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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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.
South Korea is undergoing a major change in energy generation policy. The new President is reducing plans for nuclear energy and the construction of two new reactors has been temporarily halted while decisions are made with respect to their ultimate fate. Critics of the rejection of nuclear power in South Korea claim that turning to new fossil fuel plants and renewable energy installations like wind and solar will lead to a sharp increase in the price of electricity.
In response to these criticisms, a member of the Minjoo Party cites a report titled “Examples of Selecting Generation Prices in Major Countries” from the National Assembly Budget Office on July 20. The report includes power generation costs for various sources of power that were provided by the U.S. US Energy Information Administration and the U.K. Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.
The report states that the projected cost in 2022 for a megawatt of electricity generated by new nuclear power plants (including tax deductions) would be $99.10. The same megawatt from a coal fired power plant equipped with carbon capture technology would be $123.20. A megawatt of solar energy would cost $66.80 and a land-based wind farm would generate a megawatt for $52.20. A combined cycle power plant which integrates a gas turbine and a steam turbine to capture more of the heat produced by the consumption of natural gas than a traditional single cycle power plant would provide a megawatt for $82.40.
The U.K. Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy estimated charges for one megawatt of electricity from various sources for 2025. One megawatt from a nuclear power plant would cost $123.45. One megawatt from a coal power plant would cost $170.23. Large-scale solar farms will generate a megawatt for $81.87. Onshore wind farms will charge per megawatt $79.26. Combined cycle power generation with natural gas would cost $106.56.
In these estimates of the future cost of electricity generation, both the U.S. and the U.K. used the “levelized cost of energy” method for projecting costs. This method is based on dividing the total cost over the lifetime of a power plant by the total amount of electricity generated. The total cost includes design, construction, operation and decommissioning.
The Korean Nuclear Society, the Korean nuclear industry and the opposition parties in the Korean parliament have repeatedly charged that if nuclear power is phased out in Korea, the price of electricity will rise by eighteen percent at the least up to eighty percent at the most. However, the projections from the U.S. and the U.K. show that it is more likely that instead of rising, the cost of electricity in South Korea should fall after nuclear energy and coal are phased out.
The new Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy in South Korea said at his confirmation hearing, “The trends over the past two or three decades show that the unit cost of nuclear power continues to rise when the safety and environmental costs of nuclear power are included, while the technological level of new and renewable energy improves every day. As a consequence, it’s an unshakeable fact that the cost of nuclear power is rising and the cost of new and renewable energy is falling, in terms of the levelized cost of energy.”
With respect to the question of whether the U.S. and U.K. estimates can be applied to power generation in South Korea, a professor at the department of economics and trade at Kyungpook National University in South Korea said, “The unit-cost of nuclear power continues to rise around the world, following the inclusion of social costs, including the cost of decommissioning nuclear reactors. Even if the cost of electricity increases because of a step-by-step nuclear phase-out, it’s estimated to be 6,000 won [about US$5] at the most. As new and renewable energy replaces nuclear power, we could reach a point in the future when domestic energy costs are actually lower than they are now.”
Flag of the Republic of Korea (South Korea):
Part Two of Two Parts (Pease read Part One first)
The Chinese also have been working on fusion research for a decade. They recently announced a successful confinement test in the HT-7 tokamak in Hefei, China. They were assisted in the tests by researchers from the Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering at the University of Illinois in Urban-Champaign. A major innovation was to circulate liquid lithium along the inside of the plasma confinement chamber. Energy confinement was improved by ten percent. This can reduce the diameter of the confinement chamber by one third. The cost of construction may be reduced as much as a factor of ten. This definitely puts the Chinese in the lead for production of commercial fusion reactors. The Chinese intend to be a major supplier of advanced energy generation systems. They have been focusing on nuclear fission power reactors but would be quite happy to be an international supplier of nuclear fusion reactors too.
While these three research programs are utilizing designs that have been refined for decades, there are other approaches to nuclear fusion that are being researched. In the United States, funding for nuclear fusion research has been relatively small compared to these other national and international programs. And, existing nuclear fusion research funding is under threat. An advisory panel to the U.S. Department of Energy has recently subjected that one of three U.S. fusion projects be mothballed and that the U.S. expand its participation in the ITER project. Fortunately, the private section is picking up the slack in fusion research in the U.S.
The U.S. Navy has invested twelve million dollars in the development of what is called the Polywell fusion reactor at Eneryg/Matter Conversion Corporation, Inc. (EMC2) since 1999. The Polywell reactor is based on electron and gas injection into a confinement chamber. While EMC2 was working for the Navy, its research was secret. Now the Navy has ended its support and EMC2 is seeking thirty million dollars to fund the next stage of its research. It is estimated that a Polywell nuclear fusion reactor that was about five feet in diameter should be able to produce excess energy.
Lockheed Martin, the big defense contractor, is working on their own fusion reactor design. Their program was announced in 2013. The Lockheed Martin Compact Fusion Reactor is a design that is referred to as a high-beta fusion reactor where the ration of plasma pressure to magnetic pressure is extremely high when compared to a tokomak design. This design is supposed to result a much cheaper and smaller fusion reactor than many other designs. They were hoping to have a prototype built by 2019.
Helion Energy is a firm in Redmond, WA with a unique approach to fusion power. Their reactor is shaped like two traffic cones with their small ends embedded in a grapefruit. Magnetic fields function like pistons to drive gas in the ignition chamber to fuse. The rebound of the magnetic fields generates electricity. This reactor does not require a steam turbine to convert heat to electricity which means that the reactors will be small and cheap to build. They expect to have a prototype in a few years.
There are other interesting fusion research projects both in the U.S. and abroad but this post covers some of the main projects. Several companies intend to have a small, safe and relatively inexpensive commercial fusion power reactor on the market within ten years. With many projects based on many different designs, the odds of success are high. So perhaps the old joke about forty years until commercial fusion can finally be laid to rest.
Part One of Two Parts
I have blogged about nuclear fusion research in the past. The basic principle is the same as the process that keeps the fires in the sun burning. Light nuclei such as hydrogen or helium are forced to combine to form heavier nuclei, releases a great deal of energy. In order to accomplish this, the light nuclei need to be subjected to enormous heat and pressure. This has proven to be very difficult to do in practice. The payoff would be a source of energy that would generate no pollution, create little if any dangerous waste, be fueled by elements that are abundant and accessible, and be cheaper to build and operate than nuclear fission reactors.
Fusion power research has been going on since the 1940s but nuclear fusion has never generated any electricity for commercial purposes. There is an old joke that says useful nuclear fusion is always forty years away. Billions of dollars from all over the world are currently flowing into different fusion reactor research project.
The British have been working on nuclear fusion as part of the Joint European Tokomak project at Culham Centre for Fusion Energy in Oxfordshire, U.K. since 1984. They have been making steady progress and have racked up a number of firsts with respect to temperature, pressure and creating a self-sustaining reaction. The JET is the biggest operational nuclear fusion test reactor in the world. It is based on using a electrical current to confine a superhot plasma to a donut shape. The future of the JET is uncertain since the U.K. voted to leave the European Union. When they formally leave in 2018, their participation in the JET program as part of their membership in the E.U. will also end.
Germany began the construction of their own fusion Wendelstein 7-X stellarator (W7-X) research reactor in 2008 at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Greifswald. The German reactor is based on what is called a stellerator where the plasma is confined by a complex system of magnetic coils. In early 2016, construction was completed and the first successful test was conducted. The temperature and duration of plasma confinement will be slowly increased until the confinement can be maintained for thirty minutes. The researchers hope to be able to reach their goal by 2025. The W7-X is not designed to actually produce excess energy.
The biggest fusion research project in the world is the ITER reactor being built in France by an international consortium in Cadarache, France, The ITER is a tokomak which is a reactor design that looks like a donut. The huge reactor is being built just to test the confinement of plasma and momentary return of energy. The researchers intend to generate five hundred megawatts of energy with the consumption of fifty megawatts for a period of twenty minutes. If successful, it could serve as a stepping stone to a commercial reactor. Billions of dollars have been spent on the project to date. Construction started in 2013 and it is estimated that it will be completed by 2021. Initial test runs will begin in 2025 and full scale operational tests are scheduled for 2035. There have been serious problems with the management of the project, partly due to all the different nations involved.
Please read Part Two
