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 = 119 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 100 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 103 nanosieverts per hour
Blueberry from Central Market = 85 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 99 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 84 nanosieverts per hour
Part 1 of 2 Parts
Inside a highly classified facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee workers are turning old, unexploded nuclear warheads into fuel that will power cities. This is the same facility that enriched uranium for the first atomic bomb in the era of the Manhattan Project.
The process to create advanced reactor fuel involves melting weapons-grade uranium with low-enriched uranium in a crucible which is a massive, metal cauldron heated to around twenty-five hundred degrees Fahrenheit to turn its contents into molten soup.
Removed from its furnace, a glowing orange cast filled with hot liquid uranium is slowly lowered into a cooling chamber. The hardened granular black finished product can be safely held in-hand.
This fuel is set to power the next generation of U.S. nuclear reactors, including small modular reactors (SMR) that are easier and cheaper to build. They require far less maintenance and physical space than the aging U.S fleet of large nuclear power reactors. However, they also require a more-enriched and energy-dense uranium.
Until last year, the U.S. obtained the vast majority of its enriched uranium from Russia. A bipartisan law passed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ended that practice. Now, scientists and companies are racing to produce it here in the U.S.
After the Cold War, Russia possessed loads of highly enriched weapons grade uranium. After the war, the U.S. and other countries encouraged Russia to dilute that uranium below the weapon-making threshold and sell it to the world to be used as nuclear fuel. It was a beneficial arrangement for all parties. The US had a supply of fuel and had an available market to sell to.
Down blending old weapons grade uranium from the nuclear arsenal is not the only way to make this fuel which is known as high assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU). A few facilities around the country are also making it, and they are expected to continue to produce most of the fuel in the long run. The federal government is expected to award over two billion dollars in the coming months to uranium enrichment companies to help kickstart the nuclear fuel supply chain.
Michael Goff is the principal deputy assistant secretary for the Energy Department’s Office of Nuclear Energy. He said that the feds are scouring high and low for suitable nuclear fuel that might have been missed. In addition to the US nuclear weapons stockpile, the Idaho National Laboratory is also down-blending part of its collection of fuel from research reactors.
The fact that the U.S. is looking at its own arsenal for nuclear fuel speaks to how much of a scramble there is to get new-age reactors off the ground — like TerraPower, the Bill Gates-backed project in Wyoming that recently broke ground.
Projects like TerraPower in Wyoming are waiting for the HALEU fuel shipments, anxious they may run out of time. The company was supposed to get its first fuel shipments from Russia which is the world’s only commercial HALEU supplier. The situation changed after Russia invaded Ukraine in February of 2022.
Jeff Navin is TerraPower’s director of external affairs. He said, “We are getting to the point where we need to see more urgency from the government. There’s a huge national interest to move quickly. We don’t fully understand why that same sense of urgency hasn’t gotten to the Department of Energy in getting this material out.”
The amount of HALEU nuclear fuel that the US can get from its nuclear weapon stockpile is relatively small. It’s going to need a much bigger nuclear fuel production line.
Jeff Chamberlin is the acting principal assistant deputy administrator for defense nuclear nonproliferation. He said, “The long-term solution is we have to have enrichment. Even if we down blended all that material tomorrow, we couldn’t supply the demonstration needs of all the advanced reactor companies the US has stated right now.”
Please read Part 2 next
UK Industry Employment Highest Ever As ‘Major New Projects’ Bring Big Increase nucnet.org
CIA director saw ‘genuine risk’ of Russia using tactical nuclear weapons early in Ukraine war cnbc.com
North Korea to ‘exponentially’ increase nuclear weapons stockpile, Kim says scmp.com
Kepco seeks closer US ties as part of nuclear export push ajot.com
Ambient office = 135 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 113 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 118 nanosieverts per hour
Beefsteak tomato from Central Market = 137 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 100 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 90 nanosieverts per hour
Part 2 of 2 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
Gorman said that “We do have to admire what China is doing in terms of the parallel construction of these projects at the same time. Every nation has to come to terms with the fact that we are going to have to be doing these projects concurrently. And if I just look at one province alone, Ontario, our official systems plan is calling for eighteen gigawatts of new nuclear by 2050. The work being done right now is figuring out how we are going to support that in concurrent ways because of all the consideration you have there. But nations have done this before – Canada has done it before, the USA has done it before, as have Sweden and France.”
Daniel Westlén is the State Secretary to Sweden’s Minister for Climate and the Environment. He said that a change of government two years ago made it possible to make changes to Sweden’s nuclear policy.
Westlén continued, “We have found for a long time that we have increasing support for nuclear power. It’s politics that has been the problem, where nuclear has been used to form governments. The matter of where we stand on nuclear has not been based on physics or the needs of the power system. It has been based in political realities, and the ability to form a government. Now that is gone, we have a government that accepts nuclear, where everybody is working to make nuclear possible and work properly.”
Westlén said that Sweden is “much better prepared this time” for its new nuclear program, compared with when it built its current reactors in the 1970s and 1980s. “We have operating experience, we have recent projects of power uprates and modernizations. So we have a lot of people that have been doing complex projects in nuclear. We didn’t have any of that last time. I think there is reason for optimism.” However, he added, “I’m sure the first project is going to be a little more complex and run into hurdles than the coming ones and that’s why it’s so important to have a program to get this bandwagon effect going.”
Vijay Kumar Saraswat is a member of Niti Aayog, the Indian government’s public policy think tank. He said that the country aims to reach net-zero by 2070. “Our main mission is to reduce carbon emissions as much as possible and we have a strategy for reaching that in terms of how do you meet the energy demands with the reduced use of fossil fuels. In the last ten years, we increased our nuclear energy contribution – something like two percent of total power production and about three percent in terms of electricity. That would amount to an almost thirty five percent increase in the last ten years.”
He added that India plans to triple its nuclear energy capacity by around 2030 through the construction of large reactors and SMRs.
Bilbao y León said the size of the challenge of meeting climate targets “is enormous”. He added that “it requires nuclear and wind and solar and hydro and natural gas and many other things, so all low-carbon energy industries really need to work together”.
Gharibabadi will be appointed to lead nuclear talks, report says tehrantimes.com
Rural co-op to purchase energy from Palisades Nuclear Power Plant with USDA grant michiganfarmnews.com
Iran threatens ‘nightmare’ for Israel as UN watchdog warns Tehran nuclear programs runs unchecked foxnews.com
What to know about Orano, the state-owned French nuclear company with plans in Oak Ridge Knoxnews.com
Ambient office = 158 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 106 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 108 nanosieverts per hour
Avocado from Central Market = 125 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 108 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 93 nanosieverts per hour
Part 1 of 2 Parts
Actions are being taken by various countries to meet the target of tripling global nuclear power generating capacity by 2050. They were discussed by panelists during a session at the World Nuclear Symposium 2024. The panelists agreed that cooperation will be key to meeting the target.
Last December, the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) took place in Dubai. The one hundred and ninety-eight signatory countries to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change called for accelerating the deployment of low-emission energy technologies including nuclear power for deep and rapid decarbonization, especially in hard-to-abate sectors such as industry. More than twenty countries at COP28 pledged to work towards tripling global nuclear power capacity to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
Sama Bilbao y León is the Director General of the World Nuclear Association. In his introduction to the session, he said that “new-found momentum in favor of nuclear power is taking shape in some countries around the world”.
John Gorman is the president and CEO of the Canadian Nuclear Association. He described the momentum in Canada as “remarkable”. He continued, “We, as a nation, are doing just about everything right when it comes to nuclear.”
He mentioned that Canada has “the entire ecosystem”. It is the second largest exporter of uranium in the world. It has an indigenous reactor technology, called Candu, which is in use in seven nations around the world. “We are refurbishing the vast majority of our existing nuclear plants, and importantly those refurbishments … are on time and on budget.”
Gorman added that policymakers across Canada needed to be re-engaged in order to increase political support for new nuclear builds. “The roadmap that we created – which was a very collaborative effort, a pan-Canadian effort – to introduce small modular reactors (SMRs) into the system acted as a thin edge of the wedge for policymakers to feel comfortable to rediscover nuclear … Since the recognition and support for small modular reactors, it has opened up new large build.”
He described SMRs as being very disruptive. “I mean disruptive in a very positive way. It’s forcing system operators, regulators and utilities to go through the process of rethinking how we introduce and deploy new nuclear. So disruption can be good and small modular reactors are good for that.”
Huang Mingang is the Chief Economist of the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC). He said that nuclear energy currently represents about five percent of China’s total electricity generation. Coal plants account for the majority of the rest. He added that “If China wants to realize carbon peak and carbon neutrality, there is still a very long way to go. In the last month, the Chinese government approved eleven new reactor. In this case, the total number of reactors in China in operation and under construction and officially approved will be in the region of one hundred and two reactors. This is a milestone for Chinese nuclear energy.”
Mingang said that, according to projections, by 2035 China will have one hundred and fifty nuclear power reactors in operation plus fifty reactors under construction.
Please read Part 2 nextally need to work together”.
Yakutia’s energy revolution: From remote wilderness to nuclear power plant news.az
Japan begins removing melted nuclear fuel at Fukushima reactor news.az
Entergy Corporation – Entergy nuclear stations prepare for tropical system energycentral.com
IAEA calls for resolution of safeguards issues on Iran’s nuclear program news.az
Ambient office = 128 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 98 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 100 nanosieverts per hour
White onion from Central Market = 103 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 95 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 88 nanosieverts per hour
