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 June 1, 2013
Ambient office = .131 microsieverts per hour
Ambient outside = .100 microsieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = .077 microsieverts per hour
Red Onion from local grocery store = .093 microsieverts per hour
Tap water = .076 microsieverts per hour
Filtered water = .058 microsieverts per hour
Radiation Danger in Magnuson Park in Seattle – Part 2 of 4
This is the second in a series of blog posts about the radioactive contamination left over from World War II at Magnuson Park in Seattle. On May 29th there was an “Open House” at the Mountaineers building in Magnuson Park where the Navy, the Washington State Department of Health and the Washington State Department of Ecology presented the history of the situation and plans for dealing with it at placard stations around the room. For details on the history of the contaminations, see Part 1.
There are national standards for cleaning up hazardous waste contamination. There are more stringent state standards in Washington State. There are special standards for cleaning up what have been designated as Superfund sites by the Environmental Protection agency. The Washington State Department of Health has its own standards for industrial work spaces and recreational spaces. These allow more radiation than the other standards. Each of these different designations carry with them a process that requires documentation of the problems at the site in question, exploration of alternative for clean up and a set of public meetings so that the affected citizens can have input to the planning process.
After four years of sitting on the contamination at Magnuson Park and making no public announcement because the Navy felt that there was no danger to the public because public access to the contaminated areas had been prevented, the situation finally reached public awareness last March. The Navy, which is responsible for cleaning up the contamination decided that suddenly the situation was so critical that they declared that a “Time Critical Cleanup Response” was necessary. This allowed them to circumvent any of the usual processes associated with the different site designations including their environmental impact statements, exploration of alternatives for clean up, public notification and input, and final discussion and decisions on the best way to proceed with the cleanup.
It appears that the Navy chose to work closely with the Washington State Department of Health because they had the lowest standards for allowable radiation to remain after a cleanup. The Washington State Department of Ecology was brought into the conversation very late in the game in May. Although they are the senior agency in charge of this cleanup, a representative from Ecology explained that they are stretched pretty thin and that they sometimes let “independent cleanups” go forward while they concentrate on other projects. Apparently, the cleanup of Magnuson Park was one of those “independent cleanups” that was being left to the Navy.
During conversations with the experts scattered around the room and question and answer sessions conducted by Washington State Representative Gerry Pollet, what became clear to me was that the situation was anything but clear. The experts didn’t seem to know things they should have know, the explanations for why the situation was now time critical were poor to non-existent, the plan for removal might be a good plan but the “expert” from the Washington State Department of Ecology didn’t really know much about the details. People were frustrated by the format. They wanted a public meeting with a panel of experts fielding questions from the audience. The reasons given for not holding such meetings were again poor or non-existent. The Navy may have avoided the usual processes but what passed for their new process last night was a garbled and confusing mess.
Magnuson Park and Lake Washington in Seattle:
Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on May 31, 2013
Ambient office = .099 microsieverts per hour
Ambient outside = .079 microsieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = .078 microsieverts per hour
Banana from local grocery store = .083 microsieverts per hour
Tap water = .095 microsieverts per hour
Filtered water = .089 microsieverts per hour
Radiation Danger in Seattle’s Magnuson Park, Part 1 of 4
I attended a Navy “Open House” at the Mountaineers building in Magnuson Park in northeast Seattle last night. It was a very interesting and somewhat contentious evening. The gathering was called so that the Navy, the Washington State Department of Health, the Washington State Department of Ecology and other officials could present the story of the radioactive contamination of Magnuson Park and the plan that the Navy had for cleaning it up.
To start at the beginning of this story, it is necessary to go back to World War II when Magnuson Park was a U.S. Naval Air Base. Planes were repaired at the base. Part of the repair process was to refurbish the dials of instruments that were painted with radium paint so they could be seen in the dark. The old radium paint had to be stripped off and disposed of so the new radium paint could be applied. There were dedicated rooms in a couple of the base buildings for dealing with the preparation, application and disposal of radium paint. The old paint was flushed out of the buildings and into the drain system by piping. Radium is highly radioactive and highly toxic.
After the war, the base was repurposed several times and ultimately closed in the 1990s. There was a cleanup of toxic waste in the 1970s but apparently the radium pollution was not part of the cleanup. The base was decommissioned and sections were turned over to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration as well as the City of Seattle. In 2009, the Navy did an assessment of old base buildings that were going to Seattle with respect to any lingering contamination and concluded that there was nothing to be concerned about.
When the city of Seattle decided to renovate some of the base buildings in 2010, they went over old plans for the buildings and found that some of the rooms were labeled as radium painting and handling areas. When the Navy was called back in to test for radiation, they found hot spots of gamma radiation in several sections of the old buildings and nearby grounds. Gamma radiation can penetrate walls, floors and soil. In addition of the presence of radium, cesium-137 and strontium-90 were found. These are both serious health hazards. The contaminated areas were promptly boarded up and removed from public use. Fences were put up around areas where the soil outside of the buildings showed signs of contamination. However, there was no attempt to make the situation known to the public at large beyond some signage on the walls of the contaminated rooms and on the fences around the contaminated soil.
The situation at Magnuson Park began to seep into public awareness in March of 2013, nearly four years after officials of various agencies knew about the problem. But the problem was not officially presented to the public before the meeting last night. What the public found was that the various agencies had decided that the Navy had a good plan to deal with the problem as quickly as possible under a designation known as “Time Critical Removal Action.” Unfortunately, what the public also found out at the Open House was that this process circumvents the normal review and clean up of hazard waste sites with little opportunity for the community to express their concerns and recommendations.
Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on May 30, 2013
Ambient office = .066 microsieverts per hour
Ambient outside = .101 microsieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = .099 microsieverts per hour
Vine ripened tomato from local grocery store = .074 microsieverts per hour
Tap water = .138 microsieverts per hour
Filtered water = .092 microsieverts per hour
I have posted several times about problems at the San Onofre reactor in Southern California. Problems with the faulty installation of new steam generators led to investigation by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as well as charges and counter charges between the owners, Southern California Edison (SCE) and the manufacturer of the steam generator, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI). There has been a startling new development in the public debate about restarting the reactor.
Senator Barbara Boxer has made public a 2004 letter from a SCE Vice President to the General Manager of MHI. In the letter, the utility acknowledges that it knew that there could be a “disastrous outcome” from operating the replacement steam generator at San Onofre. MHI had fabricated the generator to SCE specifications. The letter was concerned that serious problems with the new generators could lead to “unacceptable consequences” for both companies. The VP says that the new designwas based on the seismic response characteristics of the original generator despite the design changes.
Although there had been major design changes made to the replacement generator, SCE told state and federal regulators that the generator was a “like for like” replacement for the original generator. SCE kept its concerns secret. Had they been honest about the design changes, regulations would have required a delay in construction to certify the new design and would have raised costs significantly. Activist groups say that the letter proves that SCE was more concerned about keeping to a construction schedule and making money than insuring public safety.
The anticipated serious problems did arise. In just two years, the new generators failed and caused a release of radiation. The reactors were shut off and opponents of the San Onofre plant want them to stay off. State and federal regulators want additional assurances of safety. SCE wants to restart the reactors this year and is threatening to close the plant permanently if it cannot restart the reactors soon. On May 13, the NRC Atomic Safety and Licensing board said that to grant a license to restart the San Onofre reactors would be an unacceptable experiment without sufficient understanding of the problems and their solutions.
Despite dire warning of electrical outages, so far the utilities in Southern California have been able to make up the missing power from the nuclear plant by firing up natural gas generators which, unfortunately, will increase air pollution in the area.
The San Onofre situation is a perfect example of a theme that I have stated many times. Corporations are institutions that have only the single goal of making money for the shareholders who are shielded by the corporate “veil” from paying for the consequences of bad behavior on the part of the corporation. Again and again it has been revealed that individual corporations have withheld information about the danger of their products and practices. This secrecy has led to the death of millions of people and crippling of millions more. In the nuclear industry, such dishonesty could pose a threat to our very civilization. For the sake of everyone on Earth, nuclear power must end!
Radiation at the West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton, Missouri poses no threat to the public, according to an aerial survey conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency in March. stlouis.cbslocal.com
Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on May 29, 2013
Ambient office = .074 microsieverts per hour
Ambient outside = .072 microsieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = .061 microsieverts per hour
Romaine lettuce from local grocery store = .108 microsieverts per hour
Tap water = .093 microsieverts per hour
Filtered water = .063 microsieverts per hour
