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.
Turkey has been interested in building nuclear power plants since 1970. However, progress has been very slow and neighboring countries including Armenia, Bulgaria, Romania and Iran have all brought nuclear power to their grid before Turkey which is just breaking ground for its first nuclear power plant.
Turkey believes that its economic growth and population growth will drive up demand for electricity in the next ten years. They also see nuclear power as a stepping stone in their transition to low-carbon energy sources. Nuclear power can replace coal while renewable energy is being explored. The intermittency of renewables such as solar and wind power need to be supported by base load power that could be provided by nuclear power plants. Government officials have been planning for the construction of two or three nuclear power plants.
Russia has been aggressively pursuing international markets for its nuclear power reactors. Turkey is moving into nuclear power. Russia is contracted to assist Turkey in the construction of the first Turkish nuclear power plant. Construction of the first reactor at the nuclear power plant has just begun.
The project began in 2010 and is expected to finish its first reactor by 2023. In November of 2015, a Turkish Air Force Fighter shot down a Russian attack aircraft that strayed across the Syrian-Turkish border. The pilot of the plane died on the ground after ejecting from the jet. This caused a serious rift in relations between the two countries. One consequence of the incident was the shelving of the nuclear reactor project. The split between Turkey and Russia was resolved in late 2016.
With the restoration of positive relationship between Russia and Turkey, the nuclear power project was reactivated. Four nuclear power reactors are being constructed which will come to provide around ten percent of Turkey’s electricity. On the surface, things seem to be going well, but there are problems that could impact the success of the project.
Following the resumption of normal relations in 2016, Russia managed to pressure Turkey into granting three billion dollars in tax breaks. The Akkuyu project is based on the Build-Operate-Own (BOO) model favored by Russia. This means that Rosatom, the Russian-owned nuclear company, will be responsible for the financial risks associated with the twenty billion dollar project. The Turkish Electricity Trading and Contracting Company (TETAS) has signed a contract to buy electricity from the nuclear power plant at a fixed price.
Rosatom is not capable of supplying the capital necessary to fund the project. Because of this fact, Rosatom transferred a forty-nine percent stake in the project to a Turkish Consortium consisting of Cengiz, Kolin and Kalyon (CKK) in June of 2017. Experts in the Turkish energy sector say that none of these companies have any experience or expertise in managing long term projects. The projects they have been involve with were state-funded construction and infrastructure projects where there was a quick profit.
By February of 2018, all three of these firms have withdrawn from the project. Sources inside Rosatom said that part of the cause of the withdrawal had to do the selection of a Chinese consultant by the consortium. In addition, the Turks want to be involved in the management of the project before they commit cash for their share.
In order for the project to move ahead on schedule, the Turks have to quickly find a strategic investor. The Turkish government may have to invest to move the project forward. Most projects in the world involving the construction of nuclear power plants have required some sort of government participation. In spite of the BOO model for the project, Turkey may wind up responsible for part of the funding. Rosatom has already signed contracts with suppliers and subcontractors for over four and a half billion dollars. This is far more than the three billion that Rosatom has invested in the project.
It will be difficult to raise money in the global capital markets, partly because of the sanctions that have been erected against Russia because of the seizure of the Crimea in 2014. The Russian government is most likely pressuring the Turkish government to provide funds or to find a minority shareholder to purchase the CKK share of the project. This might encounter difficulties if there is a downturn in the Turkish economy. Time will tell whether finances can be secured in time for the first reactor to come online in 2023 as intended.
Turkish Electricity Trading and Contracting Company logo:
The market for nuclear reactors is shrinking in the developed world so nuclear companies are turning to developing nations for business. Companies that sell nuclear technology for power plants are competing for the nuclear market in the Middle East which is one of the most unstable regions on Earth. The Center for Climate & Security which is based in the U.S. released a report last year that said that included the Middle East of “potential crisis regions where combining security, climate, and nuclear risks must be addressed urgently.”
The biggest potential customer for power reactors in the Middle East is Saudi Arabia. S.A. has announced that they intend to construct sixteen nuclear power plants in the next twenty-five years at a cost of eighty billion dollars. They have internal deposits of uranium that they hope can be turned into fuel to allow them to diversify from their current reliance on fossil fuels. S.A. says that they do not believe that renewable energy can satisfy their future need for electricity.
Other countries in the Middle East who have either signed contracts for or are already building nuclear power reactors include Iran, United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt and Turkey. Every one of them claims that the only reason that they want nuclear power plants is because of their estimation of future electricity needs.
The U.S. wants to sell Westinghouse reactors to Middle Eastern companies. Russia, China, Japan and South Korea are also very interested in the Middle East nuclear power market. In addition to supporting nuclear technology companies in their countries, any of the nuclear technology exporting countries would benefit from increased political influence that such sales in the Middle East would bring.
The largest current Middle Eastern nuclear power project is the twenty-four billion dollar Barakah power plant in the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) Four nuclear power reactors will be constructed by the Korean Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO). One problem is that there are not enough trained personnel to operate even one of the new reactors. The U.A.E. will be the first country in over twenty years to start up a new nuclear power reactor.
Jordan has no fossil fuel resources, so it has more reason than its oil rich neighbors to turn to nuclear power. It has signed a twelve billion dollar nuclear power reactor deal with Rosatom, the Russian-owned nuclear company.
Egypt has the largest population in the Middle East and increasing demands for electricity have stimulated its interest in nuclear power. Egypt has signed a thirty billion dollar deal with Rosatom for the construction of four nuclear power plants.
Turkey currently has to import most of its fuel in the form of fossil fuels from neighboring nations. It is currently building a nuclear power plant on the Mediterranean coast at Akkuyu in partnership with Rosatom. Turkey has been interested in nuclear power for decades and started the Akkuyu project in 2010. It was originally intended that the first reactor would be operating by now, but Turkey and Russia fell into a dispute over the downing on a Russian jet in 2015, and the project was shelved. Turkey and Russia made up in 2016 and the project resumed.
This intense interest in nuclear power among Middle Eastern countries has raised concerns of some observers and analysts. They are afraid the at least some of these countries might secretly desire nuclear weapons. The Crown Prince of S.A. says that “Saudi Arabia doesn’t want to own a nuclear bomb. But without a doubt, if Iran develops a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible.”
Since Israel already has nuclear weapons, neighboring Arab countries may feel it necessary to have their own nuclear weapons to defend themselves against Israel. Hopefully, the global nuclear non-proliferation movement will help to reduce the desire for nuclear weapons in the Middle East.
Scientists at the Robotics institute of Carnegie Mellon University have developed a new robot called RadPiper for the purpose of finding radioactive materials in the pipes of the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) Piketon, Ohio facility. This project is part of the CMU Pipe Crawling Activity Measurement System to revolutionize the efficiency and safety of the DoE nuclear cleanup program which will take fifty years or more.
The DoE plant in Piketon spent forty-six years enriching uranium to weapons grade for our nuclear arsenal. The plant was decommissioned in 2000. The senior project scientist for the RadPiper team said, “At the time that it was operating, it was using as much electricity as Manhattan just to operate the uranium enrichment plan. There are more efficient ways to do this now. So if we needed to enrich a bunch of uranium, which hopefully we don’t right now, this wouldn’t be the way to do it.”
The U.S. government intends to demolish the plant and replace it with a new industrial park. However, before they can do that, they need to inspect the entire facility for radioactive materials and decontaminate it. Without this very thorough inspection and decontamination, the workers carrying out the demolition might be exposed to dangerous amounts of radiation. It is even possible that there could be an explosion if there is a great enough concentration of U-235 in one location. Every foot of pipe in the facility must be inspected. It is estimated that there are seventy-five miles of pipe in the three large buildings of the plant.
Prior to the invention of the RadPiper robot, the inspection and decontamination of an enrichment plant were done by hand. The workers used motorized scissor lifts for pipes that were up to fifteen feet in the air. Radiation readings would be taken every few feet. It was time consuming and expensive.
At Piketon over the past three years, the workers took one million four hundred thousand measurements. The results of these measurements are hand written. It may take years to analyze these measurements and the cost could exceed fifty billion dollars.
In order to expedite this process, the DoE gave CMU one million four hundred thousand dollars to develop a pair of wireless robots called RadPipers. These two robots will inspect the remain fifteen miles of pipes at Piketon which have not been inspected yet.
RadPiper contains a disc-collimated sensing instrument which utilizes an off the shelf sodium iodide sensor that counts gamma rays. The sensor is located between two big disks made of lead that are spaced a foot apart. The robot moves down the pipe one foot at a time. When it stops, the detector measures the radiation from the one-foot section of pipe between the lead disks which block radiation from other parts of the pipe. When a section of pipe is found to be contaminated, it is removed and disposed of.
The robot cannot turn corners and there are many places where the piping in the facility does turn corners. It does have a camera onboard which can alert the operators if there is an obstruction or problem in the pipe. The robot can return to its starting point automatically. The robot transmits its findings to a laptop computer which can carry out analyses of measurements in minutes or hours.
The RadPiper robot is almost finished and the developers hope to be able to begin measurements at the Piketon facility in May or June. They also intend to use the RadPiper at another closed uranium enrichment plant in Paducah, Kentucky. The senior project scientist said, “During the World War II era and the Cold War era, there was [this mindset] of we have to develop as quickly as possible, and basically they made a big mess. And now we’re stuck with trying to clean it up. And I think robotics is going to be an important part of that.”
Clients in Canada and Japan would like to use the RadPiper on their nuclear cleanup projects. Other entities are interested in adapting the RadPiper robot to inspect different kinds of piping systems. A private company will spin off from CMU to handle commercial applications.
