Blog
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Geiger Readings for July 14, 2013
Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on July 14, 2013
Ambient office = .079 microsieverts per hour
Ambient outside = .126 microsieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = .138 microsieverts per hour
Banana from local grocery store = .137 microsieverts per hour
Tap water = .095 microsieverts per hour
Filtered water = .078 microsieverts per hour
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radiation News Roundup for July 13, 2013
Groundwater stopped by planned underground wall at Fukushima may reverse to damage the reactor buildings. fukushima-diary.com
Highly radioactive sea bass was just caught near Hitachi Ibaraki, Japan. simplyinfo.org
The first unit at Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KNPP) and India’s 21st reactor, began nuclear fission process Saturday night. in.news.yahoo.com
Pakistan’s top-level Executive Committee of the National Economic Council has approved funds to purchase two new nuclear power reactors from China. world-nuclear-news.org
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Geiger Readings for July 13, 2013
Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on July 11, 2013
Ambient office = .065 microsieverts per hour
Ambient outside = .076 microsieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = .091 microsieverts per hour
Sliced white mushrooms from Costco = .163 microsieverts per hour
Tap water = .085 microsieverts per hour
Filtered water = .064 microsieverts per hour
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Geiger Readings for July 12, 2013
Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on July 11, 2013
Ambient office = .101 microsieverts per hour
Ambient outside = .051 microsieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = .081 microsieverts per hour
Vine ripened tomato from Costco = .103 microsieverts per hour
Tap water = .086 microsieverts per hour
Filtered water = .082 microsieverts per hour
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Radioactive Waste 40 – New Dry Casks at Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant in Massachusetts
The Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant near Plymouth, Massachusetts has been operating since 1972. During the forty years of operation, it has generated a great deal of nuclear waste in the form of spent fuel rods. The reactor at the plant is a GE Mark 1 model. This is exactly the same model of reactor in use at the Fukushima plant in Japan that suffered the disaster in March of 2011. In this model of reactor, the spent fuel pool is situated above the reactor. The spent fuel pool at Pilgrim was originally designed to temporarily hold nine hundred fuel assemblies. Today, there are almost four thousand fuel assemblies in the spend fuel pool. The operators of the plant say that, so far, the spent fuel has been manageable.
At the current rate of operation, the spent fuel pool will be full within two years. If alternative storage is not available by then, the reactor will have to be shut down. In light of this situation, Entergy, the company that owns and operates the Pilgrim plant is in the process of building dry casks at the Pilgrim plant to hold spent fuel assemblies to allow the plant to keep operating. Although security at the plant is very tight and critics have not been allowed inside to document the work being done, it is known that workers are constructing a wide road that will provide a path to move the big dry casks from the reactor building to a nearby concrete pad where they will be kept.
Anti-nuclear activists are challenging the permitting process for the casks and the storage pad. They agree that something must be done with the spent fuel that is piling up but they want the current construction permit cancelled and a new process started which will include public review of the construction plans and public hearings. They seem to be primarily focused on the siting and construction of the concrete support pad that will hold the dry casks.
Personally, I am more concerned about the dry casks. Dry casks for storing radioactive wastes have been around for decades but recently there has been growing concern that the waste in some of the casks may be corroding the lining of the casks and may also be generating dangerous hydrogen gas which could cause an explosion and rupture of the casks.
Research on improved cask design is being carried out. It includes the incorporation of sensors into the casks in order to monitor the interior conditions in real time and warn of possible problems. The first prototype of the new design of dry cask will not be available until 2017 at the earliest. If I were the anti-nuclear activists in Plymouth, I would insist that the new casks being constructed at the Pilgrim plant are built according to the new designs being developed. If they are based on the old cask designs, then the storage of spent fuel in the casks at Pilgrim may cause serious accidents and radioactive releases in the future.
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Geiger Readings for July 11, 2013
Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on July 11, 2013
Ambient office = .133 microsieverts per hour
Ambient outside = .091 microsieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = .080 microsieverts per hour
Bell pepper from local grocery store = .146 microsieverts per hour
Tap water = .091 microsieverts per hour
Filtered water = .078 microsieverts per hour
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Nuclear Reactors 36 – Russia is Building a Floating Nuclear Power Station
Siting of nuclear power plants is always a complex issue. Placing the plant near the area where the electricity will be utilized has the benefit of less transmission losses and the drawback of often being in heavily populated areas. The plant has to be near a source of cooling water but that makes it prone to flooding in extreme weather and other disasters. The Russians have come up with a new solution to the problem of where to build nuclear plants.
Russia has announced that in three years it will build and turn on the world’s first floating nuclear power plant. The Akademik Lomonosov is intended to be the first in a whole fleet of floating Russian reactors. The floating reactors will supply power to coastal industrial areas, port cities and off-shore oil and gas platforms. The basis for the design of the floating reactor is the nuclear reactor powered ice breakers which the Russians have been using for fifty years. The floating reactor has no propulsion system and will have to be towed into place. There will be a crew of sixty nine people. The manufacturers state that the process of fuel enrichment on the vessels is in compliance with the non-proliferation regulations of the International Atomic Energy Agency intended to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.
The two modified KLT-40 naval propulsion reactors on the floating power plants will be able to provide seventy megawatts of electricity which is sufficient for a city of two hundred thousand people. They can also be modified to produce two hundred and forty thousand cubic meters of fresh water on a daily basis which would be very useful for cities and industries located on arid coasts around the world. The new power plants are intended to allow economic development of distant regions of the Russian east coast and far north. The US, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Algeria, Namibia and Argentina have shown interest in the possible purchase of such plants from Russia.
The floating power plants are designed with a large margin of safety. The manufacturers claim that the plants can withstand tsunamis, hurricanes and collisions. Under normal operation, the reactors do not release any dangerous materials into the environment. The reactors are designed to be operational for forty years. At the end of their lifespan, the reactors will be returned to special facilities to be refurbished for other applications.
Despite the manufacturers’ assurances of safety in the face of any possible natural disaster, I have to wonder if they are being too optimistic. Maybe they are designed to be able to withstand what the manufacturers think will be the worst possible natural disasters but I have always been impressed by the ability of the natural world to exceed our expectation. There are rare freak waves that suddenly appear in the ocean without warning. For many years, rumors of such waves were dismissed as fantasy until satellite surveillance of the oceans finally captured live images of a giant wave suddenly appearing. These waves can be one hundred feet high. One of these might be able to sink or seriously damage one the new floating power plants as it is being towed to where it will be used. Terrorists might board the floating plant and threaten to blow it up either at sea or where it is moored offshore. A floating power plant cannot be as massive and stable as a power plant built on land. I also doubt whether security can be as good at sea as at a power plant on land. I do not think that these floating power plants are a good idea. I hope that I am wrong.
