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.
Putin says Russia ready to supply ‘uninterrupted’ fuel to India bbc.com
Stony Brook Receives Department of Energy Award for University Nuclear Energy Infrastructure news.stonybrook.edu
INL announces five teams for MARVEL Project ans.org
Nuclear energy poised to rise sharply in Africa’s power mix: Report semafor.com
Latitude 47.704656 Longitude -122.318745
Ambient office = 96 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 120 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 114 nanosieverts per hour
Heirloom tomato from Central Market = 100 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 104 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 93 nanosieverts per hour
Part 1 of 2 Parts
Matthew Wald is a former nuclear energy and electric technologies reporter for The New York Times who currently works as writer and communications consultant specializing in nuclear technology and policy works for the Breakthrough Institute, a non-governmental organization that advocates for advanced nuclear reactors. Wald said on a recent Zoom call that “We do need to get our electricity house in order.” He added that many Americans think the way to keep their electricity costs down is to install rooftop solar panels on their houses or zip tie vertically mounted solar panels to their apartment balconies.
Wald continued, “This is artisanal energy policy, which is my term for people who think that steps you take at home are going to solve our national energy problems. It won’t do the job. We’re going to need some major new power plants.” And those plants, he added, should house nuclear reactors. The nuclear industry and community have committed industrial sin. Nuclear suffered through a long drought, and now it sees terrific demand for its product, and it’s not ready to deliver the needed electricity.”
New companies who are planning to build advanced nuclear reactors, including small modular reactors (SNR), for producing power, have missed the upcoming round of construction that is now being undertaken by builders of generators powered by natural gas. Wald claimed that the United States lacks enough gas generators to meet predicted future power demands, as well as the ability to build them.
Except for the Tennessee Valley Authority, Wald noted, many electric utilities that used to “build nuclear plants aren’t interested anymore.”
However, startups are announcing their intentions to build reactors or make nuclear fuel, including three that Wald named (Kairos Power, Oklo and X-energy) that have bought property in Oak Ridge’s western industrial parks.
Wald commented on a trend in which artificial intelligence companies such as Amazon, Meta and Microsoft are making power purchase agreements (PPAs) with owners or builders of nuclear power plants to ensure their future AI data centers will receive reliable power. The PPAs reduce the high-tech companies’ carbon footprint and help keep the power plants in operation.
Wald failed to mention that Kairos Power, which is building the Hermes series of demonstration reactors in Oak Ridge, has a PPA with Google and TVA, and that Amazon has a PPA with X-energy, which is building the TRISO-X fuel fabrication factory in Oak Ridge.
If the demand for electricity rises because of the needs of AI data centers and a growing U.S. population that continues to purchase new electronic gadgets and appliances, energy policy with respect to nuclear reactors must change according to Wald.
One part of the new model that must change, Wald said, is the manner in which the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) works to license new advanced thirty- to three hundred-megawatt nuclear reactors that differ from the many traditional one thousand-megawatt pressurized-water and boiling-water reactors in power plants it has approved for decades.
Wald commented that “Regulators must supply human intelligence to each license application, but their process must run many times faster than it does now, especially for licensing reactors that produce just three hundred megawatts or thirty megawatts or ten megawatts or one megawatt. These are just one-by-one individual licenses. If we’re going to think big, we’ve got to rethink regulation.”
In answer to a question on the NRC, Wald said that the NRC is working on speeding up its licensing processes because of an executive order from President Trump. He said he agrees that this is a good idea because “what the NRC does is not very productive. It has a bureaucracy that is resistant to change and that’s now dealing with new technologies. I am open to the idea that they’ll make errors, they’ll approve things they shouldn’t, and we’re going to learn from experience. The NRC has this habit of approving things they’ve approved before and of not approving anything nobody’s ever done before. That’s not a recipe for successful innovation and industrial progress.”
Please read Part 2 next
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!”
‘Invade Iran or accept talks,’ ex-Israeli Air Force chief warns jpost.com
Bilibino’s units being shut down for decommissioning world-nuclear-news.org
South Korea’s president denies nuclear ambitions amid submarine deal abcnews.go.com
Turkey drone magnate Baykar enters small reactor nuclear race middleeasteye.net
Latitude 47.704656 Longitude -122.318745
Ambient office = 118 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 136 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 139 nanosieverts per hour
Cabbage from Central Market = 93 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 128 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 101 nanosieverts per hour
Part 3 of 3 Parts (Please read Parts 1 and 2 first)
MIT has been an important center of ship research and design for over a century, with work at the Institute today representing significant advancements in fluid mechanics and hydrodynamics, acoustics, offshore mechanics, marine robotics and sensors, and ocean sensing and forecasting. The Maritime Consortium projects, including the Handbook, supports national priorities aimed at revitalizing the U.S. shipbuilding and commercial maritime industries.
The MIT Maritime Consortium was launched in 2024. It brings together MIT and maritime industry leaders to explore data-powered strategies to reduce harmful emissions, optimize vessel operations, and support economic priorities.
Sapsis said, “One of our most important efforts is the development of technologies, policies, and regulations to make nuclear propulsion for commercial ships a reality. Over the last year, we have put together an interdisciplinary team with faculty and students from across the Institute. One of the outcomes of this effort is this very detailed document providing detailed guidance on how such effort should be implemented safely.”
Contributors to the Handbook come from multiple disciplines and MIT departments, labs, and research centers, including the Center for Ocean Engineering, IDSS, MechE’s Course 2N Program, the MIT Technology and Policy Program, and the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering.
MIT faculty members and research advisors on the Handbook project include Sapsis; Christia; Shirvan; MacLean; Jacopo Buongiorno, the Battelle Energy Alliance Professor in Nuclear Science and Engineering, director, Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems, and director of science and technology for the Nuclear Reactor Laboratory; and Captain Andrew Gillespy, professor of the practice and director of the Naval Construction and Engineering (2N) Program.
Buongiorno said, “Proving the viability of nuclear propulsion for civilian ships will entail getting the technologies, the economics and the regulations right. The Handbook is a meaningful initial contribution to the development of a sound regulatory framework.”
Edmonds said, “We were lucky to have a team of students and knowledgeable professors from so many fields. Before even beginning the outline of the handbook, we did significant archival and history research to understand the existing regulations and overarching story of nuclear ships. Some of the most relevant documents we found were written before 1975, and many of them were stored in the bellows of the NS Savannah.”
The NS Savannah was built in the late 1950s as a demonstration project for the potential peacetime uses of nuclear energy. It was the first nuclear-powered merchant ship. The NS Savannah was first launched on July 21st, 1959, two years after the first nuclear-powered civilian vessel, the Soviet ice-breaker Lenin. It was retired in 1971.
Historical context for the Handbook project is important, because the reactor technologies envisioned for maritime propulsion today are quite different from the traditional pressurized water reactors used by the U.S. Navy. These new reactors are being developed in the maritime context, as well as to power ports and data centers on land; they all use low-enriched uranium and are passively cooled. Sapsis says that For the maritime industry, “the technology is there, it’s safe, and it’s ready.”
“The Nuclear Ship Safety Handbook” is available on the MIT Maritime Consortium website and from the MIT Libraries.
‘Invade Iran or accept talks,’ ex-Israeli Air Force chief warns jpost.com
Bilibino’s units being shut down for decommissioning world-nuclear-news.org
South Korea’s president denies nuclear ambitions amid submarine deal abcnews.go.com
Turkey drone magnate Baykar enters small reactor nuclear race middleeasteye.net
Latitude 47.704656 Longitude -122.318745
Ambient office = 129 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 122 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 126 nanosieverts per hour
Bannana from Central Market = 100 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 117 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 99 nanosieverts per hour
Part 2 of 3 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
The Handbook is divided into chapters in areas involving the overlapping nuclear and maritime safety design decisions that will be encountered by engineers. It is careful to balance technical and practical guidance with policy considerations.
Commander Christopher MacLean is a MIT associate professor of practice in mechanical engineering, naval construction, and engineering. He said that the handbook will significantly benefit the entire maritime community, specifically naval architects and marine engineers, by providing standardized guidelines for design and operation specific to nuclear powered commercial vessels.
MacLean added, “This will assist in enhancing safety protocols, improve risk assessments, and ensure consistent compliance with international regulations. This will also help foster collaboration amongst engineers and regulators. Overall, this will further strengthen the reliability, sustainability, and public trust in nuclear-powered maritime systems.”
Anthony Valiaveedu is the handbook’s lead author, and Nat Edmonds is a co-author. Both of them are students in the MIT Master’s Program in Technology and Policy (TPP) within the IDSS. The two are also co-authors of a paper published in Science Policy Review earlier this year that offered structured advice on the development of nuclear regulatory policies.
Valiaveedu explains, “It is important for safety and technology to go hand-in-hand. What we have done is provide a risk-informed process to begin these discussions for engineers and policy makers.”
Fellow co-author Izurieta added, “Ultimately, I hope this framework can be used to build strong bilateral agreements between nations that will allow nuclear propulsion to thrive.”
Christopher J. Wiernicki is American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) chair and CEO. He said, “Maritime designers needed a source of information to improve their ability to understand and design the reactor primary components, and development of the ‘Nuclear Ship Safety Handbook’ was a good step to bridge this knowledge gap. For this reason, it is an important document for the industry.”
The ABS is the American classification society for the maritime industry. It develops criteria and provides safety certification for all ocean-going vessels. The ABS is among the founding members of the MIT Maritime Consortium. Capital Clean Energy Carriers Corp., HD Korea Shipbuilding and Offshore Engineering, and Delos Navigation Ltd. are also consortium founding members of the consortium. Innovation members of the consortium are Foresight-Group, Navios Maritime Partners L.P., Singapore Maritime Institute, and Dorian LPG.
Jerry Kalogiratos is the CEO of Capital Clean Energy Carriers. He said, “As we consider a net-zero framework for the shipping industry, nuclear propulsion represents a potential solution. Careful investigation remains the priority, with safety and regulatory standards at the forefront. “As first movers, we are exploring all options. This handbook lays the technical foundation for the development of nuclear-powered commercial vessels.”
Sangmin Park is the senior Jerry Kalogiratos, CEO of Capital Clean Energy Carriers Corp. Vice President at HD Korea Shipbuilding and Offshore Engineering. He said, “The ‘Nuclear Ship Safety Handbook’ marks a groundbreaking milestone that bridges shipbuilding excellence and nuclear safety. It drives global collaboration between industry and academia, and paves the way for the safe advancement of the nuclear maritime era.”
Please read Part 3 next
UMaine innovation accelerates nuclear construction for Kairos Power umaine.edu
Duke Energy applauds Department of Energy’s new nuclear investments, helps advance deployment of SMRs in the U.S. duke-energy.com
McGovern, Markey Reintroduce Legislation to Halt Dangerous Global Nuclear Arms Race mcgovern.house.gov
