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.
Part 2 of 2 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
The U.S. Army had a nuclear energy research and development program from the 1950s to the 1970s. Part of that research program was aimed at finding ways to take advantage of nuclear energy for emergency electricity production in remote locations. At the time of the research program, it was reported that half of the logistical effort of moving an army was moving fuel. And one eighth of the fuel moved was dedicated to producing electricity.
One of the systems developed by the Army as part of their R&D program was called the Mobile, Low Power Reactor or ML-1. It was designed to provide a complete electrical generation system that could be moved by air, rail, ship or truck. The ML-1 used a closed Brayton Cycle compressor and turbine to create energy from the heat generated by nuclear fission reactions. Nitrogen was the working coolant which spun a turbine connected to an electrical generator. After it left the turbine, the nitrogen would be compressed and sent back to the core.
The main part of the system fit on two cargo skids. The reactor was moved on one of the skids. The other skid contained the compressor, turbine, generator and heat exchanger. The total weight of the two loaded cargo skids was thirty tons. A single truck could carry both skids. Another truck would be needed to carry cables and a control station to operate the reactor.
The ML-1 was designed to produce between three hundred and five hundred kilowatts of electricity. The nuclear fuel would be able to provide power for two years before it had to be replaced. The whole system was designed to be set up and operating within hours of arriving at a site. When it was no longer needed, a day would be required for the cooling of fission produces with a short half life before it could be moved.
The ML-1 was built and generated electricity in late 1962. However, it did not work very well. The engineers of the time did not have the necessary experience in matching turbines and compressors to recycle the nitrogen efficiently. The ML-1 was only able to generate one hundred and eighty kilowatts of electricity. This was about half of what the ML-1 was expected to produce.
The ML-1 was operated for a few hundred hours as information was gathered about the functioning system. Following the initial test period, the engineers were ready to make changes that would improve operations. However, the Army budget for 1963 cut R& D funds almost to zero so that more funding could be dedicated to the Vietnam War. If the program had been funded, we would have advanced portable nuclear power reactors today.
As Secretary Perry mentioned, there are now regulations that would prevent the creation of a system like the ML-1. Some of those regulations were the result of a lack of understanding of the technology. However, Perry’s accusation that it was public misunderstanding that resulted in those regulations was not correct. In general, nuclear scientists are not as vocal as activists opposed to nuclear energy. Nuclear energy has provided electricity in very difficult environments and alternative energy such as that proposed by Romm may not be able to reliably supply sufficient energy for natural disaster sites.
Currently, both nuclear surface ships and nuclear submarines are capable of supplying electricity to islands where a natural disaster has destroyed the grid and generation systems. In the future, it may be possible to deploy a new generation of small portable nuclear power reactors to remote locations in need of fast and portable electrical generation.
U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry:
Part 1 of 2 Parts:
It is interesting how natural disasters can prompt a wider discussion of technologies that might help the response to such disasters. In the past few weeks, there have been three devastating hurricanes that have hit Texas, Florida and islands in the Caribbean. Millions of people are lacking shelter, water, food, fuel and electricity. A panel discussion during National Clean Energy Week turned to how portable nuclear power generators could have helped the disaster response on the island of Puerto Rico.
During a panel, U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Perry said, “I want to talk about an opportunity that we have right now. The Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico are devastated. Maybe one of the most tragic events in recent history with the hurricane that hit Puerto Rico. 3.5 million Americans who are without electricity. We’re trying to get micro generators down there. We’re trying to get fuel down there. Wouldn’t it make abundant good sense if we had small modular reactors that literally you could put in the back of a C-17 aircraft, transport to an area like Puerto Rico push it out the back end, crank it up, plug it in that could serve tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people very quickly. That’s the type of innovation that’s going on in our national labs.”
This topic came up several more times during National Clean Energy Week panels. Charles Hernick of the Citizens for Responsible Energy was moderating a panel on innovation, research and development. He asked Marc Nichol, the senior project manager for a Nuclear Energy Institute program on new reactor development, small modular reactors and advanced reactors, to help the audience understand whether or not Secretary Perry’s proposal was really practical.
Nichol said that there were at least twenty different private companies working on new reactor designs. Some of the designs in development were for reactors that were much more flexible and smaller than current nuclear power reactors. Some of the new reactors are being designed for independent operation in small grids where the reactors could keep operating safely during disasters.
Following the panel discussions for National Clean Energy Week, Dr. Joe Romm who was a member of the Clinton Department of Energy wrote a blog post that was critical of the ideas that Secretary Perry expressed at his panel. He said, “Such small nuclear power plants are not expected to be commercialized until the mid-2020s, and even if they are, they are projected to be wildly expensive — just like current reactors — and not that small (650 tons). Nobody’s going to be “literally” putting one in a C-17 and pushing it out the back end on a small island ready to go. The U.S. territory doesn’t have time for such political pipe dreams.”
Dr. Romm had an alternative suggestion for dealing with the aftermath of a natural disaster. He said, “Microgrids built around cheap renewable power and battery storage are now the fastest and cheapest way to restore power — while at the same time building resilience into the grid against the next disaster.”
The truth probably lies somewhere between Perry’s ideas and Romm’s response. Nuclear power plants that can be transported by air do not currently exist but they are expected to be available by the mid 2020’s. Secretary Perry never suggested that such systems are currently available. Romm was right in suggesting that future possible reactors will be of no help to Puerto Rico which needs electricity right now. He was probably wrong in suggesting that it will not be possible to build nuclear reactors that can be transported to a disaster zone by air.
Please read Part 2
The big project to build two new nuclear power reactors at the V.C. Summer Nuclear Generating Station in South Carolina was cancelled as of July 2017. In spite of this setback for nuclear power in S.C., nuclear science and technology are still important to S.C. The Savannah River Laboratory in South Carolina is a national nuclear laboratory owned by the U.S. Department of Energy where important research is carried out. Now two new grants from the DoE Nuclear Energy University Research Program have been awarded to scientists at Clemson University in S.C.
Kyle Brinkman is a member of the C.U. Department of Materials Science and Engineering. Brinkman is working on the disposal of tritium which is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen generated by natural processes and by the fission reaction in nuclear reactors. It has a half life of twelve and one half years. If tritium from nuclear reactors leaks into the environment, it can threaten human health. Ingestion of tritium can lead to illnesses including cancer.
Brinkman is working on the development of a membrane that can filter out the tritium in cooling water from a nuclear reactor. He and his team are exploring different materials but will focus mainly on persovkite, a naturally occurring mineral. The membrane would be utilized in reprocessing plants where spent nuclear fuel is processed to create new fuel for reactors. The U.S. has given up on reprocessing nuclear fuel but China, France, Japan, India, Russia and the United Kingdom are developing reprocessing facilities.
“We’re going to design not only the material, but the processing and the microstructure to get the right filter properties,” Brinkman said. “No one has ever used ceramics to do this. No one has ever used naturally occurring materials, such as perovskite. No one has taken these classes of materials, which have the ability to incorporate the hydrogen isotope tritium, and use them in this sort of capture process. We will be the first.”
Luiz Jacobsohn is also with the C.U. Department of Materials Science and Engineering. He is getting a grant from the same DoE Nuclear Energy University Research as Brinkman. The grant will allow Jacobsohn to purchase a special microscope which will permit him and his team to examine ceramic materials with what is referred to as “Raman” spectroscopy.
The microscope will be used in conjunction with high temperatures and controlled atmospheric conditions. It can heat samples to sixteen hundred degrees Centigrade. In Raman spectroscopy, a sample is heated and then illuminated with a laser beam. The pattern of light scattering in the sample contains useful information about the structure of the material. “Atoms in a solid are shaking because of thermal energy, you illuminate them with a laser beam and then you detect the light that is scattered,” said Jacobsohn. “It essentially measures how much energy is acquired or lost, known as Raman shift.” The microscope will be used in studies of nuclear fuel cladding, nuclear waste immobilization and radiation damage.
