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.
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:
The total economic impact of the nuclear industry in North and South Carolina has been estimated to exceed at least $20 billion per year in a detailed study carried out by a team at Clemson University. world-nuclear-news.org
I have blogged in the past about the Nuclear Waste Fund. A law was passed by the U.S. Congress in 1980 to have operators of nuclear reactors make annual payments into a fund that would be used to create a permanent geological repository for nuclear wastes in the U.S. by 1999. In 1987, Yucca Mountain in Nevada was designated as the potential site for the national repository. A great deal of research and development was put into creating such a repository under Yucca Mountain in Nevada. In 2002, three years after the repository was supposed to be open for waste disposal, Congress official stated that Yucca Mountain would be the site. The project continued under heavy criticism for not addressing some potential environmental problems. Harry Reid, a Democratic Senator from Nevada and the current Senate Majority leader has strongly opposed the Yucca Mountain Repository. Presidential Candidate Obama campaigned against the repository in the 2008 presidential election. In 2011, the Obama administration ended funding for the Yucca Mountain repository.
There is around thirty billion dollars in the repository fund now. Nuclear plant operators have been suing the Federal government in an attempt to recover some of the money in the fund and/or to have the mandatory fund collection halted because of the missed 1999 deadline and the fact that there will be no permanent repository until 2040 at the earliest. There is also a push to have the repository funds made available for dry cask storage at nuclear plants. The nuclear waste situation in the U.S. is getting desperate. It is estimated that all the spent fuel pools at all the nuclear plants will be full by 2017. Spent nuclear fuel assemblies can be stored in dry casks on or off site. Unfortunately, as the law for the repository fund is written, none of the fund can be spent on building dry storage casks.
A few days ago, a U.S. appeals court ruled that the mandatory fund collection of about seven hundred and fifty million dollar a year had to stop. The court said that since the Yucca Mountain repository project had been cancelled and there was currently no viable alternative project for permanent storage of nuclear waste in the U.S., there was no justification for the continued payments. The nuclear power industry said that this was a “win” for the consumers because they would no longer have to support the repository fund with higher prices for nuclear power.
I think that this is very bad decision. The U.S. is going to have to find a solution to permanent nuclear waste storage. One thing I can guarantee is that the cost for any future repository will continue to climb until it is completed. The thirty billion currently in the fund will not cover the eventual cost. As far as the U.S. public not having to pay now for permanent disposal only means that they will have to pay more when a final solution is found for the disposal of nuclear waste.
Proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository design.
