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.
On July 7th, one hundred and twenty two nations signed the first United Nations treaty banning all nuclear weapons. The treaty negotiations were led by Austria, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, and New Zealand. Only the Netherlands voted against the treaty and Singapore abstained. The U.S., Russia, Britain, China, France, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel are the countries which currently have nuclear weapons and they did not participate in the negotiations. Most members of NATO were also not involved in the negotiations. Although Japan is the only country to suffer nuclear attack, it also boycotted the treaty talks.
The President of the U.N. conference on the ban said “It’s been seven decades since the world knew the power destruction of nuclear weapons. This agreement is a very clear statement that the international community wants to move to a completely different security paradigm that does not include nuclear weapons.”
The ten-page treaty “prohibits signatories from developing, testing, manufacturing, possessing, or threatening to use nuclear weapons.” Signatories are also prohibited from giving nuclear weapons to other signatories. Now that the treaty has been approved by the U.N., it will be open for parties to sign after September 20th. At least fifty nations will have to ratify the treaty in order for it to take effect.
While the fact that one hundred and twenty two nations are agreed that all nuclear weapons should be banned, the opposition of nuclear armed nations and other powerful countries is a serious problem for implementation of the treaty. A joint statement by the U.N. ambassadors from the U.S, Britain and France made it clear that their nations had no interest in being a part of the treaty. They said that the treaty “clearly disregards the realities of the international security environment.” A major criticism of the treaty by the three ambassadors is the fact that it fails to address the problem of North Korea and its nuclear weapons program.
Instead of participating in the new treaty, the U.S., Britain and France want to strengthen the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) which discourages countries other than the original five nuclear power of U.S., Britain, France, China and Russia from embarking on their own nuclear weapons programs. In return for the support of the international community for the NPT, the five original nuclear powers say that they will continue to work for nuclear disarmament and provide nuclear technologies to other countries for the production of electricity.
Critics of the NPT say that the movement towards nuclear disarmament has been too slow. The new treaty is an explicit call for the banning of all nuclear weapons on Earth. It is hoped that it will put pressure on nuclear nations to move forward with disarmament at a faster pace. The very existence of the treaty changes the legal landscape. The director of a U.K. organization that opposes nuclear weapons said that the treaty “stops states with nuclear weapons from being able to hide behind the idea that they are not illegal.”
China rejects Trump’s calls for it to do more to rein in its neighbour, saying the ‘China responsibility theory’ must stop theguardian.com
Although Rocky Flats was dismantled and cleaned up more than a decade ago, the controversy surrounding the former nuclear weapons facility has not gone away. Denver.cbslocal.com
It is important to be able to monitor the level of uranium in bodies of water. Unfortunately, current methods of testing water for uranium are expensive and complicated.
Gary C. Tepper, the chair of Virginia Commonwealth University’s Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering, and a graduate student have invented and patented a new device that will make it easier, faster and cheaper to monitor the amount of uranium in water. The new device is more sensitive than previous monitoring equipment and is able to detect lower levels of uranium pollution.
Uranium is common in many different minerals. It can enter surface and ground water in many different ways. These include uranium mining, the production of nuclear weapons, leakage from nuclear fuel storage canisters, the illegal dumping of nuclear waste and agriculture. Fertilizer runoff can result in chemical reactions that release uranium from minerals in the ground.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Safe Drinking Water Act provides the standards for what is considered a safe level of uranium in drinking water. The problem is that testing is expensive and takes time which lowers the actual monitoring and compliance with the standards from the EPA. Tepper says that “Right now, you test for uranium by taking water a single sample [of water] and sending it out to a lab. This is impractical. You need a device that takes measurements in real time. It should also be easily used across various regions of the water source because concentrations vary from place to place.”
The new device that Tepper and his graduate student invented uses a nanoporous material that collects and concentrates particles of uranium in water and then employs an ultraviolet light which makes the collected particles visible. When uranium compounds are dissolved in water, they are fluorescent. Because of this effect, ultraviolet light can be used to create a measurable signal in the form of visible light. Tepper says “But water quenches that reaction and makes it difficult to detect and quantify uranium at very low concentrations.”
The device that Tepper invented uses tiny beads of silica get that are commonly used as a desiccant. Tepper explains that “The uranium compounds attach to silica gel and accumulate inside the small pores. This enhances the signal and minimizes the quenching effect of water, so now if uranium is present, it lights up and can been seen in the visible spectrum.”
Combining the silica gel and an ultraviolet light source results in a cheap portable hand-held device that can reliably read low concentrations of waterborne uranium. An early version of the device required an hour to read uranium concentration after being dipped in water. An improved model added a pump to move the water through the device. This resulted in the ability to read uranium concentration is a matter of seconds.
Tepper and his graduate student have provisional U.S. and international patents for their device. They are working with Virginia Commonwealth University’s Innovations Gateway to bring their device to market.
