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.
Korean interest in Finnish heating SMR world-nuclear-news.com
Palisades plant set for historic nuclear restart with $400M federal investment boost michiganadvance.com
Missouri nuclear plant back online after incident fox2now.com
Kazakhstan builds partnerships at home and abroad world-nuclear-news.com
Czech Public Continues To Show Strong Support For Nuclear, Says Poll nucnet.org
Latitude 47.704656 Longitude -122.318745
Ambient office = 81 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 66 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 61 nanosieverts per hour
Roma tomato from Central Market = 93 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 80 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 70 nanosieverts per hour
Part 1 of 2 Parts
Countries around the world are grappling with the clean energy transition and the challenges of rapidly expanding solar, wind, and battery storage. Many countries are looking to nuclear power as an additional option. In Southeast Asia, the five countries responsible for the vast majority of regional power consumption have all taken steps to include nuclear power in national plans. After a historical conversation on whether to adopt nuclear power given concerns over cost, waste management, and risks, the region must now contend with geopolitical and governance considerations, as well as reinvestment in human, technical, regulatory, and institutional capacity to ensure success in a nuclear power transition.
Global representatives gathered in Belem, Brazil the week of November 13th to explore next steps to mitigate climate change. Many attendees recalled the ambitious pledge of twenty countries at COP28 to triple nuclear energy output by 2050. This was a historic recognition of nuclear power as a key element of world efforts to transition away from fossil fuels. However, for developing and middle-income countries, realizing this “nuclear renaissance” brings its own set of challenges, from geopolitics and governance to financing, infrastructure, and workforce development. These issues are particularly palpable in Southeast Asia, where six of the eleven countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are exploring or are already investing in nuclear power.
Southeast Asia, where fossil fuels currently dominate the power mix, is a priority zone for rapid adaptation to nuclear power. Electricity demand in the region is estimated to grow by four percent annually through 2035, accounting for one fourth of global energy demand growth and adding more than South Korea’s entire energy demand over the next decade. To meet net zero carbon commitments, the region must massively expand investment in and access to clean energy while ensuring power system reliability and affordability for consumers and manufacturing. Most countries are taking an all-of-the-above approach to meet the rising energy demand, targeting not only solar and wind, which are broadly available in the region, but also alternative sources including hydrogen, geothermal, and nuclear power.
As the COP28 pledge underscored, nuclear energy will be critical to balancing many national clean energy portfolios given its ability, unlike wind or solar, to supply consistent stable baseload to national grids. However, despite a long history in southeast Asian regional power plans, concerns around safety, waste management, and financing have slowed down its adoption.
The Philippines completed building the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant in 1984 but never started operations due to safety concerns, including its proximity to a fault line. Vietnam initially planned to deploy nuclear energy in the early 2000s but removed two nuclear power plants from its national power development plan (PDP) in 2016 because of cost concerns. Thailand included nuclear energy in national PDPs between 2007-2015 before deleting them from the 2018 PDP. Malaysia decided in 2018 to not exploit nuclear power given concerns over risks and waste management.
Given both existing net-zero commitments as well as the emergence of advanced and small modular reactors (SMRs), nuclear power is again attracting policy support and investment. Five countries including Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam are responsible for eighty nine percent of the region’s energy demand, and all of them are moving forward with plans for nuclear power.
Please read Part 2 next
Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant temporarily lost power overnight, IAEA says reuters.com
Dunkirk to declare nuclear interest post-journal.com
Japan pulls out of Vietnam nuclear project, complicating Hanoi’s power plans rreuters.com
Two Rivers secures long-term nuclear energy deal to power city through 2050s fox11online.com
Latitude 47.704656 Longitude -122.318745
Ambient office = 101 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 105 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 104 nanosieverts per hour
Red bell pepper from Central Market = 122 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 111 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 102 nanosieverts per hour
Further delay in Finnish repository license review world-nuclear-news.org
Brazilian development bank gauges consultancy interest in uranium expansion world-nuclear-news.org
Rolls-Royce awards £400m nuclear support contract naval-technology.com
Rubio says Biden-era Australian nuclear-powered submarine agreement to proceed washingtime.com
Latitude 47.704656 Longitude -122.318745
Ambient office = 104 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 123 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 119 nanosieverts per hour
Purple onion from Central Market = 129 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 135 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 119 nanosieverts per hour
HF Controls’ $450K Gift Backs Nuclear and AI Research at UTA dallasinnovates.com
Asim Munir Now In Control Of Pakistan’s Nuclear Button ndtv.com
Laurentis, BWXT and CNPSA sign Bulgarian new nuclear contract world-nuclear-news.org
UK’s new nuclear ambitions ‘have only just begun’ world-nuclear-news.org
Latitude 47.704656 Longitude -122.318745
Ambient office = 96 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 145 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 139 nanosieverts per hour
Lime from Central Market = 108 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 122 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 97 nanosieverts per hour
Dover Sole from Central = 94 nanosieverts per hour
Part 2 of 2 Parts
Wald discussed the need for economic production of reactors with novel designs. Triggering a nuclear renaissance, he said, will necessitate making “new products like we stamp out Boeing 737s or we used to stamp out Liberty ships. In serial production, if not mass production, economics must be key. We’ve got to design the better mousetrap and figure out how to build it and how to deliver it at competitive cost. Carbon reduction pledges will help in the market, but in the end, future nuclear power plants will rise or fall on the economics.”
Wald said that the politics must change too. Commenting on the not-in-my-backyard cliché, or NIMBY, as a common objection to proposals to build nuclear reactors near particularly neighborhoods, Wald pointed out that “some of the new reactor designs will occupy literally about as much space as a backyard. Some of the designs will have plug-and-play reactor cores with the old nuclear core going back to the manufacturer every few years” to get its spent fuel replaced with fresh fuel.
Wald mentioned a scenario in which the staff of a reactor manufacturing company’s headquarters were welcomed to a large neighborhood in a big city. A few years later residents noticed a truck had just delivered an old reactor core to the headquarters!
Wald said, “The other problem with artisanal energy policy is it doesn’t work as part of a system. Solar and wind tribalists say their costs are going down. But we’d be much better off if we put our money into collective solutions. We should invest in the electric grid. If all the money used to purchase 11-kilowatt emergency generators, like I and others have in my neighborhood, had went into the grid instead, we’d all be better off. “I think that solar and wind farms have their place, but only to the extent that they benefit the system. Adding solar panels in a place where noontime electricity prices on the grid are negative is not a good idea, although federal and state incentives may make that happen.”
Wald was asked if many more nuclear power plants were built to meet increasing demands for electricity by AI data centers, would the existing grid be able to handle the load?
He answered that “This is actually something in nuclear power’s favor,” noting that little high-voltage transmission is being built in the U.S. because of successful lawsuits based on environmental rules. “The amount of electricity transmission you need to support a new reactor is lower than what you need for wind or solar or hydro energy sources. Nuclear plants have reasonably flexible siting requirements.”
Wald may have surprised a few people in his audience because he said that he’s not sure that commercial fusion power reactors envisioned for mid-century will be needed. He said that “I think fusion seeks to solve two problems that fission does not, in fact, have. One is a shortage of fuel, and the other is radioactive waste. We don’t have a shortage of uranium, and we don’t have any shortage of plutonium if we want it. The problem of radioactive waste from nuclear power plants is manageable.”
Before he left, Wald made one statement everyone agreed with. “Life is going to change!”
