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.
Yesterday I blogged about another variant of the Stuxnet computer worm that infiltrated Iranian control computers and damaged centrifuges being used to enrich uranium. My blog post today is going to deal with Iranian speculation that Saudi Arabia and Israel are collaborating on a new cyber attack aimed at further disrupting the Iranian nuclear program.
An Iranian Fars news agency report claims that an anonymous source in Saudi Arabia told Fars that “Saudi spy chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and director of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency Tamir Bardo sent their representatives to a meeting in Vienna on November 24 to increase the two sides’ cooperation in intelligence and sabotage operations against Iran’s nuclear program.” The anonymous Saudi source said that one of the methods that was discussed in the meeting was the creation of computer malware that was much worse than the original Stuxnet discovered in Iranian computer systems in 2010. The new malware was being developed to ““to spy on and destroy the software structure of Iran’s nuclear program.”
Saudi Arabia and Israel usually appear to be hostile to each other. The clandestine meeting in Vienna was considered a better venue to explore cooperation than any public statements or meetings between the two antagonists. This collaboration seems to be based on the idea that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” The Arab Wahabist Islamic sect in Saudi Arabia is a staunch enemy of the Persian Shiites in Iran. Iran has been supporting terrorists that launch attacks on Israel. Israel is very concerned that the Iranian nuclear program is aimed at the creation of nuclear weapons which might target Israel someday. This clandestine cooperation between Saudi Arabia and Israel could be seen as a way to reign the Iranian nuclear program without invading or bombing Iran.
The recent temporary agreement between Iran and the permanent members of the U.N. security council which includes the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain plus Germany on Iran’s nuclear program was harshly criticized by both the Saudis and the Israelis. They say that the agreement will give Iran additional time and resources to develop nuclear weapons. Back in November, the Sunday Times reported the Saudi officials and the Israeli were discussing taking action against Iran if the deal that was being negotiated with the U.N. did not effective stop the Iran progress toward nuclear weapons.
While this collaboration on a cyber attack on Iran is still in the realm of speculation, I previously mentioned reports that the Saudis were prepared to allow Israeli military aircraft to cross Saudi air space in order to destroy Iranian nuclear installations. It would make sense that the Saudis would prefer not to anger their Arab neighbors by openly cooperating with Israel. And, Israel would prefer not to have to openly bomb Iran if it could be avoided. As they say, politics makes strange bedfellows.
I have blogged about the Stuxnet worm, a computer program that infiltrated the computers controlling the Iranian centrifuges that are being used to enrich uranium. The Stuxnet worm that was revealed in 2010 allowed the centrifuges to spin faster than they should and caused them to break down. It has recently been revealed that the Stuxnet that is well known is not the first such worm released to infect the Iranian control systems.
It turns out that there was another variant of the Stuxnet worm that has been in the Iranian computers since at least 2007. This variant also targeted the centrifuges but used a different mechanism. It blocked the outflow of gas from the centrifuges which eventually damaged them although it took time for the damage to become critical. The whole idea of this worm was to cause damage that would be difficult to trace. It also intercepted information coming from the centrifuges so that operators would not know about the problem until it was too late.
It is not known why the people that created the earlier version of the Stuxnet decided to release a more immediate and less subtle version of the worm into the Iranian control computers. It is possible that as the Iranians kept fixing and expanding their pool of centrifuges, the Stuxnet authors abandoned stealth in favor of speed with respect to damaging the Iranian centrifuges.
Many people believe that the United States and Israel designed the Stuxnet worms and released them to prevent Iran from enriching uranium for nuclear weapons. Neither the U.S. or Israel has officially admitted designing the Stuxnet worms. One thing is certain. The Stuxnet worms have proven that cyber weapons are an inexpensive alternative to full scale military assaults. The governments of major industrial nations are running cyberwar simulations to identify weak spots in national infrastructures that might be susceptible to cyber attack such as power plants, electrical grids, and telecom systems.
However sophisticated the cyber weapons are, they still have problems with collateral damage. The Stuxnet worm has been found in Russian nuclear power plants and even on the International Space Station. Fortunately, Stuxnet is very specifically targeted to damage centrifuges run by a specific type of control computer so it is not dangerous to other types of systems. The effect of the Stuxnet is confined to damaging centrifuges but it does not endanger other equipment, buildings or people. Future cyber weapons might not be so considerate. They can be designed to cause catastrophic failure in major infrastructure that could result in major damage and loss of life. As the Russian power plant example demonstrates, there is the same problem that conventional weapons may have with respect to being able to identify and separate friendly systems from enemy systems. And there is always the possibility of accidental mutation or deliberate alteration by hostile parties that may make a computer worm or virus much more dangerous that originally intended. We live in a world run by computers and cyber attacks could ultimately bring down our civilization, intentionally or unintentionally.
I have often remarked in posts about Fukushima how lax the Japanese Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA). The Agency is entirely to friendly and forgiving of the industry that it is supposed to be regulating. This phenomena, known as “regulatory capture” is not limited to Japan. It seems to be endemic among the nations that have major nuclear industries. There have recently been several new stories about the failures of the JAEA.
I have posted articles about the problems at the Monju fast breeder reactor in Japan. Recently, the Japanese Nuclear Regulatory Authority (JNRA) instructed the JAEA to keep the Monju reactor shut down because fourteen thousand pieces of equipment had not been properly inspected. The JNRA is an administrative department of the Japanese legislature. It is part of the Department of Environment and it is charged with insuring nuclear safety in Japan.
The inspection failures were found as part of an investigation into whether the Monju site was being properly secured against possible terrorist attacks. In addition to the failute to inspect the equipment that records vehicles and people who enter the Monju site, the managers of the site also failed to document the identification of people who entered especially sensitive area, failed to conduct background checks on people who entered of the Monju site, and failed to fence off restricted areas. The JNRA said that “the levels of neglect witnessed at Monju were unprecedented” and laid the blame with the JAEA.
In October the Mainichi Shimbun, a daily newspaper in Tokyo, reported that almost half of the nuclear power plant equipment exported from Japan in the last ten years was not properly inspected by the Japanese government. Apparently, exported equipment was only inspected if the exporter got a loan from the Japan Bank for International Cooperation or applied for insurance from the Nippon Export and Investment Service. About one billion dollars worth of nuclear equipment were exported to twenty three countries and territories. Only about a half a billion dollars worth of the equipment was inspected by the Japanese government. The uninspected equipment includes such critical components as reactor pressure vessels and control rod system.
Japanese Prime Minister Abe has been promoting the nuclear industry in Japan as the corner stone of his ecomonic development plans. He has been traveling around the world trying to convince other countries to purchase Japanese nuclear technology, promoting it as the safest nuclear equipment in the world. This is bad enough when Japanese nuclear technology is offered to countries with major nuclear power installations but it is almost criminal when uninspected Japanese nuclear power equipment is being offered to third world countries such as Viet Nam. To sweeten the deal, Japan offer to take the spent nuclear fuel away from Viet Nam. Considering that Japan has no permanent nuclear disposal facility and that Japanese spent fuel pools are filling up, this may not be such a good deal for Japan. When uninspected Japanese nuclear equipment is installed in third world countries that are high on the corruption index, nuclear disasters are almost guaranteed.
Fukushima isotopes are nearing the U.S. west coast. enenews.com
Highest ever radiation levels detected outside reactor buildings at Fukushima. enenews.com
A leaching tank has failed at the Ranger uranium mine in Australia, releasing a large volume of acidic slurry mixture. world-nuclear-news.org
A moisture separator problem tripped the Hope Creek reactor in New Jersey for the second time in less than a week Thursday. nuclearstreet.com
