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 = 89 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 100 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 102 nanosieverts per hour
Tomato from Central Market = 114 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 102 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 89 nanosieverts per hour
Cleanup milestone for East Tennessee site world-nuclear-news.org
Oil-rich UAE completes Arab world’s first nuclear energy plant newarab.com
Power engineers repair damaged power line to Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant Pravda.com.ua
France’s newest nuclear reactor shuts down automatically after initial startup news.az
Ambient office = 57 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 94 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 94 nanosieverts per hour
Red bell pepper from Central Market = 122 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 104 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 93 nanosieverts per hour
Dover Sole from Central = 103 nanosieverts per hour
Uranium trichloride (UCl3) is a molten salt under extremely high temperatures. It holds the key to unlocking the full potential of next-generation nuclear reactors. When transformed into a liquid state, its unique properties offer unparalleled opportunities to rethink nuclear fuel technology and improve reactor safety and efficiency.
Researchers from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and their collaborators have carefully documented the elusive structure and complex chemistry dynamics of high-temperature liquid UCl3 salt. The research identifies this substance as a promising source of nuclear fuel. Their critical insights prepare for designing safer, more efficient, and innovative reactors that could reshape the future of nuclear energy.
Santanu Roy is an ORNL researcher. In a paper published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, he noted that this is a first critical step in enabling better predictive models for the design of future reactors. He added that “A better ability to predict and calculate the microscopic behaviors is critical to design, and reliable data helps develop better models.”
For decades, molten salt reactors have been advertised as a promising solution for producing safe and affordable nuclear energy. ORNL’s prototyping experiments in the 1960s first demonstrated the potential of this technology. With the global push for decarbonization, there has been renewed interest in making these reactors commercially available.
However, designing the ideal reactor requires a deep understanding of how liquid fuel salts behave, particularly those involving actinide elements such as uranium. Molten salts melt at extremely high temperatures. They exhibit complex ion-ion coordination, making them challenging to study.
The research study was a collaboration between ORNL, Argonne National Laboratory, and the University of South Carolina. The team utilized a combination of computational approaches and advanced facilities such as the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS). The SNS is one of the brightest neutron sources in the world. It allowed the team to perform state-of-the-art neutron scattering studies. This enabled them to measure the chemical bond lengths of molten UCl3 for the first time.
Alex Ivanov co-led the study. He said, “I’ve been studying actinides and uranium since I joined ORNL as a postdoc. But I never expected that we could go to the molten state and find fascinating chemistry.” The study revealed that, unlike most substances, the bonds between uranium and chlorine contracted rather than expanded as the substance became liquid.
One of the most surprising discoveries of the study was the inconsistent behavior of the bonds. They oscillated between expanded and contracted states at ultra-fast speeds. Ivanov noted that “This is an uncharted part of chemistry and reveals the fundamental atomic structure of actinides under extreme conditions.” The bond lengths showed varying patterns, occasionally becoming shorter and temporarily transforming from an ionic to a more covalent nature. This fleeting change helped explain problems in previous studies. These findings will improve both experimental and computational approaches to reactor design. They will also shed light on challenges such as nuclear waste management and pyroprocessing.
The insights gained from this study not only expand our understanding of molten uranium salts but also highlight their potential in revolutionizing nuclear energy production. The unpredictable behavior of UCl3 is now more clearly defined. The path to developing more efficient and safer nuclear reactors has become clearer.
These major breakthroughs could play a crucial role in dealing with challenges related to nuclear waste, pyroprocessing, and the advancement of sustainable nuclear technologies. By improving predictive models and expanding the knowledge of molten salt behavior, researchers are one step closer to creating fission reactors that can help meet global energy demands while minimizing environmental impact.
Nuclear energy remains a key player in the race toward decarbonization. The discoveries in this study offer hope for more reliable, scalable, and eco-friendly energy solutions in the near future.
Gov. Lee Announces Orano USA Seeks To Locate Uranium Enrichment Operations in Oak Ridge tn.gov
Kazakhstan to Decide on Nuclear Power Plant Construction in Referendum Caspian.com
Kazakhstan to Decide on Nuclear Power Plant Construction in Referendum – Caspian News search.yahoo.com
US regulator issues environmental assessment for two-unit test reactor world-nuclear-news.org
Ambient office = 52 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 93 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 96 nanosieverts per hour
Jalapeno from Central Market = 72 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 100 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 89 nanosieverts per hour
Nuclear fusion research is rapidly expanding in the U.S. and across the globe. One of the important issues with respect to the magnetic confinement approach is how to accurately measure the actual power produced by a fusion reactor.
Currently, magnetic confinement fusion devices such as tokamaks and stellarators rely completely on absolute neutron counting as a direct way of measuring fusion power.
Fusion researchers say, “This technique presents several difficulties: the emission and the transport of neutrons from an extended source like the tokamak, and their interaction with reactor materials, require the use of complicated simulation codes, as well as long and costly calibration campaigns to validate the codes.”
Researchers have developed a groundbreaking new method for measuring power in nuclear fusion reactors. They have discovered that gamma rays which are produced during the deuterium-tritium nuclear reaction, can serve as a highly accurate and alternative means of measuring the power output of new fusion reactors.
The new method makes use of the gamma-ray-to-neutron branching ratio in the deuterium-tritium reaction, a measurement that was previously unidentified. The researchers have found a way to count the rare gamma rays emitted during a fusion reaction. By counting the gamma rays emitted during a fusion reaction, researchers can now obtain valuable information about fusion power, independent of traditional neutron counting techniques.
The research team explained that “Absolute counting of deuterium-tritium gamma rays could provide the secondary neutron-independent technique required for the validation of scientific results and as a licensing tool for future power plants.” This novel method involves the precise measurement of two particular gamma rays with energies around thirteen million electron volts and seventeen million electron volts.
Marica Rebai is a researcher at Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR-ISTP) and an author of the study. She said, “From this measurement, never before carried out with sufficient accuracy, it was possible to determine the energies and relative intensities with which the two gamma rays are emitted. This gamma ray emission process has a relative probability (called branching ratio) which is much lower than that of fourteen million electron volts neutron emission.”
Andrea Dal Molin and Davide Rigamonti led another study on the same subject. They said that this work enabled them to find that one gamma ray is emitted for every forty-two thousand fourteen million electron volts produced.
Dal Molin and Rigomonti added that “It paves the way for the use of absolute gamma-ray measurement as a new alternative and complementary method to neutron measurements for determining the power achieved in new fusion reactors based on the deuterium-tritium reaction, such as ITER and SPARC”.
The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is a global collaborative effort focused on proving the viability of fusion power. It requires two independent methods for precisely measuring the power it generates.
Marco Tardocchi is a research director at CNR-ISTP. He said that “Until now, the absence of a direct and alternative method to absolute neutron counting has been an obstacle to the independent validation of results obtained from ongoing experiments and the authorization of future commercial plants.”
Ukraine Cuts Output at Nuclear Plant After Russian Attacks usnews.com
Westinghouse Unveils Pioneering Nuclear Generative AI System businesswire.com
Energoatom denies accident at South Ukraine Nuclear Power Plant but says ‘issues’ found kyivindependent.com
China pledges to encourage investment in Nigeria reuters.com
Ambient office = 66 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 104 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 107 nanosieverts per hour
Heirloom tomato from Central Market = 87 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 102 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 87 nanosieverts per hour
