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.
Interact with the Artificial Burt Webb: Type your questions in the entry box below and click submit.
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.
All the concerns about North Korea now having missiles that could reach the U.S. West Coast have prompted questions about just how prepared cities and states on the West Coast are for a possible nuclear attack. During the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, in the early days of the Cold War, the state of Washington had plans and shelters in place in case of a nuclear attack on the U.S. mainland.
All that changed in 1983 when a new Washington state law was passed entitled Comprehensive Emergency Management Act. The official designation of the bill is RCW 38.52.030. The text of the bill says, “The comprehensive, all-hazard emergency plan authorized under this subsection may not include preparation for emergency evacuation or relocation of residents in anticipation of nuclear attack.”
The rationale for leaving nuclear attack planning out of the Comprehensive Emergency Management Act was that if an enemy saw people in Washington State evacuating major cities in a time of heightened nuclear tensions, they might interpret that as our preparation for a preemptive nuclear strike. Washington State Senator Dick Nelson was the author of the bill to ban nuclear emergency planning. He says that Washington State was inundated with nuclear threats, and the idea was to create an example of peace.
Nelson also believes that if Seattle were the target of a nuclear attack, even with some advanced warning, the possibility of survival would be so low that it would be a waste of time to draw up an evacuation plan. The state law does allow for individual cities to draw up an evacuation plan but the state itself does not have one.
Around the time that the bill was being debated, I was asked by the Physicians for Social Responsibility to review a draft plan for the evacuation of Seattle in case of warnings of a nuclear attack. The plan was to evacuate the citizens of Seattle to Eastern Washington over a three day period. Reviewing traffic flows and major highways, I concluded that every major road out of Seattle to the East would be completely blocked by accidents and stalled cars within twelve hours of the declaration of an evacuation. I reported that it would take more like three weeks than three days to evacuate Seattle and would be an exercise in futility. In addition, the casualty figures might be even higher with all those people trapped in cars without food and water.
State lawmakers from both parties are interested in changing the law to allow for evacuation planning. Washington State Senator Mark Miloscia was a B-52 bomber pilot during the Cold War. He recently said “I couldn’t believe how this thing could go on the books. If we ever have to evacuate or relocate citizens due to a nuclear attack or an impending nuclear attack, right now, we can’t plan for that. It puts like a big stop order on any sort of planning we have to do to prepare for the unthinkable. I think there is right now, a common sense support for repealing this. We’ve just got to educate people that let’s do that soon.”
Washington State Senator David Frockt has joined with Miloscia to sponsor a bipartisan bill to change to the law to allow for planning a nuclear evacuation. Frockt said “Since the state government committee was already planning to update our emergency planning for a large earthquake in the Puget Sound, it makes sense to update this statue at the same time. So, we can improve our planning for both earthquakes and for nuclear strikes.”
Completion of unit 4 of the Shin Kori nuclear power plant has been delayed by ten months, Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power (KHNP) has said. The APR1400 reactor is now expected to start up in September 2018. World-nuclear-news.org
Workers at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan have unearthed what appeared to be an unexploded wartime bomb. Newsweek.com
Donald Trump, the current U.S. President, has been trying to exert pressure on China to curb North Korean nuclear weapons development. China is the main trading partner for N.K. and, since N.K. and China share a border, China definitely has a major stake in developments on the Korean peninsula. China has asked the North Koreans to suspend their missile and nuclear warhead program to little effect. While China has been cooperating on the new N.K. sanctions, Chinese companies are still trading in sensitive technologies with N.K. Shutting off the flow of technology to the N.K. weapons program would be a reasonable move for China if they really wanted to stop N.K. from building nuclear tipped ICBMs with which to threaten the world. However, there are some critics of the Chinese government who say that China has its own reasons for letting N.K. continue on its course of weapons development and belligerent threats.
Some analysts believe that N.K. will attack our military bases in Hawaii with nuclear warheads. Other possible targets would be U.S. military bases Japan and Okinawa. The Pacific Northwest has a concentration of military bases in the Greater Seattle area of Washington State including the only Trident submarine base in the Pacific Ocean. This would be a tempting target for N.K. ICBMs. Another important target on the U.S. West Coast would be the Naval and Marine bases around San Diego in California where almost a quarter of our fleet is stationed. With a few missiles, N.K. could seriously cripple our Pacific Ocean military operations.
It would not benefit N.K. to launch such an attack because we would counter attack and remove the current regime. There would be major destruction in N.K. In a poor country, the destruction of major infrastructure in and around major cities would be devastating and civil society would collapse. No matter how fast and overwhelming our counter attack, N.K. artillery would destroy large areas of Seoul, the South Korean capital just south of the border and kill millions of people. Civil order in South Korea would break down and they would need our help to restore order and prevent the death of millions more.
Some military analysts say that the main beneficiary of a conflict between N.K. and the U.S. would be China. Their major rival for military dominance of South East Asian seas would be severely weakened. The U.S. and China have been arguing about the attempt of China to control the South China Sea and its resources and a U.S. – N.K. conflict might give them more latitude in their operations in the South China Sea.
On the other hand, millions of starving and ill North Koreans would pour across the N.K.-Chinese border and there is little that China could do to prevent it. This would throw that part of China into chaos. There is also the possibility that there would be radioactive fallout over North East China if nukes were deployed on the Korean Peninsula The humanitarian crisis would overload the infrastructure and civil order would disappear in that area.
While some analysts brush off these concerns by saying that China could easily handle the refugees and the fallout, I doubt that is something the Chinese government would like to put to the test. It does not appear to me that if N.K. nuked U.S. targets, it would turn out to be a very positive development for China.
China is walking a tightrope on the Korean Peninsula. It is useful to have a weak client state in the North as a buffer against a strong South Korea and an irritant to distract the U.S. from Chinese activities. If the North attacked the U.S. and the U.S. helped S.K. defeat the North, then China would face the prospect of a unified Korea that would put U.S. troops right across the Chinese border. The Chinese are playing a dangerous balancing game and the states are very high for the whole world.
Black circle marks that location of North Korean missile base:
Donald Trump, the current U.S. President, has been trying to exert pressure on China to curb North Korean nuclear weapons development. China is the main trading partner for N.K. and, since N.K. and China share a border, China definitely has a major stake in developments on the Korean peninsula. China has asked the North Koreans to suspend their missile and nuclear warhead program to little effect. While China has been cooperating on the new N.K. sanctions, Chinese companies are still trading in sensitive technologies with N.K. Shutting off the flow of technology to the N.K. weapons program would be a reasonable move for China if they really wanted to stop N.K. from building nuclear tipped ICBMs with which to threaten the world. However, there are some critics of the Chinese government who say that China has its own reasons for letting N.K. continue on its course of weapons development and belligerent threats.
Some analysts believe that N.K. will attack our military bases in Hawaii with nuclear warheads. Other possible targets would be U.S. military bases Japan and Okinawa. The Pacific Northwest has a concentration of military bases in the Greater Seattle area of Washington State including the only Trident submarine base in the Pacific Ocean. This would be a tempting target for N.K. ICBMs. Another important target on the U.S. West Coast would be the Naval and Marine bases around San Diego in California where almost a quarter of our fleet is stationed. With a few missiles, N.K. could seriously cripple our Pacific Ocean military operations.
It would not benefit N.K. to launch such an attack because we would counter attack and remove the current regime. There would be major destruction in N.K. In a poor country, the destruction of major infrastructure in and around major cities would be devastating and civil society would collapse. No matter how fast and overwhelming our counter attack, N.K. artillery would destroy large areas of Seoul, the South Korean capital just south of the border and kill millions of people. Civil order in South Korea would break down and they would need our help to restore order and prevent the death of millions more.
Some military analysts say that the main beneficiary of a conflict between N.K. and the U.S. would be China. Their major rival for military dominance of South East Asian seas would be severely weakened. The U.S. and China have been arguing about the attempt of China to control the South China Sea and its resources and a U.S. – N.K. conflict might give them more latitude in their operations in the South China Sea.
On the other hand, millions of starving and ill North Koreans would pour across the N.K.-Chinese border and there is little that China could do to prevent it. This would throw that part of China into chaos. There is also the possibility that there would be radioactive fallout over North East China if nukes were deployed on the Korean Peninsula The humanitarian crisis would overload the infrastructure and civil order would disappear in that area.
While some analysts brush off these concerns by saying that China could easily handle the refugees and the fallout, I doubt that is something the Chinese government would like to put to the test. It does not appear to me that if N.K. nuked U.S. targets, it would turn out to be a very positive development for China.
China is walking a tightrope on the Korean Peninsula. It is useful to have a weak client state in the North as a buffer against a strong South Korea and an irritant to distract the U.S. from Chinese activities. If the North attacked the U.S. and the U.S. helped S.K. defeat the North, then China would face the prospect of a unified Korea that would put U.S. troops right across the Chinese border. The Chinese are playing a dangerous balancing game and the states are very high for the whole world.
Black circle marks that location of North Korean missile base:
