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.
Transatomic Power Corporation is one of the new companies that is pushing a different approach to nuclear power reactors than the conventional light water reactors (LWR). The company was founded in 2011 by two MIT students from the MIT Nuclear Science & Engineering department.
In a Transatomic reactor, uranium is dissolved in a liquid consisting lithium fluoride and uranium fluoride. Since the fuel is in liquid form, reaction byproducts can be continuously removed so periodic refueling is not necessary. It will operate at low pressure and produces less waste than a LWR. If there is a loss of power and the cooling system fails, when the fuel mix gets too hot, it will melt a plug and pour into a large chamber where it will cool off naturally.
The company published a technical white paper in 2014 in which they made bold claims for the capabilities of their new design. They said that their reactor could produce seventy-five times as much electricity from a ton of mined uranium as an LWR. They also said that they could burn spent nuclear fuel from conventional LWRs reducing stockpiles of nuclear waste. They raised millions of dollars, got a lot of media attention and recruited some top technical people.
In 2015, Kord Smith, a former a nuclear science and engineering professor at MIT who was an expert in the physics of nuclear reactors decided to check the impressive claims being made by Transatomic. MIT was closely connected to the company and, if the company was making false claims, it would hurt the reputation of the MIT Nuclear Science & Engineering department.
Smith recruited two other MIT professors to join him in an informal review of the Transatomic design. Smith and his colleagues found flaws in the white paper and concluded that the claims violated principles of basic physics. When he asked Transatomic to conducts some tests, the results confirmed that some of their claims were invalid.
As a result of the work of Smith and his colleagues, in 2016, a new technical paper was published by Transatomic that reduced the “seventy-five times” figure to just twice the energy a LWR could produce from a ton of mined uranium and also admitted that the Transatomic reactor design could not burn spent nuclear fuel from conventional reactors. Their reactor design was incapable of sustaining a fission reaction with spent nuclear fuel that would make it practical for producing electricity. Tests from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory did confirm that the Transatomic reactor design would produce about half the waste of an LWR.
Transatomic had originally announced that it would build a demonstration reactor by 2020 but now they are saying that a prototype won’t be ready until 2021. The licensing and testing required by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the construction of a new reactor design is about ten years so maybe Transatomic means that they will be ready to begin the NRC process by 2021 because they certainly won’t be able to construct and turn on a new reactor in the next four years.
Transatomic says that the founders were not deliberately trying to fool anyone. They say that they were just inexperienced and did not circulate their reactor design for peer review as they should have before making the claims they did in the 2014 paper. That may be true but it is difficult to believe that they didn’t understand the basic physics that they were violating. That does not speak well for the instruction they received at the MIT Nuclear Science & Engineering department.
Accidents at nuclear power plants can release massive amounts of radioactive materials that are unimpeded by national borders as they spread with the wind. This means that nations have a responsibility that extends beyond their borders to neighboring nations to manage nuclear power plants responsibly. When a nuclear power plant might break down and pose a threat to other nations, those other nations have a right to exert pressure to have that power plant shut down. There is a debate over just such a possibility raging in eastern Europe right now with respect to a power plant that is still under construction.
Construction of a Russian nuclear reactor in the nation of Belarus is currently underway. The construction site is at Astravets which is a hundred miles from the Belarus capital of Minsk but only twenty miles from the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius. The new reactor will be operated by a joint venture between Russia and Belarus.
Lithuanian critics of the new power reactor say that Russia is intent on increasing its influence in the European Union energy market for political reasons and statements from Russian media support that claim. Russia has been guilty of threatening to cut off fuel supplies to European nations during political disputes in the past.
The critics have also expressed concern that Belarus is being irresponsible and failing to use proper procedures in the construction of the reactor. There have been six serious accidents during the construction of the reactor and Belarus authorities only admitted that these accidents occurred after the accidents were reported in the independent media. A huge reactor pressure vessel was dropped six feet but the Russian construction company claimed that there was no sign of damage to the vessel. Two people also died in other accidents.
When the Chernobyl nuclear accident occurred in nearby Ukraine in April of 1986, twenty percent of Belarus was eventually contaminated with radioactive fallout from the accident. The people in the area were not warned about the accident for several days while they continued their regular routines and experienced more radiation exposure than was necessary. People in this part of eastern Europe are understandably worried about nuclear reactors, especially when there are so many unreported accidents in their construction. If there was a problem at the new Belarus reactor, would the people of Lithuania be told immediately or would the authorities try to hide it?
Lithuanian authorities claim that the Belarus authorities were not concerned about existing pollution which was quite high near the reactor site on the Lithuanian side of the border. Had this pollution been taken into account, the site would have been less acceptable and may have been rejected by the Belarusian planners. The Lithuanians requested the creation of an independent construction commission with representatives from both Belarus and Lithuania but Belarus rejected the suggestion.
The Espoo Convention which Belarus signed requires that countries supply neighboring countries with trans-boundary environmental impact statements for major projects translated into neighbor’s language. Belarus sent Lithuania an EIS which was translated with Google translation software into Lithuanian. It was incomprehensible.
Rolandas Kačinskas, Political Director of the Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, “What we want is for [Belarus] to stop the construction of the reactor,” said Kačinskas. “It’s not that we are against nuclear power, we are against the irresponsible use of it. At the least we want more access and more accountability. We want assurances that if there are problems we will be the first to know. Our position is clear: Since Belarus has not fulfilled major international commitments – has not accomplished IAEA’s Site and External Events Design Review Service (SEED); has not undertaken comprehensive risk and safety assessment tests; has not established an international commission of experts for an in-depth analysis of Astravets case; and therefore it poses extreme safety threat for the whole region and the European Union – Lithuania demands that Belarus suspends the construction works at the Astravets site.”
Astravets reactor construction site:
The French Nuclear Society (SFEN) says the country needs to maintain its nuclear power generation capacity to raise the share of electricity from renewable sources without increasing the cost of electricity production. In a white paper it suggests ways in which this can be achieved. world-nuclear-news.org
I have mentioned the threat of terrorists smuggling small nuclear bombs into the United States in previous posts. As a matter of fact, my 2012 novel, Rare Earths, featured just such activity as part of the plot. A decade ago, a software company that I worked for bid on a project to improve inspection and tracking of containers coming into U.S. ports. At that time, only about three percent of containers were closely inspected for possible radioactive materials. Today, the situation has improved but there is still a great deal of concern.
In 1996, David Kay of the International Atomic Energy Agency talked about the smuggling of nuclear devices on PBS’s Frontline. “I’ve often said, my preferred method for delivering a nuclear device is, I would hide it in a bale of marijuana, contract it out to the drug lords and move it,” Kay said. “Marijuana is a good shielder actually for radiation. The drug lords have a superb record for delivery. They’re not Fed Ex, but they’re awfully close to it. And contract it out and get it across the border.”
In 2001, Jack Ruina from MIT wrote about such smuggling in the Washington Post. “A potential adversary does not have to rely on ballistic missiles to deliver a warhead. A small nation could easily resort to using planes, ships, cruise missiles or, as has been facetiously suggested, to hiding a warhead in a bale of marijuana, the shipment of which defies most detection.”
In 2007, Representative Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) addressed nuclear smuggling on the floor of the House of Representatives with respect to implementing recommendations from the 9/11 commission. “The most important issue facing the United States, and certainly the most important part of this bill, deals with preventing a nuclear attack on American cities. Since a nuclear bomb is about the size of a person, it could be smuggled into the United States inside a bale of marijuana.” He repeated these ideas in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2015 and 2017.
In a Congressional hearing in 2014, the director of George Washington University’s Homeland Security Policy Institute, Frank Ciluffo, said, “If you want to smuggle in a tactical nuclear weapon, just wrap it in a bale of marijuana. Because we’re not doing all that well in terms of some of our drug enforcement.”
And, finally, just this week, Representative Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) said “I can suggest to you that there are national security implications here for a porous border. We sometimes used to make the point that if someone wanted to smuggle in a dangerous weapon — even a nuclear weapon — into America, how would they do it? And the suggestion was made, ‘Well, we’ll simply hide it in a bale of marijuana.’ ”
While previous statements about smuggling a nuclear device in a bale of marijuana resulted in little response from the media and the public, Frank’s comment received ridicule in the form of tweets from citizens. Of the many ways that a nuclear device could be smuggled into the U.S., it is interesting that the marijuana reference keeps popping up. I think that it is a matter of a natural tendency to combine “bad things” to make a greater impact for a public statement. Linking nuclear weapons, terrorism, drugs, and smuggling things across U.S. borders really ramps up the paranoia even if that particular scenario is actually not very probable.
A Coast Guard Cutter Edisto crewmember offloads a bale of marijuana in San Diego, Oct. 18, 2010. U.S. Coast Guard photo by PA2 Jetta H. Disco:
