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.
The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission is considering whether a 34-year-old nuclear power plant just across the border from Maine should be relicensed for another five years. Bangordailynews.com
A cybersecurity expert says the biggest cyberextortion attack in history is going to be dwarfed by the next big ransomware attack. Sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com
The UAE has a leading role in shaping the future of nuclear power development, industry experts say. Thenatiional.ae
For the past few days, I have been blogging about the tunnel collapse that happened Tuesday at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in south central Washington State near the Plutonium Uranium Extraction Plant (PUREX). As the days pass, more information is being released so I am continuing to blog about the accident.
“The infrastructure built to temporarily store radioactive waste is now more than a half-century old,” said Maia Bellon, director of the state ecology department. The three hundred and sixty foot railway tunnel was built in 1956 and was used between 1956 and 1988 to move spent nuclear fuel from Hanford Reactors to the PUREX so that uranium and plutonium could be extracted for the manufacture of nuclear weapons. It is estimated that seventy thousand tons of spent uranium fuel rods were moved through the two underground tunnels. After the end of the Cold War, the tunnels were used to store the radioactive railway cars that had been used to move the spent fuel. Other equipment and materials that had been contaminated were also stored in the tunnel. The tunnel contains about seven hundred and eighty cubic yards of radioactive waste.
It turns out that although the collapse of the tunnel was discovered on Tuesday, it could have happened up to four days before it was discovered. There are no regularly scheduled inspections of the underground tunnels. The nuclear waste manager for the Washington state Department of Ecology, which helps regulate the Hanford site, said “It’s not acceptable that the hole could have been open for four days.” Washington state officials demanded that the DoE “immediately assess the integrity of the Hanford tunnels.”
The dirt that fell into the tunnel when the ceiling collapsed apparently prevented the release of any of the radioactive material in the tunnel because the Hanford authorities claim that no radiation has been detected around the hole. Fifty four truck loads of dirt were poured into the hole to fill it.
In 2015, the U.S. DoE commissioned a report on the integrity of the tunnels. The report said that the steel, concrete and wood used to construct the tunnels had been weakened by exposure to intense radiation and that the tunnels could be collapsed by earthquakes.
Rick Perry, the new Director of the U.S. Department of Energy, said that filling the hole “was accomplished swiftly and safely to help prevent any further complications. Our next step is to identify and implement longer-term measures to further reduce risks.”
The Yakima Indians were moved off the land where the Hanford Nuclear Reservation is located which had been their reservation by treaty. Although they moved, they were given the right to monitor the Hanford Nuclear Reservation environment. The Yakima Tribe has released a statement that says that they had warned the DoE for several years that the tunnels were unsafe. “No preventative action was taken,” the tribe said in a statement. The tribe also said that the railroad tunnels should be completely cleaned out long before the new 2042 deadline that has been granted to the DoE.
For the past two days I have been posting about the problems at Hanford with respect to the collapse of the soil above a railroad tunnel filled with radioactive railway cars and contaminated equipment. There have been a flurry of stories since the cave-in two days ago and I thought that I would add some additional information to my coverage of the story.
Prior to May of 2016, the U.S. DoE had been under a court imposed deadline to remove the wastes from the “PUREX tunnels” by 2024. In May of 2016, the DoE was granted an extension of the deadline from 2024 to 2042 over the objection of Hearts of America Northwest, Native American Tribes with Treaty Rights impacted by Hanford’s contamination, the Hanford Advisory Board and other concerned organizations and individuals. These opponents fear that the tunnels could be collapsed by an earthquake and expel radioactive contamination into the environment.
On Wednesday, workers began filling the hole by the PUREX. It took about fifty truck loads of soil to fill the hole according to the news story. An average dump truck carries about ten cubic yards of dirt. So fifty truck loads would be about five hundred cubic yards.
The early reports said that the hole was twenty feet by twenty feet and four feet deep. This would represent about sixty cubic yards of dirty. It would take about six average dump truck loads at ten cubic yards to fill such a hole. This does not make sense because the dirt had to go into the tunnel. As you can see from the picture at the bottom of this post, the walls of the tunnel are exposed. The dirt over the ceiling of the tunnel is eight feet deep. A hole four feet deep would not have exposed the sides of the tunnel. The numbers just don’t add up.
A flat car is about four feet high. The tunnel is about twenty feet high and twenty feet wide. A hole in the top of the tunnel twenty feet long all the way across the width of the tunnel would accept the amount of soil covering the tunnel which would spread out over and beside the railroad cars and flow up and down the tunnel past the edge of the tunnel which matches what is shown in the picture.
About one hundred and fifty cubic yards of dirt would have filled the hole shown in the picture but the workers put in over five hundred cubic yards. This means that much of the dirt had to flow into the tunnel beyond the area where the ceiling collapsed which would have displaced air contaminated with radioactive materials into the outer atmosphere.
Official reports keep saying that no radiation was released following the collapse and that no worker was exposed to any radiation. This is difficult to square with the fact that the tunnel and its contents were so radioactive that one hour of exposure would be lethal and it appears that air from the tunnel reached the outside atmosphere. I would think that there would be radiation danger to the workers who were filling the hole at the very least. If the information from official sources about radiation hazards at Hanford is not true, it would not be the first time.
