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.
For the most port, nations armed with nuclear weapons have tried to make those weapons as secure as possible. However, sometimes they fail. I have blogged in the past about some accidents involving nuclear weapons that were suffered by the U.S. Today, I am going to blog about an accident that happened to the Soviet Union in the early days of nuclear submarines.
The Soviet Union began working on nuclear attack submarines in the 1960s. The November (Type 627) class were their first effort. Thirteen November class submarines were built. They displaced about four thousand seven hundred and fifty tons when fully submerged and could carry twenty torpedoes. They could reach a maximum speed of thirty knots which is equivalent to about thirty-five miles per hour. They resembled the design of earlier diesel-powered submarines but were even noisier than the old diesel submarines.
The November class submarines were originally designed to carry a massive nuclear torpedo called the T-15 for use in attacks on NATO naval bases. The torpedo was so big that each submarine could only carry one. Ultimately, it turned out that the U.S. developed sophisticated detection systems that the noisy November class submarines could not be used for their intended purpose.
The Soviets rearmed the November class submarines with nuclear torpedoes with smaller warheads that allowed the November submarines to carry more than one each. The November class was reassigned to more conventional anti-ship attack duties. The November class could have threatened convoys of ships and sunk many, but they would have been destroyed by surviving escort ships. The Soviets never really considered them as effective for hunting enemy submarines because they were so noisy, and they had inadequate sonar systems.
The third November class submarine constructed was referred to as K-8. On one of her first missions in the Barents Sea, there was a problem with the coolant system that could have caused a meltdown of the two reactors. The crew managed to rig an emergency cooling system which saved the sub. Some of the crew members were exposed to dangerous amounts of radiation from leaks of radioactive gas. The crew managed to save the submarine and it limped back to port for repairs.
In spring of 1970, K-8 was involved in a massive Soviet military exercise called Okean 70. One purpose of the exercise was to demonstrate the reach of the Soviet Navy to the rest of the world. They also wanted to work on coordinating navel maneuvers far from the Soviet Union. Okean 70 was one of the biggest navel exercises that the Soviet Union ever held. About two hundred Soviet Navy ships participated from the Northern, Baltic, Black Sea and Pacific fleets. K-8, carrying four nuclear-tipped torpedoes, was part of the forty submarines from the Northern fleet in the war game.
On April 8, there were two fires aboard K-8 that shut down both reactors. The submarine surfaced and the captain gave the order to abandon ship. Eight crew members were trapped and died. A Soviet repair ship came to the aid of the K-8 and began towing it back to port. The weather was rough and most of the crew went back aboard the K-8 and tried to save it. There was no opportunity to recover the four nuclear torpedoes.
The combination of power loss aboard the K-8 and the high seas caused by the rough weather turned out to be too much. On April 12, K-8 sank and took forty crew members with it to the bottom of the Bay of Biscay north of Spain, about fifteen thousand feed deep. The location made any attempt to recover the torpedoes impossible.
The Soviet Navy probably learned valuable lessons about the construction and deployment of nuclear submarines, but it also learned about the cost in lives that failure could mean. The K-8 and her nuclear torpedoes remain at the bottom of the Bay of Biscay to this day.
K-3, another November class Soviet submarine:
Nuclear power is facing serious challenges from cheap renewable energy sources. In 2017, existing construction projects fell further behind schedule while their costs continued to rise. Some major projects were abandoned. Political support and investor interest have been falling across the world. On the other hand, wind and solar power have been falling in costs and rapidly expanding across the world.
There are also new technological treads that threaten nuclear power. The development of huge arrays of batteries are helping to answer the problem of maintaining steady baseload power as solar and wind fluctuate. Also, excess power is being used to produce hydrogen gas which could partially replace natural gas as a fuel for both vehicles and power plants.
The speed with which renewables are being adopted has surprised even the optimists. In areas that are favorable for wind or solar, they are now the cheapest way to produce electricity. While the cost of nuclear power keeps going up, the cost of renewables keeps dropping. One hundred and eight countries are looking to renewables for energy and carbon reduction while just nine countries are moving ahead with nuclear projects.
A couple of years ago, a nuclear renaissance was being touted in the U.S. Four new reactors began construction, the first new builds in decades in the U.S. Two reactors in South Carolina fell behind schedule and had considerable cost overruns. This year, the project was cancelled, leaving lawsuits and consumer electricity prices rising. Two other reactors in Georgia are behind schedule and over budget but the state utility commission just gave the project authorization to continue with construction. It is an open question whether or not they will ever be finished.
France which depends on nuclear power for more than seventy five percent of its electricity has announced that it will reduce nuclear to a fifty percent share of its generation capacity and make up the difference with renewables. France will continue to close old reactors as they reach the end of their licenses and does not intend to build any more reactors.
South Korea has elected an anti-nuclear president and there is serious public pressure to close the existing nuclear power plants, replacing them with renewable sources.
Japan was the location of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March of 2011. They shut off all of their nuclear reactors after the accident so they could review and enhance safety regulations. They are slowly restarting some of their plants while other plants will be permanently shut down due to public opposition and/or the cost of safety upgrades.
China and Russia both have major investment in nuclear power. They both have state-owned enterprises which deal with the construction and operation of nuclear power plants. They both have been planning on making nuclear power exports a major part of their economic expansion. However, construction on some domestic nuclear power plants has been halted or slowed down in China and Russia, although there has been no public statement of a major change in nuclear policy from either nation.
Russia claims that it has signed agreements with Belarus, China, India, Bangladesh, Hungary, Turkey, Finland and Iran to construct nuclear reactors. It also says that it has bids in for reactors in twenty three other countries. Time will tell whether or not these ambitious plans will be realized or abandoned.
The U.K. is working on the construction of two nuclear reactors at Hinkley Point C with help from the Chinese and the French. The project is way behind schedule and way over budget. If completed, the owners will be guaranteed a price for electricity which is way over the current cost of electricity in the U.K. There are some analysts who believe that the project will never be complete.
Nuclear power is being kept alive by the vast amounts of money that are involved in reactor construction, the low carbon footprint, the support that civilian nuclear programs provide for nuclear weapons programs and the influence that nuclear export countries gain from building reactors for foreign customers. Time will tell whether or not this will be sufficient to keep nuclear power alive.
