nation that has no permanent nuclear waste disposal facility. Many other nations are struggling with the question of where they can safely store the nuclear waste being generated by nuclear power reactors . Today I am going to talk about Japan.
Most of the recent press about Japan’s nuclear program have been focused on the disaster and cleanup at Fukushima. All of the fifty Japanese power reactors were shut down following the disaster in March of 2011. Only two have been restarted as questions of the safety of the remaining nuclear power reactors are carefully reviewed.
The Tokai nuclear power plant in Ibaraki Prefecture began operating in 1966. It was the first commercial power reactor in Japan. The Tokai reactor has reached the end of its lifespan and was slated for decommissioning in 2006. The cost of the process was estimated to be about nine hundred million U.S. dollars. It was to begin in 2011 and take six years. The only problem is that there is no place to dispose of the sixteen hundred tons of low level waste that must be buried one hundred fifty to three hundred feet below ground to be safe. It is now 2013 and work on decommissioning has not started yet.
The Japanese government is considering a disposal site in Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture where a uranium reprocessing plant is being built by Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd, (JNFL) a consortium of Japanese power utilities. It is the intent of the Japanese government to reprocess all spent nuclear fuel in the Rokkasho plant to obtain additional fuel and reduce the radioactivity of the remaining waste. However, there have been problems and accidents that have delayed the completion of the Rokkasho uranium reprocessing facility.
JNFL started research in 2002 on disposal of nuclear waste from decommissioning. They built a test facility about three hundred feet underground at the Rokkasho site. Their research on storage was eventually turned over to the Radioactive Waste Management Funding and Research Center which is affiliated with the nuclear industry in Japan. Unfortunately, the authorities of the village of Rokkasho and the Aomori Prefecture have stated that they have no intention of accepting any new nuclear waste at the JNFL site.
The Japanese government has estimated that over fifty thousand tons of nuclear waste will be generated by decommissioning by 2030. The Japanese Nuclear Regulation Authority has not set standards for permanent disposal of nuclear wastes and the Japanese government has not yet selected a site for a permanent geological repository for nuclear waste disposal. The national government put out a call in 2002 for any municipality that would accept a permanent nuclear waste disposal facility. Only one city answer the request but soon withdrew its willingness to accept such a facility.
As in the United States, the spent fuel pools in Japan are rapidly filling up and many will be filled completely within a few years. There are calls for the creation of interim nuclear waste storage onsite at nuclear power plants. The municipalities near the nuclear power plants have expressed their reluctance to see such interim facilities built.
The nuclear waste situation is part of the heated debate over the future of nuclear power in Japan. Prime Minister Abe is pushing to restart all the reactors and to export Japanese nuclear technology to other countries. In fact, Japan has offered to dispose of nuclear waste generated by nuclear reactors that Japan builds in developing nations. This push is countered by former Prime Minister Koizumi who is calling for a permanent shut down of all nuclear plants because of the accident at Fukushima and the lack of permanent nuclear waste disposal in Japan. He is also against making nuclear technology exports a major part of future Japanese economic growth.
Rokkasho uranium reprocessing plant:
