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.
Fukushima workers say that they hide accidents at Fukushima plant. enenews.com
Nuclear expert expresses concerns about structures at Fukushima plant holding up during typhoons. enenews.com
Water with traces of a radioactive hydrogen isotope has again leaked at Catawba Nuclear Station in York County, South Carolina. charlotte.cbslocal.com
Ambient office = 94 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 102 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 91 nanosieverts per hour
Carrot from Top Foods = 186 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 151 nanosieverts per hour
Filtered water = 135 nanosieverts per hour
My recent posts have been about breeder reactors which generate more fissile material than they consume. There is renewed global interest in breeder reactors for the production of nuclear fuel and the destruction of nuclear waste. Today’s post is the first in a series about the history and current status of breeder reactors in India.
India started talking about fast breeder reactor technology in the 1950s in order to develop an independent nuclear industry for power generation although they do not have much in the way of natural uranium resources. They set out on a three stage program that continues today.
In the first stage, uranium fuel would be created and burned in heavy water reactors. The spent fuel from these reactors would then be reprocessed in order to extract the plutonium.
The plutonium extracted during the first stage would then be used to fuel the cores for fast breeder reactors. There were two configurations for the second stage plutonium fueled reactors. In the first type, a blanket of natural or depleted uranium would be wrapped around the core to produce more plutonium. In the second type, thorium would be in the blanket around the core and U-233 would be produced. The plan was to process uranium through the first type of fast breeder in order to produce enough plutonium to sustain the future fleet of anticipated reactors.
In the third stage, when enough plutonium was available, a new generation of thorium breeders would be built. Although the thorium/U-233 fuel cycle was not as efficient or rapid as the uranium burning breeders, India has very little uranium and vast amounts of thorium.
India’s Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) began serious design studies on fast breeder reactors after 1960. An test fast breeder was constructed at the Bhabba Atomic Research Center in 1965 but was only tested for a few years. In 1969, India signs a collaborative agreement with the French Atomic Energy Commission. India obtained the design of the French Rapsodie reactor and the steam generator design from the French Phénix reactor. Combining these two designs, India began work on the Fast Breeder Test Reactor (FBTR). Indian scientists trained in France returned to India and began work at the new Reactor Research Center (RRC) in 1971 at Kalpakkam.
The FTBR was supposed to be completed by 1976 but it only achieved criticality in late 1985 and began generating steam in 1993. The FTBR had major and minor acidents during the first fifteen years of operation. In 1987, the system that rotated fuel assemblies out of the core failed and resulting efforts to deal with the problem occupied the next two years as successive as successive attempts to fix the problem resulted in even more mechanical damage. The original cause of the problem was never fully understood.
In 2002, defective manufacturing of valves in the sodium coolant circulating system failed and over one hundred and fifty pounds of molten sodium leaked out onto the floor of the purification room and solidified. The sodium was radioactive and dangerous for workers. When normal air was used to replace the nitrogen around the purification room, the sodium started sparking and burning. The dust used to put out the fires hung in the air and made it difficult to see. The room was filled with nitrogen again and workers had to use mask supplied with oxygen through hoses. Finally, after three months, the sodium was removed.
With the problems detailed above and other difficulties, the reactor never operated for more than fifty consecutive days. Over its lifetime it was available only twenty percent of the time. Even with this poor record, the Indian government claimed that the experiment had been a successful demonstration of the feasibility of fast breeder reactors.
India Fast Breeder Test Reactor at Kalpakkam:
Ambient office = 103 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 102 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 92 nanosieverts per hour
Redleaf lettuce from Top Foods = 207 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 116 nanosieverts per hour
Filtered water = 82 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient office = 103 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 102 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 92 nanosieverts per hour
Redleaf lettuce from Top Foods = 207 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 116 nanosieverts per hour
Filtered water = 82 nanosieverts per hour
My recent posts have been about breeder reactors which generate more fissile material than they consume. There is renewed global interest in breeder reactors for the production of nuclear fuel and the destruction of nuclear waste. Today’s post is the second post in a series about the history and current status of breeder reactors in the France.
In 1976, a French council made the decision to build the Superphénix reactor near Lyon, France. The utilities rushed into planning and construction for the Superphénix before the decision was made public in 1977. Twenty thousand people came out to protest the project in the summer of 1976. Fifty cities and towns opposed the project. Thirteen hundred scientists published an open letter of their concerns to the governments of France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland. The CEA Chairman remained highly optimistic about the future of fast breeder reactors. He predicted that almost six hundred Superphénix size fast breeder reactors would be in operation world wide by the year 2000 and that there would be almost three thousand by 2025. Actually, there were no such reactors in operation by 2000.
A huge anti-nuclear demonstration took place at the Superphénix construction site with over fifty thousand people in 1977. After the demonstration turned violent, the riot police unleashed grenades which resulted in the death of one demonstration and the mutilation of another. The government refused to alter or delay their plans for the construction of the Superphénix.
In the late 1970s, Europe was concerned with the United States dominance in nuclear technology. The EURODIF uranium enrichment consortium started a plant at Tricastin in 1979 and there was a call for a European plutonium industry. President Carter’s concerns about nuclear weapons proliferation dangers from spreading fast breeder technology were dismissed as “totally absurd.” France felt that if it could use uranium mined in France to fuel fast breeders, it could be independent of outside energy suppliers such as Saudi Arabia.
Not all the people working of CEA shared the enthusiasm for fast breeder reactors. a two hundred and fifty page report was produced by a CEA engineer in 1982. He concluded that “fast breeder reactors are the most complicated, the most
polluting, the most inefficient and the most ambiguous means that man has
invented to date to reduce the consumption of nuclear fuel”.
The Superphénix was finished and turned on in 1985. It was intended to burn about four thousand pounds of plutonium annually but over its eleven years of operation, it burned less than twelve thousand pounds of plutonium. It experienced a number of technical problems and was shut down about half of the time. It never produced the level of electrical power that was projected in its original design. A major leak of sodium coolant at the end of 1985 was not repaired quickly because the engineering company responsible for the repair had laid off many critical staff because it was losing money. Numerous problems followed and in 1996 a major refurbishing was abandoned and the Superphénix was shut down permanently.
By the mid-1980s, the enthusiasm for fast breeder reactors was fading across the globe. Global construction of reactors had peaked in 1975 at forty and, by 1986, only one reactor was being constructed. The Chernobyl disaster in 1986 damaged the reputation of and support for nuclear power. In addition, the price of uranium had dropped by almost two thirds and there was a plentiful supply for global demand. This cut into the argument for the need for breeders to produce fuel.
The French government was undeterred. Massive over construction of nuclear reactors resulted in excess electrical power capacity in the mid-1980s. The La Hague reprocessing plant quadrupled its reprocessing of spent fuel between 1987 and 1997. A great deal of high grade plutonium reprocessed from the French reactors was utilized in the construction of French nuclear weapons. The French government recently renewed its commitment to nuclear power despite the Fukushima disaster and the decision of Germany to totally abandon nuclear power generation. The decades long program for fast breeder reactors was very expensive for the French taxpayers and, other than nuclear weapons, was ultimately unproductive.
Superphénix reactor:
Ambient office = 102 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 123 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 129 nanosieverts per hour
Red seedless grape from Top Foods = 97 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 97 nanosieverts per hour
Filtered water = 82 nanosieverts per hour
My recent posts have been about breeder reactors which generate more fissile material than they consume. There is renewed global interest in breeder reactors for the production of nuclear fuel and the destruction of nuclear waste. Today’s post is the first post in a series about the history and current status of breeder reactors in the France.
France plunged into plutonium production following World War II for nuclear weapons. Fast breeder reactors were also an early strategic goal for the French. In 1957, ten European countries formed a consortium called EUROCHEMIC to cooperate on nuclear technology with France and Germany leading the way.
France’s first reprocessing plant UP1 for plutonium recovery started operation in 1958. In the same year, design work began on a loop type sodium cooled fast breeder reactor called Raposide. It’s design was a prototype for future commercial power reactors. Construction started in 1962 and it took five years to finish and begin operations. Raposide was upgraded to produce more power but output was reduced in 1980 because of cracks in the reactor vessels. It was turned off in 1983.
The French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) started a second plutonium reprocessing facility at La Hague in the Normandy region in 1966. In 1976, CEA spun off a daughter company to run the operation called COGEMA. They also started a light-water reactor fuel preprocessor at La Hague designated UP2-4000 in the same year. Up to that point, they had only been processing gas graphite reactor fuel with a much lower burn up rate. COGEMA spent eleven years working on the processing of light reactor fuel. By 1987, they were processing about four hundred tons of fuel a year.
Électricité de France (EDF) is a state utility owned by the French government joined with CEA in a partnership to build the sodium cooled fast breeder plutonium reactor Phénix. Phénix was turned on in 1973 and connected to the French grid. It operated smoothly until the 1980s but then succumbed to transients in reactivity and had to be shut down for repairs. It was only restarted briefly a few times between 1991 and 1994. Between 1994 and 2002, a costly repair and upgrade was carried out. The reactor restarted in 2002 and continued to operate at reduced power until 2009.
The OPEC oil embargo of 1973 sent shockwave through the international energy market. The French government committed to sixteen big power generating reactors in 1974. The price of uranium rose about 600% between 1973 and 1976 which increased the attractiveness of breeder reactors which could produce more plutonium for fuel.
In the early 1970s, France, Germany and Italy signed agreements for joint construction of two commercial scale fast breeder reactors to be located in France and Germany. NERSA, a European consortium to build and operate fast-neutron reactors was created in 1974. Opposition swiftly grew against the project. In the mid 1970s hundreds of French scientists publicized their specific concerns about fact breeder technology. The CEA responded with a call for the “rapid and massive introductions of breeder reactors” because a delay would have “catastrophic consequences on the uranium savings that are expected.”
The Marcoule site, with the Phénix reactor on the left side:
