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.
Latitude 47.704656 Longitude -122.318745
Ambient office = 80 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 115 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 118 nanosieverts per hour
Shitake mushroom from Central Market = 103 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 115 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 105 nanosieverts per hour
‘Searching for energy solutions,’ Idaho Gov. Little creates new task force to advance nuclear energy kpvi.com
Nuclear power, battery storage funding at center of energy policy debate illinoistimes.com
Sweden Proposes €19.9 Billion Framework To Finance New Nuclear Plant Projects nucnet.org
Putin Gives Major Nuclear Weapons Update newsweek.com
Latitude 47.704656 Longitude -122.318745
Ambient office = 73 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 143 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 148 nanosieverts per hour
Heirloom tomato from Central Market = 113 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 126 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 114 nanosieverts per hour
Iran’s Nuclear Chief Arrives in Moscow to Sign Nuclear Reactor Deal themoscowtimes.com
Putin says Russia will stick to nuclear arms limits for one more year after treaty with U.S. expires inquirer.com
IAEA says Iran nuclear diplomacy at a ‘difficult juncture’ montanarightnow.com
South Korea would accept a Trump-Kim deal to freeze nuclear programme, president tells BBC bbc.com
Latitude 47.704656 Longitude -122.318745
Ambient office = 80 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 134 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 130 nanosieverts per hour
Green onion from Central Market = 126 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 101 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 89 nanosieverts per hour
Dover Sole from Central = 88 nanosieverts per hour
Part 3 of 3 Parts (Please read Parts 1 and 2 first)
Dale Klein is a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Texas and former chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He said, “The market signals are even weaker for HALEU. He also noted that the U.S. doesn’t yet have any commercial reactors operating that would use HALEU. That’s a problem for the dozen-plus private and public planning to build Generation IV reactors.
Klein said, “It is a chicken and egg situation. The fuel enrichers are not going to make the fuel unless they know they’ve got a market. You have to put in a lot more centrifuges, and you’re not sure what that market is going to be because none of these advanced reactors are running. It is an unsolved problem.”
Centrus has its own competitors. Orano is a French government-owned company. In 2024, it announced plans to build a multibillion-dollar enrichment facility in Oak Ridge. But Orano has some limitations that Centrus doesn’t.
Orano’s U.S. branch has publicized the proposed facility, but its chief executive in Paris said that they will not make a financial investment decision until 2027. In contrast, Centrus claims that it’s ready to scale up its Ohio facility which is already enriching small amounts of uranium as soon as it secures federal backing.
Dan Leistikow is Centrus’ vice president of corporate communications. He wrote in an email that “Our facility is already licensed. We’ve secured $2 billion in customer contracts. As soon as federal funding is awarded, we’ll pair it with private dollars and get to work,” wrote in an email. “Centrus offers a fully American solution: proven U.S. technology, built by American workers.”
Fleischmann believes that last point could be key to the company’s success. He explained, “Centrus’ strength is that they’re American, which means ultimately, if they get their act together, they’ll be able to produce weapons-grade uranium in addition to HALEU,” he said.
The other major U.S. nuclear operator is Urenco. In 2010 they opened an enrichment plant in Eunice, New Mexico which is designed to produce one-third of U.S. utility requirements for enriched uranium.
Data compiled from Urenco’s annual reports shows the plant’s annual capacity has dropped roughly twelve percent since 2018. No commercial enrichment facility in the U.S. or Europe lost that much capacity over the same time period.
Nuclear experts say that the reason isn’t demand for fuel. If anything, demand for nuclear fuel is rising.
Urenco uses “TC-21” centrifuge machines that are bigger and far more powerful than earlier commercial centrifuge technology known as the TC-12. Urenco has also deployed the bigger centrifuges in Germany and a few at Almelo in the Netherlands. Those two Urenco plants saw a respective ten percent and four percent decline in enrichment capacity since 2018.
Publicly available information is limited on failure rates of the larger centrifuges. However, technical experts in academia and the industry say the large TC-21s enrich a lot of uranium but tend to fail more quickly than the earlier model. “The TC-12, were running for decades uninterrupted. That is an incredible feat,” said Terrani of Standard Nuclear.
A Urenco-Orano joint venture keeps details about the technology closely guarded and have not responded to POLITICO’s E&E News’ request for failure rates of the two centrifuge models.
Jeremy Derryberry is Urenco USA’s Director of Communications. He said that declining demand was the main reason for Eunice’s enrichment decline in capacity.
Uranium prices sank after the Fukushima disaster in 2011, only months after the New Mexico facility opened. In the last three years, prices have risen due to restrictions on trade with Russia.
Derryberry said, “At any enrichment facility, machine failures are to be expected, and ours are within our forecasts and expectations. We are actively deploying the TC-21 at Urenco sites in campaigns to expand new capacity and to refurbish existing capacity, and we believe it is a superior technology to what is being deployed at other facilities around the world.”
Urenco is currently expanding its operations in New Mexico.
Iran withdraws resolution to ban attacks on nuclear sites following U.S. pressure nbcnews.com
Nucleon Energy recommended for advanced nuclear research in ND kxnet.com
Trump ‘aware of’ Putin’s nuclear treaty extension offer: White House aa.com.tr
Kim Jong-un Open to Talks if U.S. Drops Demand to Denuclearize nytimese.com
Latitude 47.704656 Longitude -122.318745
Ambient office = 93 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 1 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 66 nanosieverts per hour
Corn from Central Market = 115 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 75 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 65 nanosieverts per hour
Part 1 of 2 Parts
MIT researchers have developed a technique that permits real-time, 3D monitoring of corrosion, cracking, and other material failure processes inside a nuclear reactor environment.
This development could allow engineers and scientists to design safer nuclear reactors that also deliver higher performance for applications like electricity generation and naval vessel propulsion.
During their experiments, the MIT researchers utilized extremely powerful X-rays to replicate the behavior of neutrons interacting with a material inside a nuclear reactor.
They discovered that adding a buffer layer of silicon dioxide between the material and its substrate, and keeping the material under the X-ray beam for a longer period of time, improved the stability of the sample. This permits real-time monitoring of material failure processes.
By reconstructing 3D image data on the structure of a material as it fails, researchers will be able to design more resilient materials that can better withstand the stress caused by irradiation inside a nuclear reactor.
Ericmoore Jossou has shared appointments in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE), where he is the John Clark Hardwick Professor, and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), and the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing. He said, “If we can improve materials for a nuclear reactor, it means we can extend the life of that reactor. It also means the materials will take longer to fail, so we can get more use out of a nuclear reactor than we do now. The technique we’ve demonstrated here allows researchers to push the boundary in understanding how materials fail in real-time.”
Jossou is a senior author of a study on this technique. He is joined on the paper by lead author David Simonne, an NSE postdoc; Riley Hultquist, a graduate student in NSE; Jiangtao Zhao, of the European Synchrotron; and Andrea Resta, of Synchrotron SOLEIL. The research has been published in the journal Scripta Materiala.
Simonne added, “Only with this technique can we measure strain with a nanoscale resolution during corrosion processes. Our goal is to bring such novel ideas to the nuclear science community while using synchrotrons both as an X-ray probe and radiation source.
Studying real-time failure of materials used in advanced nuclear reactors has been a long-time goal of Jossou’s research group.
Currently, researchers can only learn about such material failures after the fact, by removing the material from its environment and imaging it with a high-resolution instrument.
Simonne continued, “We are interested in watching the process as it happens. If we can do that, we can follow the material from beginning to end and see when and how it fails. That helps us understand a material much better.”
They simulate the process by firing a tightly focused X-ray beam at a sample to mimic the environment inside a nuclear reactor. The researchers must employ a special type of high-intensity X-ray, which is only available in a handful of experimental facilities worldwide.
For their experiments they studied nickel, an element incorporated into alloys that are commonly used in advanced nuclear reactors. But prior to the start of the experiment, they had to prepare a sample.
To do this, the researchers utilized a process called solid state dewetting. This process involves putting a thin film of a material onto a substrate and heating it to an extremely high temperature in a furnace until it transforms into single crystals.
Jossou said, “We thought making the samples was going to be a walk in the park, but it wasn’t.”
MIT Nuclear Research Laboratory
Please read Part 2 next
Iran withdraws resolution to ban attacks on nuclear sites following U.S. pressure nbcnews.com
Nucleon Energy recommended for advanced nuclear research in ND kxnet.com
Trump ‘aware of’ Putin’s nuclear treaty extension offer: White House aa.com.tr
Kim Jong-un Open to Talks if U.S. Drops Demand to Denuclearize nytimese.com
