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.
Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on May 25, 2013
Ambient office = .086 microsieverts per hour
Ambient outside = .104 microsieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = .088 microsieverts per hour
Hass avacado from local grocery store = 079 microsieverts per hour
Tap water = .107 microsieverts per hour
Filtered water = .086 microsieverts per hour
The last couple of posts to this blog featured boosters of nuclear power claiming that with the construction of new reactors in the U.S., the future is bright for nuclear power. I believe that the past year’s worth of posts to this blog detail just how wrong that assessment is. The boosters brush off past nuclear accidents as not really that serious and claim that the new reactors will be even safer and more immune to accidents. Nuclear fallout from bombs and accidents is a serious concern but there is another kind of “nuclear “fallout. My posts and links about Fukushima show how a nuclear disaster such as Fukushima reverberates throughout the country of origin and, indeed, the entire world. There are social, political, economic and health impacts that are still causing problems almost two years after the disaster. Even if a nuclear disaster does not immediately kill a lot of people, the repercussions go on for years and cost billions of dollars.
France is considering what to do about their nuclear power program. A recent analysis suggested that France should either commit to continue getting eighty percent of their power from nuclear sources or they should immediately start to wind down their dependence on nuclear power. One of the problems with continuing to use nuclear power is the fact that there are many unsolved problems and countries such as Germany are eliminating nuclear power. The disaster at Fukushima has caused a worldwide reappraisal of the wisdom of using nuclear energy to generate electricity and generated a ground swell of public rejection of nuclear energy. The analysis concluded that of the two main choices, ending nuclear power would be the better one. One of their arguments is that the pool of skilled personnel needed to run their reactors is diminishing. Many nuclear professionals will be retiring soon and young people considering what to study in college may turn away from nuclear engineering because of the uncertainty of nuclear power’s future in France. Unfortunately, the analysis also concluded that it was most likely that France would choose neither of the main alternatives and would, instead, engage in a protracted debate on nuclear power which would cause even more problems in the long run than getting out of or committing to stay in nuclear power now.
There are new stories emerging from Fukushima that claim that it is getting to be more and more difficult for the operators of the stricken Fukushima power plant to find the skilled workers that it needs to keep working on recovery from the disaster. One reason is that some of the staff are reaching their limit of long term radiation exposure and will have to retire for health reasons. Another reason is that there are many better paying jobs in the construction industry rebuilding from the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami that destroyed the Fukushima power plant. There is also the possibility that as reactors are being built in other countries, Japanese nuclear professionals may be lured away to work outside of Japan.
TEPCO, the operators of the Fukushima plant, claim that they are not aware of any problems with staffing. One possible reason for this is the fact that TEPCO subcontracts with other firms for staffing. Some of these firms, in turn, subcontract from other firms. In some cases, there may be as many as five levels of contractors between TEPCO and the companies that are actually hiring people. The reports of a lack of available workers are coming from the lower level contractors so TEPCO is not really aware of the problem. A survey in December of 2012 found that over half the works at Fukushima were not actually working for the particular contractors who were supposed to be employing them.
The world wide attraction of nuclear engineering jobs took a big hit from the Fukushima disaster. Another big nuclear disaster will make working in the industry even less attractive. The staffing problem is just another one of the peripheral problems haunting the global nuclear industry aside from the big problems such as accidents and waste disposal.
Nuclear workers in training:
Last week TEPCO announced at a press conference that they would be unable to build the underground wall hoped to block some of the water infiltration and leaking at the plant. www.simplyinfo.org
Areva has confirmed that 15 people were injured in a terrorist attack at its Somair uranium mine in Niger, one of which later died the same day. world-nuclear-news.org
Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on May 24, 2013
Ambient office = .127 microsieverts per hour
Ambient outside = .085 microsieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = .071 microsieverts per hour
Sliced mushrooms from local grocery store = .104 microsieverts per hour
Tap water = .091 microsieverts per hour
Filtered water = .083 microsieverts per hour
A recent post on the Extreme Tech blog said that nuclear power was our only hope and that opposing it was a huge hypocrisy on the part of environmentalists. The post starts off by talking about the coming huge increase in electricity demand in China and India in the near future and how they are burning coal to generate electricity. The post rightly states that coal is a very dirty fuel that is highly polluting. The author, Graham Templeton, goes on to trash oil and natural gas, citing pollution and climate change.
The report talks about new technologies for pollution control of fossil fuels but dismisses them as too little and too late. He mentions the billions of gallons of coal slurry that are radioactive and an environmental hazard. He brushes off the environmental degradation of fracking as a possible reasonable price to pay to reduce air pollution, a rather cavalier attitude when tap water in fracking areas can burn like gasoline.
With respect to the increasing carbon dioxide causing global warming, he describes some new carbon sequester techniques that will help pull carbon out of the atmosphere but the writer also dismisses these as insufficient in light of continuing pollution from fossil fuel use. He also finds the current existing technologies for carbon sequestration to be wanting.
Finally he takes aim at solar, wind and other alternative technologies and says that they are not ready yet to play a major role in energy generation. So what does he have to say about how we could meet the electricity demands of the future?
Why nuclear reactors are the way! They are a mature technology, very safe, and the waste they generate is not even as bad as the radioactive coal slurry. Fukushima? Why that proves how tough and safe the current generation of reactors are. Even an earthquake and a tsumami didn’t really do that much damage. And radiation that has been released worldwide by nuclear explosions and accidents hasn’t really hurt anyone. So he says that any environmentalist who is against nuclear power is a hypocrite.
In a popular metaphor, reading this article made my head explode. The radiation from Fukushima circled the whole northern hemisphere. If the spent fuel pool at reactor number four is hit by another quake and comes crashing down, the fuel rods will burn and release a hundred times the radiation of Chernobyl. The cores that melted down at Fukushima are likely to pour radiation into the ocean for decades. All the spent nuclear fuel pools in the U.S. are going to be full and there won’t be a permanent storage until 2048 in the U.S. at the earliest. The temporary storage tanks are corroding. The Hanford reservation tanks are leaking. Illnesses and deaths attributable to radiation are very hard to track and identify unless the radiation is immediate and intense.
The financial community is not interested in investing in nuclear plants. The cost of new reactors is rising above estimates, there are delays and lawsuits. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has done a poor job of regulation. Members of the nuclear industry have allowed shoddy construction, failed to maintain equipment, falsified reports, persecuted whistleblowers, ignored leaks, etc. Alternative energy sources are increasing exponential in capability and decreasing exponentially in cost.
I do not disagree that current use of fossil fuels are highly polluting and dangerous. I do disagree that nuclear power is the answer to our future energy needs. A combination of conservation and alternative energy sources will have to serve until more futuristic alternative such as nuclear fusion and/or solar power satellites are available.
Latitude 47.704656 Longitude -122.318745
Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on May 23, 2013
Ambient office = .091 microsieverts per hour
Ambient outside = .099 microsieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = .105 microsieverts per hour
Bing cherries from local grocery store = .116 microsieverts per hour
Tap water = .083 microsieverts per hour
Filtered water = .070 microsieverts per hour
The Nuclear Energy Institute is the trade organization that represents and lobbies for the nuclear industry in the United State. In their promotion of nuclear reactors they tend to emphasize the positive aspects and overlook or excuse many of the negative aspects. Recently, Marvin Fertel the NEI President and CEO gave the keynote address at the annual meeting of the NEI.
One of the main points of the address was that the rebounding U.S. economy will lead to an increase in electricity demand which will be filled by expanding the nuclear reactor fleet. There are ten applications for construction and operating licenses for new reactors currently being considered by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It will take years for these applications to work their way through the process and constructions won’t start for years if they are approved.
More near term, the NEI President highlighted current reactor construction projects in the U.S. Concrete is being poured at Plant Vogtle in Georgia for two new reactors that are already forty percent complete. It is the biggest construction project in Georgia and is responsible for thousands of jobs. Unfortunately for nuclear power boosters, this project has been plagued by delays, unexpected construction costs, law suits, safety concerns and demands by the owners for a hike in electrical rates to pay for the problems.
The NEI President also mentioned the new reactor being constructed at Plant Summer in South Carolina. He mentioned the size of the project and the new jobs but did not say much of anything about the almost ten percent increase in costs over the original estimates and the delays on the project.
Reactor projects in Florida have been delayed because of the cheaper electricity being generated by the cheaper natural gas power generation stations. A plant in Illinois has been slated for permanent closure because of the cheaper energy available.
The NEI President was trying to make an argument based on economics but that is a very shaky argument. As the above examples indicate, the cost of nuclear power is rising. And with the boom in fracking, the cost of electricity from natural gas is dropping. In addition, the cost of solar and wind power are also dropping. It is pretty obvious that these strictly economic facts argue against a bright future for nuclear power generation.
On top of that, the disaster at Fukushima aroused a lot of hostility around the world against nuclear power. Another earthquake has just created additional leaks at Fukushima. The spent nuclear fuel pool of Unit Four is teetering four stories in the air in a severely damaged building. Another quake could take it down at any time and spread more radiation around the world. The cores of reactors Two and Three at Fukushima that melted down are still hot and must be constantly cooled by water. TEPCO wants to dump some of that contaminated water into the ocean which will continue to increase the radioactivity of plankton and fish in the Pacific Ocean for decades at the least.
One more major disaster at Fukushima or anywhere in the world will increase the pressure to end the use of nuclear power worldwide. It will also reduce the availability of capital for investment in nuclear reactors. I am afraid that the future of nuclear energy is not as bright as the NEI President suggests.
Construction at Vogtle, image by Charles C Watson, Jr.:
An oil pump fire interrupted the Pilgrim Nuclear Plant startup. nuclearstreet.com
A magnitude 6 quake has caused a new leak at Fukushima nuclear power plant. enenews.com
Strateco announces $87 million impairment charge from the Quebec Minister decision not to issue certificate of authorization the Matoush project. yournuclearnews.com
Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on May 22, 2013
Ambient office = .146 microsieverts per hour
Ambient outside = .189 microsieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = .145 microsieverts per hour
Zante Currants from local grocery store = .086 microsieverts per hour
Tap water = .126 microsieverts per hour
Filtered water = .110 microsieverts per hour
