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 April 22, 2013
Ambient office = .099 microsieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 092 microsieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = .067 microsieverts per hour
Dried blueberries from local grocery store = .102 microsieverts per hour
Tap water = .097 microsieverts per hour
Filtered water = .077 microsieverts per hour
One way that some industries increase profits is by unloading some of their costs onto the environment through pollution. These unloaded costs are referred to as externalities. Factory and fossil fuel power plant pollution coming from the smoke stacks is one of these externalities. There is another type of externality coming from thermoelectric power plants which require huge amounts of cooling water to turn steam back into water as part of the energy generation cycle. It does not matter whether coal or nuclear energy is used to produce the steam that turns the turbines. This “thermal” pollution is not discussed as often as the toxic particulates and gases emitted by smokestacks but it real and it is serious.
Recently, there was a study of such pollution which included some computer simulations conducted by scientists at the University of New Hampshire. This is the first comprehensive study of how such thermal pollution from power plants affects the climate, hydrology and aquatic ecosystems in the Northeaster United States. The rivers have become “horizontal cooling towers” analogous to the vertical cooling towers used at some power plants. This cooling process is very useful and free to the utilities running the power plants but it is costly to the environment.
“The analysis, done in collaboration with colleagues from the City College of New York (CCNY) and published online in the current journal Environmental Research Letters, highlights the interactions among electricity production, cooling technologies, hydrologic conditions, aquatic impacts and ecosystem services, and can be used to assess the full costs and tradeoffs of electricity production at regional scales and under changing climate conditions.”
Thermoelectric power plants (including nuclear power plants) provide over ninety percent of the electricity in the United States. The amount of cooling water drawn from the environment is greater than the total amount of water currently used for agriculture in the United States. Some of the water is evaporated in huge vertical cooling towers and the rest is dumped back into the environment. The heat is dissipated as the rivers flow downstream from the power plants. About half of the water used for cooling thermoelectric power plants is returned to the rivers with the other half going into the atmosphere. Just over eleven percent of the heat from the power plants goes back into the atmosphere as the rivers flow away. All the rest of the heat is arrives at coastal bodies of water and the oceans.
While the flow of most of the 4,700 river miles is not impacted significantly by the power plants drawing water from the rivers, the impact of the heat on the ecosystem in general and fish habitats in particular is considerable. Recently, a nuclear power plant had to stop drawing water from Long Island Sound because the ocean temperatures were too high. And a nuclear power plant in Illinois had to be shut down because the water in a cooling pond became too hot to use.
With global climate change heating bodies of water and water levels of lakes, rivers and reservoirs dropping as more and more water is consumed, there are serious considerations that must be taken into account regarding the use of environmental surface water for cooling thermoelectric power plants.
Monticello Reservoir was built in South Carolina to provide cooling water to the Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Generation Station – picture by Duane Burdick:
IAEA says that Japanese Fukushima cleanup may take more than 40 years. washingtonpost.com
The top aide to the United Nation nuclear chief unexpectedly resigned which suggest tensions at the top of the agency. articles.washingtonpost.com
Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on April 22, 2013
Ambient office = .100 microsieverts per hour
Ambient outside = .131 microsieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = .153 microsieverts per hour
Banana from local grocery store = .086 microsieverts per hour
Tap water = .101 microsieverts per hour
Filtered water = .085 microsieverts per hour
I have posted a lot of articles about threats to nuclear reactors. Aside from problems originating within a power plant like fires, explosions and meltdowns, I have talked about hurricanes, floods, earthquakes and other external threats. But it turns out that there are threats to our nuclear reactors that are literally out of this world.
We generally think of our sun as a stable source of life-giving energy. That is generally true but there are cycles of solar storms called sunspots that peak about every eleven years. If these storms are particularly intense, the wind of solar plasma that hits the radiation belts around the earth can cause problems for satellites and terrestrial electrical system.
In 1859 there was a severe solar storm called the Carrington Event that caused a huge coronal mass ejection (CMR). In about seventeen hours, the solar plasma hit the Earth and caused the biggest geomagnetic storm ever recorded. Auroras, commonly known as the Northern Lights, could be seen as far south as the Caribbean on the night of September 1. People in the Northeastern United States could read newspapers by the light of the auroras. Induced current caused telegraph systems all over the United States and Europe to fail. Some of the systems did continue to transmit messages even though they had been disconnected from their power supplies.
Analysis of ice cores from Greenland indicates that Carrington size CMEs occur between every one hundred and fifty years and every five hundred years on average. Events that are about one fifth the size of the Carrington Event happen several times a century. Powerful solar storms happened in 1921 and 1960, causing widespread problems in electrical systems and disrupting radio broadcasts. In 1989, a big solar storm caused a power failure over a large part of Quebec, Canada.
We are living in an electrical house of cards. It has been estimated that if we had a Carrington Event now, it would cause such massive damage to our electrical infrastructure that it would result in the end of our civilization. All electrical generation, transmission and utilization would be damaged beyond repair. All electrical communication systems would be gone. Gasoline to run vehicles is pumped with electrical pumps so combustion engines would soon be inoperable. Since we had a Carrington Event about a hundred and fifty years ago, we could have another one at any time. In addition, more frequent but less severe solar storms can still wreck havoc on our infrastructure including nuclear power plants. The problem at Fukushima was that they could not cool the fuel rods because external electrical power was cut off. This could easily happen to many reactors in the United States in the event of a serious solar storm.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is taking this threat seriously. They are currently coordinating with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to understand the problem. They have concluded that the possibility of a severe solar storm is serious enough that they need to consider some sort of regulatory action for the U.S. nuclear reactors. Emergency planning and response capability in such circumstances need to be explored. A number of studies have concluded that the possibility of major solar flares taking down the U.S. power grid for months or even years would result in multiple meltdowns of U.S. reactors. It appears the threat to nuclear reactors from solar storms is more serious than even the threat of earthquakes and tsunamis. It is a good thing that the NRC is working on preparations for such solar events.
Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on April 22, 2013
Ambient office = .050 microsieverts per hour
Ambient outside = .077 microsieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = .098 microsieverts per hour
Opal apple from local grocery store = .079 microsieverts per hour
Tap water = .087 microsieverts per hour
Filtered water = .070 microsieverts per hour
Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on April 21, 2013
Ambient office = .067 microsieverts per hour
Ambient outside = .097 microsieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = .110 microsieverts per hour
Redleaf lettuce from local grocery store = .117 microsieverts per hour
Tap water = .109 microsieverts per hour
Filtered water = .088 microsieverts per hour
I have posted a lot of articles about threats to nuclear reactors. Aside from problems originating within a power plant like fires, explosions and meltdowns, I have talked about hurricanes, floods, earthquakes and other external threats. But it turns out that there are threats to our nuclear reactors that are literally out of this world.
We generally think of our sun as a stable source of life-giving energy. That is generally true but there are cycles of solar storms called sunspots that peak about every eleven years. If these storms are particularly intense, the wind of solar plasma that hits the radiation belts around the earth can cause problems for satellites and terrestrial electrical system.
In 1859 there was a severe solar storm called the Carrington Event that caused a huge coronal mass ejection (CMR). In about seventeen hours, the solar plasma hit the Earth and caused the biggest geomagnetic storm ever recorded. Auroras, commonly known as the Northern Lights, could be seen as far south as the Caribbean on the night of September 1. People in the Northeastern United States could read newspapers by the light of the auroras. Induced current caused telegraph systems all over the United States and Europe to fail. Some of the systems did continue to transmit messages even though they had been disconnected from their power supplies.
Analysis of ice cores from Greenland indicates that Carrington size CMEs occur between every one hundred and fifty years and every five hundred years on average. Events that are about one fifth the size of the Carrington Event happen several times a century. Powerful solar storms happened in 1921 and 1960, causing widespread problems in electrical systems and disrupting radio broadcasts. In 1989, a big solar storm caused a power failure over a large part of Quebec, Canada.
We are living in an electrical house of cards. It has been estimated that if we had a Carrington Event now, it would cause such massive damage to our electrical infrastructure that it would result in the end of our civilization. All electrical generation, transmission and utilization would be damaged beyond repair. All electrical communication systems would be gone. Gasoline to run vehicles is pumped with electrical pumps so combustion engines would soon be inoperable. Since we had a Carrington Event about a hundred and fifty years ago, we could have another one at any time. In addition, more frequent but less severe solar storms can still wreck havoc on our infrastructure including nuclear power plants. The problem at Fukushima was that they could not cool the fuel rods because external electrical power was cut off. This could easily happen to many reactors in the United States in the event of a serious solar storm.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is taking this threat seriously. They are currently coordinating with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to understand the problem. They have concluded that the possibility of a severe solar storm is serious enough that they need to consider some sort of regulatory action for the U.S. nuclear reactors. Emergency planning and response capability in such circumstances need to be explored. A number of studies have concluded that the possibility of major solar flares taking down the U.S. power grid for months or even years would result in multiple meltdowns of U.S. reactors. It appears the threat to nuclear reactors from solar storms is more serious than even the threat of earthquakes and tsunamis. It is a good thing that the NRC is working on preparations for such solar events.
