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.
Latitude 47.704656 Longitude -122.318745
Ambient office = .089 microsieverts per hour
Ambient outside = .095 microsieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = .100 microsieverts per hour
Romaine lettuce from local grocery store = .095 microsieverts per hour
Tap water = .121 microsieverts per hour
Filtered water = .105 microsieverts per hour
Ambient office = .147 microsieverts per hour
Ambient outside = .143 microsieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = .124 microsieverts per hour
Carrot from local grocery store = .097 microsieverts per hour
Tap water = .083 microsieverts per hour
Filtered water = .079 microsieverts per hour
In Mid-June I posted four blogs about a meeting at the Mountaineer’s Headquarters building at Magnuson Park in Seattle, Washington. The meeting was called by the U.S. Navy, the Washington State Department of Ecology and the Washington State Department of Health. The purpose of the meeting was a presentation of information about radium contamination in a couple of old Naval buildings and soil around drainage systems left over from World War II aircraft repair activities.
The City of Seattle found reference to radium in blueprints they were reviewing in 2010 in preparation for remodeling of the old buildings. At that time, the Navy boarded up the contaminated sections of the buildings and put up fences around the contaminated soil. Small signs of warning people to keep away were posted but there was no public announcement.
Last winter, when the facts began to become public, the Navy partnered with the Washington State Department of Health to develop a plan for cleaning up the site. The Washington State Department of Ecology which has jurisdiction over the environment in the park was brought in late in the planning process in June. The State Department of Health has standards which allow for a higher level of residual radiation than the State Department of Ecology or the Federal Environmental Protection Agency.
The Navy and the Washington State agencies called the meeting to present their picture of the current situation and to explain their plan to clean up the radioactive contamination. They had a series of stations with posters and they said that they would accept written comments but were not going to accept verbal comments. Their plan called for public comment to end at the end of June and work on the cleanup to begin on July 15th. This schedule implied that they are not really interested in incorporating public input into their cleanup plan.
State Representative Gerry Pollet forcefully argued with the Navy and State presenters, saying that the people needed to have more input into the process. The Navy was utilizing a special fast track procedure that they said was necessary. This appears to be at odds with the fact that they claimed that at no time was there any danger to the public. And now they wanted to rush through a cleanup without allowing public meetings or an environmental impact statement.
After the heated argument at the meeting, the Navy and the State understood that the people of Seattle’s Magnuson Park neighborhood were not about to passively accept the plan to rush through a questionable cleanup of radioactivity in their neighborhood. Public pressure forced the Navy and the State to extend the public comment period to the end of July and to hold additional meetings for public input. Unfortunately, the Navy announced that they were going ahead with “preliminary” work on July 8th.
The Navy says that they want the public to be confident that everything necessary is being done to protect the public and that all relevant documents are available on their website and at Northeast Branch of the Seattle Regional Library at 6801 35th Ave NE. However, Representative Pollet points out that the Navy has not provided the usual reports that should accompany such environmental clean projects.
There will be another public meeting tonight at the Mountaineer’s Headquarters at Magnuson Park tonight from 6 to 10 PM. It will be interesting to see if the Navy and the State of Washington have indeed decided to incorporate public feedback into the cleanup process at Magnuson Park or whether tonight’s meeting is simply for show. It is an open question of whether the Navy is more concerned about insuring the safety of the citizens that use Magnuson Park or forcing the acceptance of a quick fix to the public embarrassment of a contaminated site that they were responsible for.
Mountaineer’s Headquarters at Magnuson Park:
Latitude 47.704656 Longitude -122.318745
Ambient office = .061 microsieverts per hour
Ambient outside = .111 microsieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = .089 microsieverts per hour
Celery from local grocery store = .122 microsieverts per hour
Tap water = .083 microsieverts per hour
Filtered water = .068 microsieverts per hour
I have written extensively about the problems in Japan that followed the Fukushima disaster. One major problem was the fact that the nuclear industry was being monitored by the same Japanese government agency that promotes industrial development and trade. After Fukushima, a new agency, the Nuclear Regulation Agency (NRA), was created to deal with nuclear regulation independently. A new set of much more strict nuclear safety regulation was drawn up. There is great pressure to restart the Japanese fleet of around fifty reactors which were all shut down following Fukushima. While the owners of the reactors are supposed to implement the new strict regulations before restarting their reactors, there has been criticism of the new regulations on the grounds that there are loop holes that give reactor owners years in which to implement the new regulation fully. Presumably, the reactors would operate as they did before Fukushima while the required changes were being made. Considering the safety record of some reactors owners such as TEPCO, the owners of Fukushima power plant where the reactors melted down, it might be better if none of the reactors were permitted to restart until all the mandated changes had been accomplished.
Since the Fukushima disaster started with a massive earthquake, there is obvious concern in Japan about danger from future earthquakes. Considering that about twenty percent of the seismic activity on Earth occurs in the area of Japan where three tectonic plates meet, it seems like a valid concern. There is a vast network of inactive and active faults under Japan. One important aspect of the Japanese nuclear regulations is that no reactor will be allowed to operate if it is above an active fault. For years, the NRA and its predecessor agencies have been analyzing the complex set of fault lines beneath the Tsuruga nuclear power plant on the east coast of Japan. There is evidence of a quake a few thousand years ago which qualifies that particular fault as being “active”. There are other faults nearby and the NRA is afraid that if they moved together they could generate a quake more powerful than previously thought.
Recently, the NRA told the Japanese Atomic Power Company (JAPCO), the owners of the Tsuruga nuclear power plant, that they would not be allowed to operate the plant because the fault beneath the plant was active. JAPCO has insisted that the fault under the plant should not be classified as active. It turns out that JAPCO did not make seismic readings about the fault available to the Japanese government from studies done in 2005.The NRA has said that if convincing scientific evidence is provided that proves that the fault is not active, then they would consider reversing their decision.
In addition to denying that the fault under their reactor is active, JAPCO has refused to submit a requested report on what would happen to the spent nuclear fuel stored at Tsuruga in the event of an earthquake caused by the fault under the plant. If the reactor at Tsuruga is a GE Mark I or Mark II design like the reactors at Fukushima, then the spent fuel is stored in a pool on the fourth floor of the reactor building. If the water covering the spent fuel rods drains away because of damage caused by a quake, the rods will burst into flames and inject huge amount of radioactive gases and particulates into the atmosphere. Given the results of the Fukushima disaster, any such radiation plume would circle the whole Northern Hemisphere and endanger a majority of the human race.
While the Japanese government has made changes to the way they regulate nuclear power plants, it appears that the operators of the nuclear power plant are refusing to respect the authority of the NRA. If this continues, it almost guarantees another major accident. The public backlash against another accident could end the use of nuclear power in Japan permanently.
Tsuruga Nuclear Power Plant:
TEPCO lied when they said recently that it would take 100 years for contaminated groundwater to reach the ocean from the area of the Fukushima nuclear power plant. fukushima-diary.com
A report has been published about high levels of radiation in a shaft at the Fukushima Unit Three reactor. fukushima-diary.com
Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on July 17, 2013
Ambient office = .127 microsieverts per hour
Ambient outside = .100 microsieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = .083 microsieverts per hour
Redleaf lettuce from Costco = .109 microsieverts per hour
Tap water = .083 microsieverts per hour
Filtered water = .070 microsieverts per hour
I have posted several articles about the nuclear waste problems at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation (HNR) in Central Washington. The waste at the reservation is the legacy of the research and construction of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The one hundred and forty nine old buried single wall tanks are leaking. The new double walled tanks that were supposed to solve that problem have now started to leak. The construction of the vitrification plant that was going to embed the waste in the tanks in glass logs has been halted because of design problems. The waste in the tanks varies in consistence from solid to liquid to gas. Some of the tanks contain very dangerous highly radioactive waste. In addition to the waste in the tanks, it has been reported recently that the lower level waste like clothes and equipment that has been removed from Hanford is being mishandled during transport and processing.
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) is located near Carlsbad, New Mexico. It is operated by the Nuclear Waste Partnership, LLC. and was constructed to handle disposal of transuranic low-level radioactive waste generated by the U.S. defense departments and defense contractors. Permitting at the WIPP is handled by a partnership consisting of the DOE Carlsbad Field Office and the Nuclear Waste Partnership, LLC. Between 2000 and 2011 Hanford sent the equivalent of twenty five thousand drums of transuranic wastes to WIPP. This waste is less dangerous than the high-level waste in many of the buried tanks at Hanford. In 2004, a specific prohibition was inserted into the permitting rules for WIPP to prevent shipment of high-level waste from the HRC tanks to the WIPP.
Now the U.S. DOE has requested a permit to ship transuranic radioactive waste from a few of the underground tanks to WIPP. Since the 2004 prohibition was created to prevent such shipments, the New Mexico Environmental Department (NMED) has sent a request to the permitting partnership for WIPP to reverse the prohibition. They have said that they will consider the request. In the meantime, the DOE has asked NMED to expedite their request and give quick approval. NMED has refused to speed up the DOE request and has insisted that a full process including public meetings must take place. One of the concerns that New Mexico and WIPP have is that some of the wastes that Hanford wants to ship may be in a liquid form which is difficult to handle.
Supporters of the DOE request point out that the waste that Hanford would ship to WIPP would not be the most dangerous type and would be acceptable within the current rules aside from the special prohibition put into place in 2004. The critics are concerned about the ability of WIPP to handle liquid waste. The supporters of Hanford shipments from underground tanks may be right about the technical details in the law. However, considering that there has been consistent mishandling of low-level waste from Hanford during transportation, I believe that the critics have good reason to be concerned about the new shipments.
Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico:
