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.
I have blogged before about China’s nuclear arsenal and nuclear protocols. Basically, the Chinese have a few hundred nuclear warheads and various delivery options. They have chosen to maintain enough nuclear weapons to discourage anyone from attacking them with nuclear weapons but have a policy of not being the first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict. Since the deterioration of relations between Russia and the U.S., some parties in China believe that the Chinese arsenal should be expanded, and their nuclear policies revised.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) just reported on an experiment carried out at the Heavy Ion Research Facility (HIRF) in Lanzhou. The HIRF fired a superheated beam of tantalum 181, a radioactive isotope of tantalum. The CAS said that the experiment was important to “meet a critical strategic demand of China’s national defense”.
One of the researchers said that it was very difficult to create a high-quality, high-output tantalum beam because tantalum melts at about three thousand degrees Celsius. It has been a problem to isolate the tantalum and generate a particle beam that was large enough to conduct experiments. Tantalum is almost as heavy as gold and they needed to use advanced magnetic technology to impart high velocity to the ions as well as control their movements.
A professor of nuclear science at Beijing Normal University who was not involved in the tantalum project said that the experiment was likely carried out to further the development of nuclear devices that contained tantalum. This type of nuclear weapons is called a “salted bomb.” The name is derived from the mediaeval practice of spreading salt on land in conquered nations. The salt prevented the growth of crops and, essentially, killed the land.
A salted bomb containing tantalum would release a cloud of radioactive isotopes much bigger than that released by a similar bomb without tantalum. The salted bomb cloud would spread over a larger area than the cloud from a conventional nuclear bomb. The fallout from a tantalum bomb would render the land uninhabitable for months. Cobalt has also been tested in previous salted bombs developed by Britain.
The professor went on to say, “The most likely application that I can think of [for the tantalum acceleration experiment] is in nuclear research. By generating a powerful beam of tantalum ions, we can observe how the metal interacts with other elements and change form in high-speed collisions. It simulates what will happen in a real nuclear reaction.”
China has expanded and modernized it nuclear arsenal in the past few years. It is dedicated to attaining the highest level of deterrence with the fewest nuclear weapons possible. They may feel that the development of salted bombs could assist in that goal.
Leo Szilard, a pioneer of nuclear weapons, first suggested the idea of salted bombs. He feared that their widespread use could poison so much of the Earth’s surface that the human race would not be able to survive. Some nuclear authorities have suggested that salted bombs could make a good doomsday device that a nation could threaten to detonate if they were attacked with nuclear weapons. There is great concern that a nuclear war could bring the end of human civilization. The use of salted bombs might guarantee it.
There have been books, movies and TV shows about the detonation of nuclear weapons in major urban centers. Much of the drama in such shows lies in how people react and cope after the attack. Now scientists are working on a huge computer simulation to try and better understand exactly how people would really react if they survived a nearby nuclear detonation.
The U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) is “…a combat support agency whose goal is to reduce the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction.” It’s parent agency is the U.S. Department of Defense. The DTRA awarded a grant of about half a million dollars to the Center for Social Complexity (CSC) last May. The CSC is located at George Mason University. The GMU is “…a specialized venue for pursuing interdisciplinary advanced research, discoveries, and inventions that support exploration and analysis of human social phenomena. The Center subscribes to the philosophy of exploiting synergistic interactions between purely theoretical and applied policy research.”
The purpose of the grant is to fund a study to develop a sophisticated computer simulation of how twenty million people would react in the first thirty days after a nuclear attack on New York City. The three-year project will follow millions of software agents as they make decisions and move around the simulated area as their needs, surroundings and social networks dictate. It is expected that most of them would stay near where they were when the bomb hit, follow emergency instructions and take care of injured people nearby.
William Kennedy, the lead researcher on the grant, said in an interview that the first step would be to do basic research and generate text descriptions on how the people, the infrastructure and the environment would be affected by the blast. Then they will begin to translate the descriptions into computer programs. His group has already created other computer models of natural disasters in similar-sized areas. They will be using an open source computer simulation program called MASON that was created at GMU for most of the modeling.
The research group is studying public responses to natural disasters in the U.S. over the past hundred years. Their model will be based on the detonation of a relatively small nuclear warhead of about ten kilotons of TNT in Manhattan. This is about the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War II. It is also about the size on the warheads that North Korea are testing.
The individual software agents are designed to act like people usually do in a major disaster. Their first priority is always to find and help other members of their family if they are nearby when the bomb hits. If they are at work, they will help and cooperate with people they work with. If they are in the midst of strangers, they will tend to form ad hoc “families” and work together. After the detonation, they will try to get out of their current area to find food, water and shelter.
The researchers are currently working on maps of New York City that contain infrastructure that the software agents might interact with including police stations, fire departments, government buildings, commercial establishments, road, bridges, schools, hospitals, etc. It is assumed that a small detonation at ground level will leave communication networks intact, so cell phones and land lines will be available.
Psychological effect such as fear, terror, depression, etc. will be included in the modeled behavior as well as physical injuries. Behavior will be modeled at five-minute intervals for the first few hours after the attack, then it will move on to modeling at fifteen-minute intervals. Considerable computational power will be required. The terms of the grant require that the researchers provide published papers and academic advancement of the two Ph.D candidates involved in the study.
Uranium is a chemical element with the atomic number of 92. It is a grey, dense, radioactive metal. The fuel for nuclear reactors is a highly radioactive isotope of uranium that is less than one percent of most uranium deposits. Low enrichment of uranium provides fuel while highly enriched uranium is used in nuclear weapons.
Uranium is common in the crust of the Earth. It is forty times more common than silver and five hundred times more common than gold. Uranium is found in small quantities in rocks, sediments, seawater, aquifers and hot springs. In areas where the geological conditions are just right, concentrated uranium ore can be found.
Uranium is an energy commodity that is traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) division of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. All energy raw materials including crude oil, natural gas, coal, and uranium are traded on the NYMEX. Each contract on the futures exchange involves two hundred and fifty pounds of Triuranium Octoxide which is a popular form of processed uranium ore known as yellowcake. The current price of uranium is the lowest that it has been in the last ten years. If the price rises, uranium offers value for investors.
Kazakhstan produced the highest amount of uranium of any country in the world in 2017. There are seventeen uranium mines in Kazakhstan scattered among fifty known deposits of high grade ore. It is estimated that Kazakhstan contains as much as twelve percent of global reserves. Kazakhstan was responsible for the production of twenty-three thousand eight hundred tons of uranium which represents about forty percent of world production for the year. Canada comes next in uranium production. It produces about thirteen thousand tons. Australia is next after Canada with about six thousand tons a year. Niger produces over four thousand tons. Russia and Namibia produce three thousand tons a year. Uzbekistan, China, the United States, and Ukraine are also in the top ten producers.
Australia has about thirty percent of the uranium reserves in the world. Although Australia has the biggest reserves by far there are no commercial nuclear power reactors there because of the very strong political and public opposition to all things nuclear. If that changes, Australia could easily outproduce Kazakhstan.
For most nations with uranium, reserves and stockpiles are considered to be important strategic national security secrets. It is likely that the exact size and location of reserves and stockpiles in Russia and China are not being made public.
The price of uranium has been falling for the past ten years, from a high of one hundred and forty-eight dollars a pound in 2007 to a recent low of seventeen dollars and fifty cents. The current price is twenty-two dollars and forty five cents a pound.
Cameco is the company that produces the most uranium in the world. They generate about thirteen thousand five hundred metric tons each year in Canada, the U.S. and Kazakhstan. The French company Areva produces nearly the same amount from Canada, Kazakhstan and Niger. Rio Tinto is the third largest producer with Paladin Energy as the fourth.
