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.
Ambient office = 99 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 87 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 91 nanosieverts per hour
Purple onion from Central Market = 129 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 100 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 85 nanosieverts per hour
Framatome to supply Hungarian plant with nuclear fuel world-nuclear-news.org
Partners mark two years of Lu-177 production at Bruce 7 world-nuclear-news.org
ASP Isotopes Stock Surges on Uranium-Plant Agreement With TerraPower msn.com
Device Catches Nuclear Fuel Debris at TEPCO Fukushima Plant nippon.com
Ambient office = 116 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 129 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 129 nanosieverts per hour
Green onion from Central Market = 70 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 75 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 63 nanosieverts per hour
South Bruce votes in favor of hosting Canadian repository world-nuclear-news.org
First BWR restarts in Japan world-nuclear-news.org
ČEZ takes Rolls-Royce SMR stake, plans to deploy 3GW fleet world-nuclear-news.org
Thales gyrotron sets new record in plasma heating world-nuclear-news.org
Ambient office = 112 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 96 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 93 nanosieverts per hour
Green onion from Central Market = 80 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 121 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 110 nanosieverts per hour
Dover Sole from Central = 108 nanosieverts per hour
General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems (GA-EMS) just announced that it has completed preliminary development of four individual performance models in support of its SiGA silicon carbide composite nuclear fuel cladding technology. One of the four individual models utilized to analyze the fiber architecture within SiGA cladding.
GA-EMS is approaching completion of a thirty-month contract with the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) to deliver individual models for nuclear-grade SiGA materials to serve as the basis of a future digital twin. This modelling and simulation capability is intended to help accelerate the process of qualifying nuclear fuel and licensing for current and next generation reactor materials.
SiGA is a silicon carbide (SiC) composite material that has great hardness and the ability to withstand extremely high temperatures. It has been used for industrial purposes for decades. It is now used as the basis for the development of nuclear reactor fuel rods that can survive temperatures far beyond that of current materials.
GA-EMS said that the four individual physics-informed models it has developed are able to capture the complex mechanical response of SiGA fuel-rod cladding while exposed to irradiation. A multi-scale modelling approach was utilized where each individual model covers a different length scale – from a mechanism-based microscale model to a reactor system level model. In the future, these individual models will be combined into one integrated model which is called a digital twin.
Scott Forney is the President of GA-EMS. He said, “A digital twin is a virtual representation of a physical object or system – in this case our SiGA cladding nuclear fuel system. When complete, this digital twin will allow researchers to predict SiGA performance inside a nuclear reactor core. This will reduce fuel development and testing costs and shorten the time it will take to get regulatory approval for this revolutionary technology, without sacrificing safety.”
Christina Back is the vice president of GA-EMS Nuclear Technologies and Materials. She said that “We have been able to expedite development and verification of the individual models by leveraging the expertise at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Idaho National Laboratory. Our work integrally involves dedicated laboratory testing as we develop each performance model. We look forward to continuing to the next phase to bring these individual models together and incorporate them into a greater digital twin framework. Utilization of the framework to apply the separate effects models appropriately will bring a new level of sophistication and accuracy to efficiently predict fuel performance.”
GA-EMS has successfully made silicon carbide nuclear fuel cladding tubes. The company’s technology incorporates silicon carbide fiber into its cladding tubes. The combination creates an incredibly tough and durable engineered silicon carbide composite material which can withstand temperatures up to three thousand degrees °F. This is about five hundred degrees hotter than the melting point of zirconium alloy currently in use.
Last July, General Atomics announced it had manufactured the first batch of full-length twelve-foot SiGA silicon carbide composite tubes designed for conventional pressurized water reactors. Previously it had created six-inch long SiGA rodlets and three-foot cladding samples that meet the stringent nuclear power reactor-grade requirements and will undergo irradiation testing at DoE’s Idaho National Laboratory.
GA had originally developed its SiGA composite for its Energy Multiplier Module (EM2) small modular reactor (SMR) design. This is a modified version of its Gas-Turbine Modular Helium Reactor (GT-MHR) design.
In February 2020, Framatome and GA agreed to evaluate the possibility of using SiGA in fuel channel applications through thermomechanical and corrosion testing. Their long-term goal is to demonstrate that the irradiation of a full-length fuel channel in support of licensing and commercialization.
China will double its nuclear arsenal to over 1,000 warheads by 2030, according to US intelligence foxnews.com
Putin begins nuclear forces exercises focused on retaliatory strikes indianexpress.com
Mirion Technologies Awarded Strategic Contracts for Sizewell C New Nuclear Power Station Project in the UK businesswire.com
Donald Trump Takes A Skeptical View Of Nuclear Energy On Joe Rogan’s Podcast huffpost.com
Ambient office = 99 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 137 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 139 nanosieverts per hour
Blueberry from Central Market = 87 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 116 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 103 nanosieverts per hour
A collaboration between researchers at the University of Sheffield in the UK and the University of Hawaii in the US has resulted in the development of a design for an antimatter detector that can measure antineutrinos and create a profile for the nuclear reaction emitting it. This system could help determine if the reactor is being used to generate power or create weapons even from hundreds of miles away, a press release said.
With nuclear fission technology poised for a major comeback as a means to power the globe with low-carbon energy, there are also concerns about nuclear power reactors being used as cover for developing nuclear weapons.
Both weapons and nuclear fuel are made with uranium, with the difference being the level enrichment, which measures fissile material in the fuel. While nuclear fuel is not enriched beyond five percent U-235, enrichment in a nuclear bomb exceeds ninety percent U-235.
By measuring the antineutrino count in an area, researchers can determine the existence of a nuclear reactor, its distance from the detector, and its operational cycle.
Much like neutrinos in matter, antineutrinos are chargeless particles that have almost zero mass but exist in an antimatter form. Most antineutrinos are created during nuclear reactions.
Steve Wilson is a research associate at the University of Sheffield. He explained that “Around 10^20 (100 billion billion) antineutrinos are produced by a typical 3 GW thermal power station. As they very rarely interact, they can, in principle, travel infinitely far and cross the entire Universe.” By capturing the antineutrinos, researchers are able determine the exact isotope of nuclear fuel and the operational cycle of the reactor.
To capture the passage of antineutrinos, the researchers utilized the well-known phenomenon of Chernekov radiation. Wilson explained that “When a charged particle, such as an electron, travels faster than the speed of light in a medium like water, light slows down, but the antineutrino does not. The antineutrino causes a positron, the electron’s antiparticle, to briefly travel faster than the speed of light. This produces the light equivalent of a sonic boom, a cone of blue light that can be observed. Observing this effect indicates that a neutrino may have interacted.”
Wilson and his team have designed an antineutrino detector that is seventy-two feet in diameter and would contain several thousand tons of water and an organic liquid scintillator. Wilson added that “The components used to detect light in this kind of detector require in the region of 1000 to 2000 V, and there would be over 4000 of them.” His team proposes that it construct a detector in northern England, and use it to detect antineutrinos from all of the UK’s reactors and even those in France.
There is a serious problem with Wilson’s plan, however. Cosmic rays can also impact the observation of neutrinos. When cosmic rays impact the Earth’s upper atmosphere, they produce particles called muons.
Wilson elaborated that “When muons reach the detector, they streak through and leave a large trail of light from Cherenkov radiation. They can also smash apart the molecules in the detector, leaving fragments of the broken particle that are unstable and decay radioactively. This decay can look very similar to that produced by an antineutrino.”
Wilson said that a detector of this size could cost one hundred million dollars or more, but for now, the researcher is happy to stimulate discussions on how such a detector could be utilized.
Netanyahu vows to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons following IDF strikes jpost.com
Nuclear power generation seeing a resurgence, Mississippi could benefit vicksburgnews.com
Savannah River Site nuclear waste contractor indicates completion date doubts postandcourier.com
First nuclear fuel produced for Bolivia’s research reactor world-nuclear-news.org
