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 about thorium reactors before. They have been studied and experimented with since the 1950s. There are enthusiastic supporters of the use of thorium to produce electricity but the question can be honestly raised about why, after seventy years, there are no thorium power reactors today. A consortium of Utah counties are partnering with a private startup in an attempt to build a commercial thorium reactor.
The Seven County Infrastructure Coalition (SCIC) sent out a request for qualifications in an attempt to find a qualified analyst who could evaluate a proposal for a thorium reactor to product electricity put forward by the Alpha Tech Research Corporation. The promoters of thorium power say that thorium reactors do not produce waste that can be refined to make nuclear weapons, they cannot melt down, and they do not produce waste that is dangerous for thousands of years.
Alpha Tech is looking for a site in Utah to construct a thorium reactor to produce medical isotopes and other isotopes for industrial and research applications. One of the things that make Utah attractive is the fact that there are a lot of locations that are in rural areas but are still close to airports. This is important because some medical isotopes have short half-lives and have to be shipped out quickly after they are created. One of the founders of Alpha Tech said, “We are a young company that is working on a technology that is not only cutting edge, but could have significant impact on the world.” They estimate that thousands of jobs could be created for rural Utah.
Thorium reactors use molten-salts to capture and circulate the heat generated by the thorium reactions. The three elements that are often selected for use in molten-salt reactors are beryllium, lithium and fluorine. Utah happens to be rich in both beryllium and lithium. Utah has extensive salt flats that contain a lot of lithium. One mine in Utah provides eighty five percent of the commercial beryllium in the world.
The mission of the SCIC is to “build essential regional infrastructure elements,” such as pipelines, roads, transmission systems and railroads that are necessary to deliver extracted minerals and power to market. There have been questions raised as to whether or not this mission is consistent with investment in such a speculative venture as that proposed by Alpha Tech. The SCIC has allocated twenty five thousand dollars to review the Alpha Tech proposal and decide if it wants to participate. The SCIC is having trouble finding an analyst to review the proposal and recently extended the deadline for responses to it RFQ.
The SCIC is under investigation by the Utah State Treasurer’s office. There are concerns that the group is not following proper accounting standards. The Treasurer is also a member of the Community Impact Board of Utah (CIB). This board allocates mineral royalties from the federal government to rural counties in Utah. Grants from the CIB are the only source of revenue for the SCIC. The Treasurer has publically raised the question of whether the SCIC has been handing contracts to insiders instead of giving them to the best qualified people. He is also worried that the SCIC is wasting public money in ways that do not provide the public benefit that is the purpose of the SCIC.
Critics of the Alpha Tech project point out that while some of the technologies needed to build thorium reactors have been developed, there is still a lot of technical research and development that will be required to develop the integrated commercial facility that Alpha Tech desires. It has been estimated that it will take at least ten years to design and build a commercial facility. And it will take a great deal more money than is available from a handful of rural counties in Utah.
Guam releases guidance to prepare residents for North Korean nuclear strike. Washingtonpost.com
Following the filing of a lawsuit alleging that Westinghouse Electric Co. violated labor laws by laying off hundreds of workers without proper notice, the bankrupt nuclear company confirmed Friday that it has furloughed 870 employees across the company. Powersource.post-gazette.com
The cleanup of a 44-acre nuclear waste dump in Armstrong County is facing another potentially lengthy delay after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced Friday it will re-evaluate proposals to do the work. Powersource.post-gazette.com
There has been a lot of discussion in the nuclear industry about the development of a new type of nuclear reactor referred to a “small modular reactor (SMR).” Conventional power reactors are built onsite and can exceed a gigawatt in capacity. The new SMRs will be three hundred megawatts or less. The U.S. Office of Nuclear Energy (ONE) is charged with the task of developing and demonstrating a SMR but no such reactor is even remotely near being deployed. A new study from three universities just published in the Environmental Research Letters offers details of the failure of the ONE to deliver.
This new type of reactor will be non-light water in contrast to the current ubiquitous light-water reactors supplying electricity today. Some of the new designs would allow reactors to operate at higher temperatures and provide superior performance than current reactors. Some designs will be able to operate for decades without refueling which reduces maintenance costs and generates much less waste. Another benefit is supposed to be that these SMRs will be built in factories and be subjected to better and more uniform quality control than is currently possible with the custom onsite construction that is common.
The report goes into depth about how resources were allocated and how the research and development program was run. What the researchers found was that the program “violated much of the wisdom about how to effectively run an applied energy research program.” The lead researcher said “There were often inconsistencies in the annual budget documents. The budget itself varies significantly over the period of study, which is fine if these variations are part of a coherent vision that is being pursued, but that is not the case. At all levels, NE favours existing technologies and fuels over innovation, and, where it does support truly innovative research, it is prone to changing priorities before any concrete progress has been made.”
“One example of this lack of vision is the gap that exists between the advanced reactor and advanced fuel programs. Investing in advanced fuels research is critical to developing a new nuclear reactor technology. However, NE has mostly invested in one fuel type while exploring multiple reactor designs, most of which do not use that fuel. This disjunction between the two programs is naturally problematic.”
The study reported that a lot of the money spent on the program did not go to projects that directly supported the actual development of SMRs. Some of this misspent money was dedicated to defense projects in an echo of the original promotion of nuclear power which was really intended to collect more funding for the Department of Defense nuclear programs. The lead researcher said “Despite substantial expenditure and commitments to this future, NE lacks the funding and programmatic focus required to execute its mission. Even if the program had been well designed, it still would have been insufficient to demonstrate even one non-light water technology.
“It has dedicated only $2 billion over the past 18 years to all advanced reactor and fuel initiatives. While that may appear to be a substantial sum, by NE’s own estimates it is not enough to ready even one such design for commercial deployment.”
The researchers recommended that the ONE do a better job of focusing funding of projects that will actually lead directly to the development of SMRs. They also recommend a more transparent process. The different reactor designs need to be evaluated against a set of key performance requirements. This would allow an informed debated on the relative merits of each design with respect to issues of economics, safety, security and waste.
In a grim prediction of the prospects for SMRs, the lead researcher said, “Without a sense of urgency among NE and its political leaders, the likelihood of advanced reactors playing a substantial role in the transition to a low-carbon US energy portfolio is exceedingly low. From a broader perspective, this failure means that the US will cede its leadership on nuclear matters to other nations, limiting its ability to exert influence in key areas such as safety and non-proliferation as well.”
