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.
3. Climate change mitigation
Concern over climate change has boosted the acceptability of nuclear power. Due to the low carbon footprint of nuclear power, even die-hard environmentalists are jumping onboard the nuclear train. Proponents of nuclear power are saying that it is the only possible solution for major carbon reduction.
Actually, there are reasonable and economical plans for renewable energy sources to supply all the world’s electrical needs by 2050. Renewable projects can come online in a few years as opposed to the decade or more that it can take to site, license and construct nuclear power plants. In addition, there is a great deal of carbon dioxide released in the construction of a nuclear power plant that takes years of plant operation to pay back. We have to go with energy sources that can be constructed and operational as quickly as possible to fight climate change. Even with the boom in Chinese nuclear reactor construction, the amount of electricity that the new nuclear plants will add to the Chinese power grid is tiny compared to the operating and polluting coal power plants there. Nuclear power is not going to be the magic solution to climate change mitigation.
4. Uncertainty of abundant cheap natural gas
The boom in natural gas production has helped it replace coal as the biggest source of power generation in the U.S. Since carbon emissions are lower for gas than coal power plants, abundant natural gas does help reduce overall carbon emissions. However, if natural gas replaces aging nuclear power plants, the carbon emission go up.
Abundant natural gas can serve as a bridge to renewable sources taking over all energy generation by 2050. Natural gas will continue to be cheap long enough for renewable to replace it. The price tag for nuclear power just keeps going up and the cost of renewables just keeps going down.
5. New types of reactors
Proponents of nuclear power say that new types of nuclear power reactors such as small modular reactors (SMRs) can bring down prices and improve safety for nuclear power because they will be built in factories and shipped to the site where they will operate.
As problems with falsifying quality control documents for nuclear components should indicate, just being built in a factory does not guarantee quality control. It is questionable whether three SMR reactors that produce a combined total of nine hundred megawatts can be built and operated any cheaper than a single nine hundred megawatt conventional reactors. While there is increasing interest and investment in SMRs around the world, the fact is that there are none that have been licensed yet to operate anywhere. There will be years of design, testing, regulatory review and licensing necessary before any SMRs are constructed and attached to the grid. With the continuing expansion of and lowering cost of renewable sources of energy generation there may be no need for a fleet of SMRs.
I am not impressed with the arguments above on the coming “rebound” of nuclear power in 2018. There are many other factors opposing major expansion of nuclear power in the near future but I will mention just one. Another major nuclear accident somewhere in the world is inevitable. When it happens, the prospects for nuclear power will take a major nose-dive.
Part One of Two Parts
It should be clear to anyone who reads this blog that I am not a great fan of nuclear energy. For my one thousandth post, I laid out forty reasons that nuclear power is not a good idea. (it has since grown to forty-five reasons.) The arguments for and against nuclear energy production are being played out in the press, legislatures and board rooms around the world. The pro and con arguments play out on several different levels. There are arguments that nuclear power should or should not be used. And then there are arguments that nuclear power will or will not be used in the coming years. Recently an article was published that laid out five reasons why the author thought that the nuclear power industry was going to “rebound” in 2018. I decided that I would present those five reasons and my reactions to them today.
There are more than fifty new nuclear power plants under construction in the world today and one hundred and fifty more are being planned. This year fourteen new power plants will be connected to power grids including next generation Westinghouse AP1000 and Framatome’s EPR. Korea is building its first APR1300 reactor in the UAE which is on time and on budget.
This sounds really positive, but it turns out that both the Westinghouse AP1000 reactor in China and the Framatome EPR in Finland and France have encountered serious problems and are behind schedule and over budget. Both Westinghouse and Framatome have serious financial difficulties to deal with that may affect the construction of these reactors. There are also ongoing investigation of French and Japanese nuclear reactor component companies falsifying quality control records for their products that are used in reactors around the world. The Korean reactor in the UAE may be on schedule and on budget now but let’s see what the situation is when it finally completed and connected to the grid. Every single nuclear power reactor built in the U.S. in the last sixty years has come in late and over budget. The price of nuclear power reactors just keeps going up and will probably continue to do so which will cool off enthusiasm for this power source.
Some of the biggest members of the nuclear power industry are reorganizing to be more efficient and profitable. The former French Areva was split up into Framatome and Orano. The French utility, EDF, the biggest nuclear plant operator in the world, is taking over Framatome which is focused on reactors, nuclear fuel and nuclear services. Orano will focus on uranium mining, recycling and decommissioning. Brookfield Asset Partners of Canada are going to buy Westinghouse Electric Company from Toshiba. China National Nuclear Company is China’s second biggest nuclear power company. It is merging with China Nuclear Equipment Company. Now that the board has been reshuffled, some pending nuclear reactor projects should be able to move forward.
Once again, this sounds really good. However, the companies that have been reorganized, bought or merged have all had serious financial problems which prompted the changes. It is well known that just reorganizing, being bought or merging in themselves are not necessarily solutions to anything. Sometimes, problems result from poor management and sometimes they result from external market factors that put companies in difficult financial situations. Unless new and more competent managers are installed and/or market situation change, the new companies may find themselves with many of the same problems that the old companies had.
Please read Part Two:
Part 2 of 2 parts (Please read Part 1 first)
HI-STORE CIS is being funded by Holtec. They have the enthusiastic support of local communities in southeastern New Mexico as well as the governor of New Mexico. The NRC says that the regulatory review of the application will cost about seven and a half million dollars. HI-STORE CIS is the only facility being planned in the U.S. that satisfies the desire of the Department of Energy for a consolidated interim storage facility.
Critics of the HI-STORE CIS project say that it will be dangerous to transport what could be volatile nuclear waste from nuclear power plants in other states to New Mexico. They also are concerned about the environmental impact of storing so much nuclear waste in New Mexico.
Supporters of the HI-STORE CIS project respond that none of the waste is volatile, there are no liquids in the waste that could leak into the environment, thousands of tons of nuclear waste, nuclear weapons and spent nuclear fuel have been transported safely in the past and we have been storing nuclear weapons waste in the Waste Isolation Plant Project (WIPP) near Carlsbad, New Mexico for over fifteen years.
Holtec says that they have been designing, testing and building dry casks for spent nuclear fuel storage for over thirty years. Their casks have been run into concrete bunkers at eighty mile an hour, dropped onto huge steel spikes, burned in jet fuel fires with temperatures of thousands of degrees, and sunk into water for weeks. Holtec says that their dry casks are “as strong as humans can make them.”
Holtec latest dry cask design is called the HI-STORM UMAX. It was certified and licenses by the NRC in 2015 and is currently deployed at many nuclear power plants around the U.S. The HI-STORM UMAX casks are completely below ground. Holtec intends the UMAX casks to standardize spent nuclear fuel storage resulting in simpler systems and lower costs.
While the Holtec dry casks are designed to safely store spent nuclear fuel for at least one hundred years, they are still considered to be only temporary storage. The dry casks at the HI-STORE CIS can be easily retrieved and transported to other locations as new disposal options become available.
Holtec is also seek approval from the NRC to use the heat generated by the spent nuclear fuel to convert dirty water from industrial processes such as drilling and fracking to clean water that can be safely consumed by humans and animals. Southeastern New Mexico is arid and can definitely benefit from a new process to provide safe drinking water.
Holtec International is headquartered in Jupiter, Florida. Florida is considering the use of the Holtec storage system with its waste water process in Florida. Holtec is also working on a small modular reactor design called the SMR-160 at its new Singh Technology Campus on the Delaware River in Camden, New Jersey.
