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.
Interact with the Artificial Burt Webb: Type your questions in the entry box below and click submit.
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.
Nuclear waste is a growing headache for South Korea. abcnews.go.com
International sanctions may be speeding Iran’s nuclear advancement. csmonitor.com
Duke Energy tells the NRC that the risk of a Jocassee Dam failure isn’t credible. greenvilleonline.com
I have written two posts about decommissioning of nuclear reactors. The focus was primarily on the problems in the United States. There are serious concerns that some companies running nuclear reactors do not have enough money set aside for decommissioning. And also that it may be difficult to estimate what such decommissioning wil ultimately cost. These concerns are also being expressed in the European Union with respect to the decommissioning of reactors in member states.
In 2011, a mandatory European Union Directive called on all member states to “provide a detailed cost estimate of all waste management steps up to disposal, including the associated activities, such as research and development.” In 2013, the European commission issued a report that member states had not provided sufficiently detailed information on their decommissioning plans to satisfy the requirements of the 2011 mandate.
In addition, the report stated that the member nations were not in compliance with the Euratom Treaty requirements that they notify the Commission about decommissioning plans and efforts. Some of the notifications did not contain information about a fully developed decommissioning plan that was written into law. Such notifications were supposed to contain information about investment projects, amounts invested in funds, plans for dealing with the assets of such funds, how funds were to be managed, etc. The report did not name the countries that were not complying but did say that future notifications required detailed plans and at the very least, drafts of proposed legislation to provide the legal framework for the decommissioning funds.
Another problem highlighted by the report had to do with oversight for the decommissioning fund. There were some open questions about exactly who would have authority to monitor the funds and their compliance with EU regulations. The importance of having an independent monitoring authority separate from the fund managers was stressed. The report ended on a positive note saying that most of the member states had set aside adequate money for decommissioning.
When Bulgaria, Lithuania and Slovakia applied for membership in the European Union, one of the conditions of membership was that old Soviet era nuclear reactors in the three countries had to be shut down. In return for the cost and effort to comply with this condition, the European Union agreed to provide funds for the decommissioning effort. Almost four billion dollars was set aside in the 2007 to 2013 EU budget for this project. Much of the money has been spent but there have been serious cost overruns, and charges of lack of coordination, serious delays, diffused responsibilities, poor priority setting and too much money going to other energy projects unrelated to decommissioning. One big problem is that some of the plants have not been “irreversibly shut down”.
The European Union has serious financial problems with some of the member states on the verge of bankruptcy and costly bailout plans being discussed. It is no stretch of the imagination to foresee a situation where an EU member state is unable to maintain the decommissioning funds required due to financial crashes. In that case, the EU would have to find the money somewhere else to deal with decommissioning. With the EU itself in danger of financial collapse if member states continue to have serious problems, it is not improbable that the EU would turn to the United States for help. So we may find ourselves in a situation where not only do our own nuclear operators default on decommissioning funds but members of the EU also default and turn to us for help. If the United States is also in serious financial trouble, we may wind up with shuttered and fenced shut down reactors that have not been decommissioned properly and constitute a serious public health problem.
Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on March 25, 2013
Ambient office = .078 microsieverts per hour
Ambient outside = .068 microsieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain = .079 microsieverts per hour
Kara Kara Orange from grocery store = .113 microsieverts per hour
Tap water = .085 microsieverts per hour
Filtered water = .062 microsieverts per hour
China won’t act against a nuclear North Korea. washingtonpost.com
The latest aerial survey of the Fukushima region reveals a pattern of contamination significantly reduced in the space of a year by natural processes of radioactive decay and dispersal. world-nuclear-news.org
I recently read an article in Forbes about nuclear energy and fear. Imagine There’s No Fear — Why We Are So Afraid of Nuclear. The writer spends a lot of time talking about ideas and culture. He suggests that the question of why people fear nuclear energy and radiation is complicated and bound up in a lot of cultural issues. He says that the idea of power and who wields it is part of the complicated mix and that nuclear energy linked into a deep cultural concern with the struggle between good and evil. According to the author, the idea that dangerous weapons that could rain death down on millions and the strategy of mutually assured destruction as a deterrent existed before nuclear weapons but nuclear weapons became the ultimate embodiment of these ideas. Then he says something that I consider to be very stupid “Nuclear will no more easily destroy the world than will coal, or drug-resistant bacteria, or terminator-GMO seeds.”
I had to read that sentence several times to see if it really was as wrong as it appeared to be on first reading. I hate to contradict a pundit for a prestigious magazine but this statement is just silly. Whether or not his rattling on about memes and the sociology of fear is worth reading is one thing, but this blatant idiocy of this quote is something that I have to challenge. I agree that the three other things that he mentions could cause widespread death and destruction in some circumstances but their threat is tiny compared to the destructive potential of nuclear weapons. A small exchange of a few hundred warheads by Pakistan and India which is a very real possibility could cause a nuclear winter that would effectively destroy human civilization. If the spent fuel pool for Reactor 4 at Fukushima collapses from another earthquake which is a very real possibility, the resultant injection of radioactive materials into the atmosphere will spread around the entire northern hemisphere of the earth and threaten civilization. While there are serious hypothetical threat scenarios that coal, bacteria or GMO seeds could cause much havoc and death, they are nowhere near as possible or likely as nuclear war or nuclear accidents.
The author then goes on to talk about what a great document the U.S. Constitution is and that it is a great framework for incorporating any new technology into society for the benefit of the people. So the U.S. needs to develop renewable energy sources and other green technologies such as nuclear for a stable and prosperous future. I have already said a great deal about the viability and dangers of nuclear energy in other blogs and I will have more to say in the future. For the moment, I would just like to say that I really resent this cheerleading for the nuclear industry under the guise of a sober assessment of cultural and technological trends. Contrary to the article I am citing, it is very reasonable to fear nuclear energy and to work hard to exclude it from the mix of practical future energy sources. The Forbes article is too long on sociology and psychology and too short on physics and technology to be taken seriously.
Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on March 24, 2013
Ambient office = .121 microsieverts per hour
Ambient outside = .092 microsieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain = .109 microsieverts per hour
Orange from grocery store = .079 microsieverts per hour
Tap water = .105 microsieverts per hour
Filtered water = .085 microsieverts per hour
Nuclear workers think Fukushima can’t be settled. fukushima-diary.com
Haunted by trauma, Fukushima tsunami survivors in Japan turn to exorcists. yahoo.com
U.S. students near Three Mile Island were kept in classroom with radiation levels off the scale. enenews.com
Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on March 23, 2013
Ambient office = .090 microsieverts per hour
Ambient outside = .075 microsieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain = .086 microsieverts per hour
Sliced mushrooms from grocery store = .100 microsieverts per hour
Tap water = .094 microsieverts per hour
Filtered water = .067 microsieverts per hour
More Fukushima nuclear pollution will hit the West Coast of the U.S. starting in 2015. enenews.com
The Development Bank of Latin America has issued its first loan for a nuclear project to support the refurbishment and license extension of Argentina’s Embalse nuclear power plant. world-nuclear-news.org
Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on March 22, 2013
Ambient office = .105 microsieverts per hour
Ambient outside = .084 microsieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain = .083 microsieverts per hour
Papaya from grocery store = .147 microsieverts per hour
Tap water = .110 microsieverts per hour
Filtered water = .091 microsieverts per hour
