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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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.
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
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.
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
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.
Tritium is a universal health threat that released by every nuclear reactor during normal operations. beyondnuclear.org
A project to upgrade the concrete basemat under EDF’s Fessenheim 1 has been completed, allowing France’s oldest operating reactor to continue producing electricity. world-nuclear-news.org
An international team has visited the Chernobyl site to review the causes and effects of a roof collapse that took place in February. world-nuclear-news.org
Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on July 10, 2013
Ambient office = .102 microsieverts per hour
Ambient outside = .121 microsieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = .129 microsieverts per hour
Millet from local grocery store = .107 microsieverts per hour
Tap water = .074 microsieverts per hour
Filtered water = .065 microsieverts per hour
I have blogged in previous posts about my concern over the cost of nuclear power. I believe that the cost of nuclear power will continue to rise and that, ultimately, the taxpayers in the United States and other parts of the world that use nuclear energy will wind up paying huge amounts of money to deal with spent nuclear fuel. There is a factor in the cost of nuclear power that I have not dealt with in detail before. Once a nuclear power plant has been built and is operating, fuel must be purchased for the reactor. While uranium is a fairly common element on Earth, mining it and processing it is expensive. Now a report has been published in the Science of the Total Environment journal that indicates that a supply gap in world uranium production is imminent which will result in spiraling uranium fuel costs for decades.
Although there has been an increase in uranium production in the past five years, the uranium being mined is lower grade than in previous production periods and does not produce as much energy per pound of uranium. The report says that initial estimates of uranium resources were too optimistic and that in a worst case scenario, only fifty percent of known reserves could be recovered and processed into fuel.
The report has analyzed the depletion of global deposits in past and present uranium mines. Peak uranium, the highest level of uranium production anticipated is projected to be fifty eight thousand tons in 2015. That is only two years away! The report predicts that production will drop to fifty four thousand tons by 2025. After 2025, it is predicted that there will be a rapid decline in product to about forty one thousand tons in 2030. The report states that these projected production figures will not be sufficient to fuel the existing and planned nuclear reactors during the next twenty years. Estimating a one percent rise in demand, the report predicts that there will be shortages of uranium and rising prices beyond inflation rates in the next five years.
Even if one percent of the global nuclear reactor capacity is phased out every year from now until 2025, there will still not be enough uranium to fuel the operating reactors. The authors of the report call for a worldwide systematic phase out of nuclear energy generation to begin immediately. This phase out could possibility delay the supply gap until after 2025. Military uranium reserves in the U.S. and Russia could also be tapped to prevent a short fall in uranium fuel production before 2025.
If there is not a concerted global effort to head off the coming shortage of uranium for fuel, the report predicts that the end of cheap uranium fuel will force a phase out of nuclear power generation along with wild price fluctuations, supply shortages and possible brown outs and black outs in countries that rely on nuclear power for a substantial portion of their electricity.
Four Japanese utilities applied to restart eight idled reactors under new post-Fukushima safety regulations that took effect Monday. nuclearstreet.com
A report on the environmental impact of Turkey’s forthcoming Akkuyu nuclear power plant has been presented for independent review. world-nuclear-news.org
Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on July 09, 2013
Ambient office = .128 microsieverts per hour
Ambient outside = .072 microsieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = .086 microsieverts per hour
Fresh Garlic from local produce stand = .099 microsieverts per hour
Tap water = .119 microsieverts per hour
Filtered water = .097 microsieverts per hour
