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.
Ambient office = 81 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 105 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 108 nanosieverts per hour
Blueberry from Central Market = 100 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 102 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 85 nanosieverts per hour
Page 1 of 2 Pages
Years ago, I wrote a post about forty reasons not to support nuclear fission power generation. I had a whole section on questions of security. In that section I mentioned the problem of nuclear reactors in a war zone. At the time, it was theoretical, but the Russian invasion of Ukraine have made such issues practical questions.
Rafael Grossi is the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency. He recently said in an interview that the situation is getting worse every day at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in the southeastern city of Enerhodar. Russian troops seized the plant in early March, just weeks after they invaded Ukraine on February 24th. He added that “Every principle of nuclear safety has been violated at the plant. What is at stake is extremely serious and extremely grave and dangerous.” Grossi mentioned many violations of the plant’s safety and went on to say that it is “in a place where active war is ongoing,” near territory controlled by Russia.
The physical integrity of the plant has not been respected, Grossi said, pointing out that it had been hit with artillery at the beginning of the war when it was seized. Continuing information from Ukraine and Russia accuse each other of deliberate attacks on Zaporizhzhia.
There is “a paradoxical situation” in which the power plant is under the control of the Russians, but the Ukrainian staff continues to operate the plant. This leads to inevitable moments of friction and allege violence. While the IAEA has some contacts with the staff at the plant, they are “faulty” and “patchy,” according to Grossi.
Grossi mentioned that the supply chain of equipment and spare parts have been interrupted, “so we are not sure the plant is getting all it needs.” The IAEA also needs to perform very important inspections to be certain that nuclear materials are properly safeguarded. He said that “there is a lot of nuclear material there to be inspected.”
Grossi said, “When you put this together, you have a catalog of things that should never be happening in any nuclear facility. And this is why I have been insisting from day one that we have to be able to go there to perform this safety and security evaluation, to do the repairs and to assist as we already did in Chernobyl.”
The Russian capture of Zaporizhzhia renewed fears that the largest of Ukraine’s fifteen commercial nuclear reactors could be damaged. This would set off another emergency similar to the 1986 Chernobyl accident. This is considered to be the world’s worst nuclear disaster. Chernobyl is located about sixty-five miles north of Kyiv, the Ukraine capitol city.
Russian forces occupied the heavily contaminated site soon after the February 24th invasion but turned control back over to the Ukraine at the end of March. Grossi personally visited Chernobyl on April 27th and tweeted that the level of safety was “like a red light blinking.” However, last Tuesday, he said that the IAEA set up an
assistance mission at Chernobyl at the that time “that has been very, very successful so far.”
Please read Part 2 next
Ambient office = 118 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 105 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 105 nanosieverts per hour
Avocado from Central Market = 80 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 100 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 86 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient office = 88 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 102 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 102 nanosieverts per hour
Watermelon from Central Market = 66 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 87 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 75 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient office = 120 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 104 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 104 nanosieverts per hour
Tomato from Central Market = 82 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 92 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 82 nanosieverts per hour
Dover Sole from Central 112 nanosieverts per hour
Part 3 of 3 Parts (Please read Parts 1 and 2 first)
In a preliminary version of the environmental impact statement, the NRC has suggested that a new forty-year license be issued. Their reasons for the recommendation include the importance of the CFFF to the U.S. commercial nuclear plant industry and their conclusion that the environmental threats are not great enough to warrant denying the license.
Virginia Sanders is a Lower Richland environmental activist and Sierra Club official. She said that the continued operation of the CFFF threatens the environment. This is especially true as more intense rains related to climate change pound the Columbia area. The concern is that pollution from the CFFF could wash into the surrounding community. She added that “That plant is over 50 years old. That plant should never have been put there in the first place. Anything in Lower Richland is on low land. And with the number of flooding events on the East Coast and other climate change events, that plant should not be operating there. I’m just waiting for the day when a catastrophe happens.’’
Tom Clements is a nuclear safety watchdog from Columbia. He said that he was disappointed by the NRC decision but not surprised. He called on the NRC to reconsider its action. In an email, he said that “It has been clear from the start of the license renewal process that the NRC was going to do what Westinghouse requested in spite of a long list of incidents at the facility and even an admission by the NRC that release of contaminants in the future was reasonably foreseeable. The 40-year license extension guarantees the risk of accidents and releases that will impact the environment and possibly human health over 40 years. Unfortunately, I now anticipate that careful behavior shown by Westinghouse during the period of the EIS preparation will be relaxed as Westinghouse is essentially now being given a license to pollute.’’
The CFFF’s environmental and safety challenges emerged within a few years of the 1969 opening. Many of the problems have centered on the failure of Westinghouse to handle radioactive materials so that they would not create small nuclear accidents that could endanger workers. Many of those concerns can be traced back to the early Eighties.
Since 1980, federal and state regulators have discovered more than forty different environmental and safety problems at the CFFF. In some cases, the NRC repeatedly told the company to make improvements. However, Westinghouse did not move quickly enough to address the concerns of the NRC.
Two of the biggest incidents in the past twenty years have involved the buildup of uranium in plant equipment. These deficiencies could have endangered workers. The NRC fined Westinghouse twenty-four thousand dollars in 2004 after finding out that uranium had accumulated in an incinerator to unsafe levels over eight years. Westinghouse had assumed that the uranium levels were safe. However, the problem was discovered in 2004 by an employee. The excess uranium could have triggered a nuclear accident that could have injured or killed workers.
In 2016, Westinghouse discovered that uranium had accumulated in a scrubber which is an air pollution control device to levels that were three times higher than permitted by a federal safety standard. When pressured to explain why the buildup occurred, Westinghouse’s internal inspectors told the NRC that the company had not done enough to ensure employees had strong enough procedures to keep uranium from building up and had a “less than question” attitude about procedures to prevent a nuclear accident.
Two years later, a leak of uranium through a hole in the floor of the plant brought a barrage of complaints about Westinghouse. The discovery of the leak led to finding that some groundwater pollution on the site had been known by the company for years but never reported to federal or state regulators.
