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.
I have blogged several times about the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. This plant takes waste from the U.S. nuclear weapons programs and it was temporarily shut down a few years ago by a serious accident involving waste shipped from the Los Alamos National Laboratories. The WIPP does not take liquid waste and the LANL adds an absorbent material to barrels of liquid waste to solidify the liquid. The accident was caused by a change to the absorbent material from an inorganic clay-based material to an organic material based on wheat. A chemical reaction between the waste materials in the barrel and the new absorbent generated hydrogen gas which built up and ultimately ruptured the barrel. Radioactive material escaped and got out into the environment because the air filtration system malfunctioned. There are still about a hundred barrels of the problematic waste stored at the WIPP.
The LANL was created during World War II to help design nuclear weapons as part of the Manhattan project. It is near Santa Fe, New Mexico. The LANL focused on the design of the first generation of U.S. nuclear bombs while the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Argonne National Laboratory worked on generating uranium and plutonium for bomb construction. During the Cold War, the LANL continued to work on the design of many nuclear weapons. After the end of the Cold War, the LANL changed its focus to civilian projects involving nuclear technology. Today, the LANL “is one of the largest science and technology institutions in the world. It conducts multidisciplinary research in fields such as national security, space exploration, nuclear fusion, renewable energy, medicine, nanotechnology, and supercomputing.” However, it is still hosting large amounts of hazardous nuclear waste left over from weapons development carried out for decades during the Cold War.
The Material Disposal Area G at the LANL covers sixty-three acres. Buried three feet below the ground, there are almost forty pits and two hundred shafts that hold up to ten million cubic feet of nuclear waste. On the surface, there are large white tents that contain drums of waste waiting to be shipped to the WIPP. It was one of these barrels that exploded at the WIPP and shut it down for three years. It has cost over two billion dollars to reopen WIPP. There are still about sixty drums of the waste with the organic absorbent that still have to be disposed of. In the meantime, wildfires are a threat to the barrels storage area.
Prior to the opening of WIPP in 1999, transuranic wastes from weapons production such as soil, gloves, equipment and materials contaminated by plutonium were stored in Area G. Although decades of work and billions of dollars on the cleanup of over two thousand contaminated areas at LANL including Area G, only about half of the work has been accomplished. Most of the sites have been investigated and ninety percent of the four thousand barrels of waste have been removed from the LANL. However, most of the buried waste in Area G will probably be left there. LANL staff say that the federal and state government do not require that the waste be dug up and disposed of elsewhere.
I have written extensively about the terrible contamination and slow cleanup of the nuclear weapons waste at Hanford. Many of the same problems plague the LANL site. These sites must be cleaned up by the federal government as soon as possible before other accidents spread radioactively contaminated materials.
Toshiba Corp said today it will establish its four in-house companies as wholly-owned subsidiaries and aim to “to maximise the value of each business”. As of 1 October, it will split off its Energy Systems & Solutions Company, and the Nuclear Energy Systems & Solutions Division, and transfer them to a newly established company. World-nuclear-news.org
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) this month launched a project to enhance regulatory frameworks for nuclear security in African countries. World-nuclear-news.org
The Labour party has said it still backs the UK’s Trident nuclear weapons after Jeremy Corbyn said “all aspects” of defence would be reviewed if he won power. Bbc.com
KIM Jong-un’s controversial nuclear weapons programme has been funded from a business being run out of a gated London home, it’s been reported. Thesun.co.uk
Nuclear energy is emerging as a live issue at the Pennsylvania statehouse in a way not seen since the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in March 1979 — nearly 40 years ago. Thetimes-tribune.com
I have blogged about the destruction that would be caused by a nuclear war before. Since there is currently grave concern that a nuclear conflict could break out between North Korea on one side and South Korea and the United States on the other side, I thought that I would revisit the subject.
Nuclear warheads are rated in terms of kilotons of TNT. The U.S. dropped a twelve kiloton nuclear bomb on Hiroshima at the end of World War II. It is estimated that it killed about one hundred thousand people and totally destroyed the city.
The U.S. currently has about seventeen hundred nuclear warheads deployed on intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine launch ballistic missiles and nuclear bombers. The U.S. has another four thousand nuclear warheads stockpiled. The warheads have yields from three to five hundred kilotons. Russia has nineteen hundred and fifty warheads deployed on intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine launch ballistic missiles and nuclear bombers and four thousand and three hundred stockpiled. These missiles have yields similar to the U.S. nuclear arsenal. France has about three hundred warheads with two hundred and eighty deployed. China has two hundred and seventy warheads with none currently deployed. The U.K. has a hundred and twenty deployed warheads with another ninety-five in reserve. Israel has about eighty warheads with none deployed. Pakistan has from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and thirty warheads with none deployed. India has from one hundred and ten to one hundred and twenty warheads with none deployed. It is estimated that North Korea has about twenty warheads with none deployed.
The detonation of a nuclear bomb results in five different types of destructive impacts. There is an initial blast wave that generates a supersonic wind that rushes out in all directions, destroying everything in its path. People who are not killed by the impact of the blast may be killed or injured by flying debris carried by the wind.
An electromagnetic pulse generated by the detonation can damage or destroy all electronic devices up to hundreds of miles away from ground zero. All electrical power systems and communication devices will be wiped out.
A thermal wave of intense heat up to millions of degrees Fahrenheit will instantly incinerate anything close to the site of the blast. Anyone within a few miles of the blast will suffer severe burns. If there are flammable objects such as buildings and trees in within a few miles of the blast, they will be ignited into ferocious fires. The intense flash of light created by the blast will blind anyone within a few miles.
After the initial effects of the blast, the radioactive material of the bomb, and contaminated dirt, water, smoke, and debris will rain back to the ground as radioactive fallout. This fallout will be spread by winds and flowing surface water far beyond the initial area of the blast. It will pose a threat of cancer and other diseases to anyone who consumes, drinks or inhales any of the radioactive material.
Following a nuclear attack, there will be little in the way of surviving hospitals and emergency assistance. There will be little safe food, water, or medical supplies available. Those who do survive the initial blast will be in danger of exposure, starvation and untreated injuries.
Even worse, it has been estimated if just one hundred nuclear warheads are detonated, it could throw up so much dirt and smoke into the atmosphere that it would alter the climate and cause years of “nuclear winter.” Temperatures would drop worldwide and there would be global crop failures. Billions of people who were not directly endangered by nuclear blasts would starve or die of exposure.
Even without the worst case of a nuclear winter, a nuclear war anywhere in the world would impact the entire world and might ultimately cause the crash of the global economic and social systems that comprise human civilization. In other words, no one will win even a limited nuclear war and billions of people may die.
MVM Paks II has received environmental approval to build two new units at the Paks nuclear power plant in Hungary. The company received an environmental licence from the Baranya County Government Office in late September, but this was challenged by Greenpeace Hungary and Energiaklub. The initial licence was then reviewed by Pest County Government Office, which gave statutory approval of the licence on 18 April. World-nuclear-new.org
Britain’s first new reactor since the 1990s takes shape in Somerset. Ft.com
