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 = 109 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 93 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 100 nanosieverts per hour
Zuccini from Central Market = 97 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 74 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 66 nanosieverts per hour
The U.S. House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy approved four bills on Thursday for release to the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The chairman of the subcommittee said that these four bills “would take important steps to address key challenges facing the U.S. nuclear energy industry today.” He went on to say, “Throughout this Congress, we have repeatedly heard about the immense challenges facing all parts of our nation’s nuclear industry. While individual states have taken steps to preserve specific nuclear power plants, the underlying intellectual and industrial nuclear infrastructure is at risk of further atrophy in the absence of a coherent and defined policy from the federal government.”
The Advancing U.S. Civil Nuclear Competitiveness and Jobs Act is aimed at improving the competitiveness of the U.S. nuclear industry in the global marketplace. The bill instructs the Secretary of Energy to analyze how regulations, policies and legal requirements affect the ability U.S. nuclear companies to compete internationally. The Act also requires the Secretary of Energy to report on possible ways to improve that ability. My concern is that the Secretary of Energy may conclude that proper regulation of nuclear power plants is less important that making the plants more competitive in the energy market.
The Advanced Nuclear Fuel Availability Act provides for the establishment of a new program inside the Department of Energy. This program would be charged with task of making “high-assay low enriched uranium” more available to researchers who are working on advanced nuclear technology development. This bill would also create public-private partnerships to help overcome the regulatory and market barriers that prevent nuclear engineers and scientists from obtaining the advance nuclear fuel they need for their research. This is obviously a good idea as long as the research balances the need for safe fuels with the need for cheap and efficient fuels.
The Nuclear Utilization of Keynote Energy is dedicated to enhancing the ability of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to recover fees. The bill would make the NRC fee recovery more predictable, transparent and efficient. I am definitely in favor of this idea. The nuclear industry must foot the bill for proper nuclear power plant regulation.
The fourth bill does not have a long name. It is just referred to as H.R. 6141. The purpose of this bill is to direct the Secretary of Energy to research and write a report on a pilot program whose purpose is to select a site, carry out construction and then operate micro-reactors at critical national security locations and other sites. This bill would help ensure that facilities connected to national security would have a local and reliable source of energy if the national electrical grid collapsed.
The chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee said, ““Each of these bills can help reinvigorate different components of our nuclear ecosystem In doing so, the legislation will facilitate innovation and competition, which provides the dual benefit of both being good for consumers while protecting our national security interests.”
Ambient office = 76 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 87 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 87 nanosieverts per hour
Beefsteak tomato from Central Market = 82 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 106 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 94 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient office = 109 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 97 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 100 nanosieverts per hour
Yellow bell pepper from Central Market = 87 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 112 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 101 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient office = 109 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 93 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 100 nanosieverts per hour
White onion from Central Market = 97 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 74 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 66 nanosieverts per hour
Dover sole – Caught in USA = 97 nanosieverts per hour
Actinium-225 is a rare medical radioisotope. Treatments based on the use of actinium have been tested on leukemia, melanoma, glioma and prostate cancer and found to be effective. Most of the Ac-225 that has been produced has come from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Two other international sources have produced smaller amounts of Ac-225. These three sources can only produce enough Ac-225 to treat about one hundred patients. That is only sufficient to carry out very preliminary clinical trials.
The DoE Office of Sciences has an Isotope Program that is dedicated to developing new ways to produce useful radioisotopes. This program was started in 1946 as part of President Truman’s search for peaceful uses for nuclear energy. Since its creation, the program has been researching and manufacturing radioisotopes for research and industrial applications. The Isotope Program focuses on the production and distribution of radioisotopes that are in high demand and short supply that commercial firms are not interested in producing.
Each atom of each element has a specific number of protons in its nucleus. The number of neutrons in each nucleus can vary. This means that one element can have many different isotopes, based on the number of neutrons it’s nucleus. Some of these isotopes are stable but some are not. The unstable isotopes are constantly decaying and emitting subatomic particles as radiation. As some of these isotopes decay, they change the number of protons in a nucleus which changes the element into another element. The production and handling of radioactive isotopes or radioisotopes can only be done with the right expertise and equipment.
Currently, the Isotope program is working on finding new ways to create Ac-225. This program is referred to as Tri-Lab Research Effort to Provide Accelerator-Produced 225Ac for Radiotherapy project. It is being carried out at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), and the Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL). They have succeeded in developing a new and promising method for producing Ac-225.
Ac-225 is an alpha emitter. This means that when it decays, it ejects two protons and two neutrons, or what is basically the nucleus of a helium atom. This particle is shortlived but as it travels, it emits intense energy. When combined with a molecule that seeks out cancer cells, this intense energy can break up the DNA of the cancer cell, preventing it from reproducing and may even kill it. Ac-225 is unique because it has a short half-life of ten days. It turns out that ten days is optimal for the treatment of some cancers.
In 2013, the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first drug based on alpha emitters. If the FDA approves drugs based on Ac-225 and bismuth-213 (Bi-213), a daughter isotope, the demand for Ac-225 could rise to fifty thousand millicuries. Current world production of Ac-225 amounts to one to two thousand millicuries.
Ac-225 is currently produced from a small piece of thorium-229 which naturally decays into Ac-225. The Ac-229 must be separated from the Th-229. The Isotope Program is now looking for ways to use high-energy accelerators to irradiate natural thorium to produce more Th-229 which will decay into Ac-225. BNL’s Linear Accelerator and LANL’s Neutron Science Center both host the type of accelerator needed for this approach.
In order to use the high energy accelerators to produce Ac-225, a hocky puck sized piece of thorium is placed in the accelerator. Protons that have been accelerated to about forty percent of the speed of light are then slammed into the thorium target. This produces hundred of different isotopes of different elements including Ac-225. The same process used before separates the Ac-225 from the resulting mixture of isotopes. The Tri-Labs group believes that they can produce about twenty times the Ac-225 that they are currently producing.
