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 a broad audience, including engineers, policy makers, and interested members of the public. The blog also places emphasis on the importance of maintaining old nuclear technology, embracing new nuclear technology only 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, who operates a geiger counter in North Seattle. He has been running his blog, Nucleotidings, since 2012, where he writes about various topics related to nuclear energy, nuclear weapons, and radiation protection. Webb also works as a software consultant and has published several technical books.
You can interact with the artificial Burt Webb by typing in your questions in the entry box below.
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 half way seriousness to hope that Japan will learn from the March 2011 disaster and build its new reactors with much greater emphasis on safety, even if it is a little less convenient or expensive. The term is a play on the word ‘karakura’, which are decorative Japanese characters used for designs, and ‘Fukushima’.
Ambient office = 88 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 128 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 122 nanosieverts per hour
Red potato from Central Market = 102 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 46 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 39 nanosieverts per hour
One of my biggest concerns about nuclear power is whether we can rely on private companies to follow proper procedures in the manufacture of nuclear components destined for the construction of nuclear power plants. There have been too many instances where nuclear component manufacturers were not sufficiently concerned about quality control.
In April of 2015, Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire (ASN), the French nuclear regulatory agency, reported that they had found an “anomaly” in the composition of the steel alloy in certain parts of the vessel closure head and the vessel bottom head of the Flamanville European Pressurized Reactor. The ASN challenged Areva NP and EDF to “learn all possible lessons from this event”.
A year later in May of 2016, ASN reported on an ongoing quality audit at the Le Creusot forge, purchased by Areva in 2006. They found “irregularities” in the documentation associated with four hundred nuclear plant components manufactured at the forge since 1965. The report added that irregularities of the same type had been discovered in other countries.
The ASN said that it has “assessed how to strengthen the requirements applicable to the industry and how to improve the industry’s own oversight system.” On May 15th, they wrote a letter to all the French nuclear operators and manufacturers of nuclear pressure equipment and equipment for the transport of radioactive materials. In the letter, the ASN explained the necessary regulatory requirements for preventing, detecting and deal with counterfeit, suspect and fraudulent items (CSFI). They also said that more considerations should be given to the risk of CSFI in the integrated managements systems that are a requirement for such companies. The ASN also demands that licensees and manufacturers report on what actions they intend to turn over to external inspection agencies.
The new ASN actions are intended to supplement the provisions made by licensees and manufacturers. These include improving data security and the utilization of external organizations for inspections to support the oversight of manufacturing. The ASN also intends to make improvements in their oversight practices and require that any evidence of fraud is systematically reported to the ASN.
The ASN is making arrangements for whistleblowers to report any potential CSFI directly to the ASN. These arrangements should be in place by the end of 2018. The ASN is also going to hire two anti-fraud specialists as well as supplementing the training of its inspectors.
On June 8th, the ASN said that the “Confirmed or suspected cases, some of which were detected by basic nuclear installation licensees or the manufacturers themselves, only concern an extremely small part of nuclear activities, but could nonetheless have significant safety implications.”
“This situation shows that neither the robustness of the monitoring and inspection chain, at the top of which are the manufacturers and the licensees, nor the high level of quality demanded in the nuclear industry, were able to completely rule out the risk of counterfeit, suspect and fraudulent items (CSFI).”
The problems at Le Creusot sent shockwave through the global supply chains for nuclear power plant components. Let us hope that the actions of the ASN will prevent such behavior in the future.
Ambient office = 87 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 104 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 90 nanosieverts per hour
Celery from Central Market = 122 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 109 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 102 nanosieverts per hour
The International Atomic Energy Agency has just announced a competition to develop “innovative ways to visualize, analyze and explore” simulations of different materials that could be use to construct nuclear fusion reactors. Any such material would have to be able to withstand extremely high temperatures and energetic particles.
The IAEA hopes that the responses to the new challenge will help with the construction of a demonstration nuclear fusion power reactor. If such a reactor can be constructed, it will prove that the generation of net electrical power from a fusion reactor is economically feasible. This would be the final step before the actual construction of commercial nuclear fusion power plants.
The IAEA said that “Harnessing commercially-viable fusion power involves serious technological challenges that are expected to take many years to solve, including protecting the wall and other components of the reactor vessel from extremely high temperatures and energetic particles,” the agency said. Tungsten, steel and beryllium are candidates for use in the containment vessel for a fusion reactor.”
“Since experiments on physical samples are difficult and expensive to carry out, scientists have turned to computational models to simulate the behavior of a material. Different metals or compositions, impact energies and temperatures can be explored [using molecular dynamics] and can help with the search for an effective first wall material.”
Christian Hill is the head of the IAEA’s atomic and molecular data unit. He pointed out that very high temperatures are one of the major requirements for the construction of a fusion reactor. He said, “At such high temperatures – ten times higher than is found at the core of our Sun – matter exists only as plasma, which must be confined by a magnetic field to keep it from damaging the reactor walls.”
The IAEA is hoping to attract “experts and self-taught enthusiasts” to study simulations of the damage that can be sustained by the wall of a fusion reactor vessel under bombardment by energetic neutrons generated by the fusion reaction. Some of the factors that the IAEA says will have to be taken into consideration in the submissions of the participants include:
• The use of new and innovative software for visualizing the damage data in a way that “aids qualitative and quantative assessment.”
• The use of new and innovative software to quickly “identify, classify and quantify new patterns and structures of particular kinds in the data set.”
• The development of more efficient algorithms to visualize and “summarize the statistical distribution of atomic displacement and to analyze the effect of impact energy on this distribution.”
Hill also said that “By participating in this challenge, both specialists and non-specialists will be helping scientists to better understand how a material responds to high-energy events and will assist the development of a future fusion reactor.” The deadline for submissions is July 14, 2018. The winner will be announced on August 15, 2018. They will receive about six thousand dollars and will be invited to the IAEA’s headquarters in Vienna to present their findings.
Ambient office = 81 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 111 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 81 nanosieverts per hour
White onion from Central Market = 91 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 84 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 74 nanosieverts per hour
India and Russia can work together in third countries in various fields including nuclear energy and talks are presently in a preliminary stage, India’s Ambassador to Russia Pankaj Saran said here today. Economictimes.indiatimes.com
A judge on Thursday stopped the federal government from suspending construction of a nuclear fuel factory at the Savannah River Site atomic weapons complex near Aiken. Greenvilleonline.com
Ambient office = 85 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 54 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 45 nanosieverts per hour
Asparagus from Central Market = 91 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 81 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 72 nanosieverts per hour
