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.
While other elements have been used in nuclear reactors to generate energy, the primary fuel for nuclear power reactors is uranium. It is a silvery-white metal. Uranium is a chemical element that is symbolized by the letter “U.” Uranium has ninety two protons in its nucleus giving it an atomic number of 92. Uranium is the highest element on the periodic table that is naturally produced. All transuranics with higher atomic numbers are produced by man.
Uranium is present in the crust of Earth in a ratio of from two to four parts per million. Uranium has six isotopes, all of which are radioactive and unstable. The half lives of the isotopes vary from seventy years to four and a half billion years. The most common isotope of uranium is U-238 with ninety two protons and one hundred forty six neutrons. Over ninety nine percent of the uranium on Earth is U-238. The next isotope in abundance is U-235 with ninety two protons and one hundred forty three neutrons. It amounts to about seven tenths of one percent of the uranium on Earth.
U-235 is the only naturally occurring fissile element that can sustain a nuclear fission reaction when sufficiently concentrated. Uranium is mined and refined to produce a mixture with a few percent U-235 to make the fuel for most nuclear power reactors. Uranium can combine with many different elements in many compounds and is found in deposits all over the world.
The dominant compound of uranium in many deposits is the crystalline mineral called uraninite which is a mixture of UO2 and U3O8. Up to this point it was believed that uranium deposits were created by natural chemical processes where uranium in groundwater underwent reduction by elements such as sulfur. It had been suggested that some uranium deposits may have been laid down by biological processes but this was seen as a rare exception to the inorganic origin of most deposits.
Professor Thomas Borch and Dr Amrita Bhattacharyya of Colorado State University have proposed an alternate theory for the origin of many uranium deposits. They recently published a report of their research in the journal Nature Communications. The two scientists were investigating uranium deposits in Wyoming where they drilled six hundred and fifty foot cores in the deposits. Bosch thought that the deposits might have a biological origin so he used analysis techniques that were only developed recently.
It turned out that about ninety percent of the uranium in the Wyoming deposits was combined with either organic material or carbonates and were not the crystalline form. They concluded that bacteria had created the deposits. Instead of using atmospheric oxygen to drive chemical reactions, the bacteria that created the deposits derived energy from reduction of uranium oxidation states.
The findings of the two researchers overturn decades of accepted theory about the origin of uranium deposits. This will have an effect on mining because mining licenses often include a requirement that that mining site be returned to its original state after the mine is closed. It turns out that the original state of many deposits may not be what it was assumed to be.
Non-crystalline uranium in deposits can be more easily converted to a water-soluble form than the crystalline form. This means that it is easy for uranium from bacterial deposits to enter groundwater and migrate through the Earth to threaten drinking water or the environment.
Uraninite crystal from Maine:
In 1982, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act was passed by the U.S. Congress. This bill made the U.S. government responsible for the permanent disposal of spent nuclear fuel being generated by commercial nuclear power reactors operating in the U.S. The federal government was supposed to create a permanent geological repository for the spent nuclear fuel by 1998. In 1987, the Act was amended to mandate the creation of a repository in an abandoned salt mine under Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The repository was designed to take as much as seventy thousand tons of spent nuclear fuel. The Federal government began collecting a fee from all the nuclear power plants in the country to help pay for the construction and operation of the repository.
The U.S. Department of Energy carried out studies and preliminary work on the creation of the Yucca mountain repository and, in 2008, applied for a license to begin construction. After the Presidential election, national and local political rejection led to the cancellation of the Yucca Mountain repository project in 2009 and the Presidential appointment of a panel to explore alternatives. It was estimated by the panel that the earliest a new repository could be sited and built would be 2050. Some of the nuclear plant operators successfully sued to get money back that they had paid into the fund that had swollen to thirty five billion dollars by the time the project was cancelled.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) stopped work on the Yucca Mountain construction license in 2011. The U.S. Court of Appeals ordered the NRC to resume work on the license in 2013. The NRC complied and, in 2015, they published the final volumes of the reports required for the license. The NRC published an Environmental Impact Statement for the Yucca Mountain repository in 2016. The final adjudication hearing for a decision on the license was suspended when the project was cancelled in 2009 and it remains suspended.
The U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) was recently asked by the Committee On Energy And Commerce to review the steps that would be necessary to restart the Yucca Mountain repository licensing process. After reviewing documents and interviewing stakeholders, the GAO published a report titled Commercial nuclear waste: Resuming licensing of the Yucca Mountain repository would require rebuilding capacity at DOE and NRC, among other key steps. The GAO report concluded that there were four key steps that needed to be taken in order to restart and finish the licensing process.
First, the NRC must be directed to resume the licensing process. The timeline for the completion of the licensing process must be decided as well as whether any relevant regulations need to be changed. Following decisions on these issues and others, the NRC, DoE and other stakeholders will be able to specify the costs involved in finishing the process and obtain the necessary funding.
Second, the NRC, DoE and other stakeholders will have to rebuild their capabilities to carry out the needed tasks because they lost some of the necessary capabilities following the cancellation of the project. They will need to hire legal, scientific and other experts. The NRC and DoE will need to update their documentation for the licensing process. This will include filling out a new license application and developing a new Environmental Impact Statement.
Third, the NRC and its Atomic Safety and Licensing Boards will have to issue orders for the resumption of the adjudication process for the license application. This will require that public hearings on safety and other issues concerning the repository.
Fourth, when the adjudication has been completed, the NRC will have to review all of the information relevant to the construction of the repository and make a final decision about whether or not to issue a construction license.
The GAO report also identified some legal issues that could affect the restart and finish of the licensing process. The report stated that “At present, there are at least two unresolved legal issues that would need to be addressed and that could affect the timeline for completing the licensing process.” The DoE may have to obtain land and water rights prior to construction of the repository. There is also a legal challenge with respect to NRC changes to safety regulations that could extend the timeline.
The GAO provided a draft of its report to both the NRC and the DoE for their comments. The NRC generally agreed with the conclusions of the report. The DoE has not yet replied whether or not it agrees with the GAO report.
North Entrance of Yucca Mountain salt mine:
Part Two of Two Parts (Please read Part One first)
In the first part of this post, I went over the history of the development of antiballistic missiles systems in the U.S. Today I am going to go into technical details about the small antiballistic missile system that is currently in place.
The U.S. has a small missile defense system that it started deploying in 2004. It consists of an array of sensors and thirty six interceptor missiles. This ground-based midcourse defense system (GMD) was developed to defend the U.S. against attacks by small nations such as North Korea or Iran. It would not be able to deal with a massive attack by the sophisticated nuclear arsenals of China or Russia.
If N.K. did launch an ICBM at the U.S., the launch would be detected by satellites, radar stations in Japan and U.S. Navy ships in the Pacific. Information about the launch would be relayed to control centers in Alaska and California. A high resolution sea-based radar system would track the enemy missile in flight. When the missile exits the Earth’s atmosphere, it enters what is referred to as the midcourse. After it enters the midcourse, the missile breaks apart and creates a cloud consisting of the warhead, the last booster stage of the rocket, debris, and decoys designed to confuse our radar systems.
Meanwhile, in the U.S., the personnel at the control centers in Alaska and Colorado are tracking the missile. They plot the missile trajectory and select an interception course for the GMD. An order to fire the interceptor is sent to the Air Force Base in Greely, Alaska or Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, depending on the target of the enemy missile. Between the two sites, there are thirty six interceptors that consist of a “kill vehicle” on a three stage rocket.
After launch, as the interceptor leaves the atmosphere and enters the midcourse, the kill vehicle separates from the three stage rocket. The kill vehicle uses onboard infrared sensors to track the warhead of the enemy missile. The kill vehicle has small thrusters that allow it to maneuver into the path of the warhead. The collision of the kill vehicle and the warhead should destroy both without causing a nuclear explosion.
Since 1999, there have been seventeen tests of the GMD. However, in all of these tests, details about the incoming missile were known in advance. The system failed at least eight of those test which amounts to about a fifty percent success record.
In 2016, the Government Accounting Office (GAO) which reviews Congressional budgets issued a report that was skeptical of the GMD. The report said that the GMD “has not demonstrated through flight testing that it can defend the U.S. homeland against the current missile defense threat.”
Yesterday, the U.S. military ran a first real-world test of the GMD. A missile was launched from the Marshall Islands in the Pacific towards the U.S. The GMD fired an interceptor missile that destroyed the first missile.
GMD Kill Vehicle:
