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 often mentioned in blog posts that nuclear power has serious international political issues. Major countries with nuclear industries such as the U.S., Russia, China, Japan and South Korea are trying to sell nuclear power reactors to other nations. These are such huge projects that they inevitably become involved with the political and economic relationships between the seller and the buyer. The amounts of money involved are in the billions of dollars and are often financed by special loan arrangements of the selling nation. In some cases, the seller offers to build, fuel and operate the new power reactor for the buyer. This would leave the buyer at the mercy of the seller if the seller decided to stop fueling and operating the reactor because of a political or economic dispute.
Russia is currently negotiating to sell two nuclear power reactors to Hungary for about thirteen billion dollars. Rosatom, the Russian-owned nuclear reactor company, would build and operate the reactors at the Paks nuclear power plant on a fifty year contract. For the first decade, Rosatom would be the exclusive supplier of fuel for the Hungarian reactors. Russian banks would supply loans for up to eighty percent of the cost of the project.
The Hungarian government wants to invest in the project. Because Hungary is a member of the European Union and Russia is not, the deal has to be approved by the European Commission which is reviewing the project. The issue before the Commission is whether or not to allow the Hungarian state to provide financial assistance for the purchase. The Commission is expect to approve the deal soon.
The European Union has been trying to reduce its reliance Moscow for energy. Russia has threatened to shutoff flows of oil and gas to EU member nations in the past during political disputes. Russia recently annexed the Crimea from Ukraine and is currently involved in military conflict in eastern Ukraine. Critics of the Hungarian deal point out that it would not be wise to allow EU nations to become dependent on Russian nuclear power reactors given the past and present behavior of Russia.
Ian Armstrong, a senior analyst at the news and analysis firm Global Risk Insights has said that “In instances where Moscow provides significant financial assistance as part of the deal, like in Hungary, [the deals] also serve as a direct purchasing of influence and political favors from EU member states.”
Petr Topychkanov, a fellow in the Carnegie Moscow Center’s nonproliferation program, said that Paks II is a “ticket to the European nuclear market. Success there will help Rosatom to overcome the anti-nuclear lobby in Europe, and to have an upper hand over nuclear competitors in this region.”
Czechoslovakia is also considering the purchase of a nuclear power reactor from Rosatom. They are seeking European Commission approval to skip the usual bidding process for their purchase. Unlike Hungary, Czechoslovakia is not interested in a loan from Russian banks and believes that it can get better interest rates for the project elsewhere. Nonetheless, purchase of Russian nuclear technology will still be another way for Russia to consolidate its hold over the nuclear power reactor market in Eastern Europe.
Rosatom began its current aggressive expansion into the nuclear power reactor market with the appointment of a new CEO in 2005. Rosatom claims that it has over a hundred billion dollars in contracts to supply reactors, fuel and services to forty nine countries in the next ten years. Nuclear industry analysts have questioned these numbers and say that some of the contracts are really just preliminary agreements to explore the possible purchase of Rosatom nuclear power systems.
Jobs, prestige, access to research, climate change goals and the time table for new nuclear plant projects are under threat from Britain’s exit from the European Union, members of Parliament are arguing, although Brexit Secretary of State David Davis has now confirmed that the British government does plan to exit nuclear research and trade group Euratom with its EU departure. nuclearstreet.com
One San Diego County congressman is taking a high-profile stand against the prospect of parking tons of spent nuclear fuel on the Southern California beachfront for decades to come. sandiegouniontribune.com
I have blogged about Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal and nuclear policies before. Pakistan has over a hundred nuclear warheads and the means to deliver them. They are in a tense relationship with their neighbor India which also has over a hundred nuclear warheads and multiple delivery systems.
Pakistan has a big stockpile of weapons grade uranium and is busy building more warheads. In the last ten years, many of the warheads constructed were low-yield tactical warheads. While Pakistan has tightly controlled their nuclear arsenal up to this point, they are now in the process of deploying tactical nuclear weapons to their border with India. They intend to use them if India invades with their much bigger army.
Pakistan is a hotbed of Islamic jihadists and major attacks have been carried out against defense installations, including bases where nuclear weapons were stored. In some cases, there is evidence that the attacks were carried out with help from inside the Pakistani defense establishment. The distribution of Pakistani tactical nuclear weapons to border bases increases the possibility that jihadists might be able to get their hand on one or more of these tactical weapons.
India has concluded that recent terrorist attacks from Pakistan have been condoned and facilitated by members of the Pakistani intelligence service. India is thought to have a “Cold Start” policy with respect to future terrorist attacks from across the border with Pakistan. If terrorists attack and then return across the border to Pakistan, India has plans to send the Indian army across the border in pursuit of the terrorists. Fear of this sort of attack is the reason that Pakistan is sending tactical nukes to the border bases. Pakistan feels that if they used tactical nukes on the battlefield inside Pakistan, the Indian invasion would be stopped but India would not respond with a full-scale nuclear retaliation as they would if Pakistan nuked Indian cities.
With Pakistani tactical nukes at border bases under the control of local commanders and in a “ready to go at any moment” state, in a chaotic conflict situation, a local commander might decide on his own to deploy tactical nuclear weapons against an Indian invasion with unforeseen consequences following.
If a terrorist group obtained a tactical nuclear weapon from a border base and detonated it inside India, it is likely the conflict would rapidly escalate into a full-scale nuclear war between India and Pakistan. This is a fear that many other nations have when confronted with the political instability and jihadist activity inside Pakistan.
With the ongoing radicalization of the Pakistani army in the past few decades, there is a great danger of elements inside the army joining with jihadist to steal tactical nuclear weapons. Pakistan insists that it has excellent nuclear security but its secrecy with respect to the protection of its nuclear arsenal leaves the rest of the world wondering just how safe Pakistani nuclear weapons are. The U.S. military has contingency plans for entering Pakistan in case of the collapse of the government to secure Pakistani nukes. However, the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons to the border with India will make any such mission much more difficult.
Pakistani National Command Authority emblem:
Russia has about seven thousand nuclear warhead and the U.S. has about six thousand and eight hundred. Both countries have missiles, bombers and submarines to deliver those warheads. Both countries have announced ambitious plans to modernize their nuclear arsenals in the coming years. Each country believes that it needs such huge nuclear arsenal to deter an attack by the other.
China, on the other hand, only has about two hundred and sixty nuclear warheads. China’s population is much larger than either the U.S. or Russia and its economy is rapidly becoming one of the biggest in the world. There are tensions between China and the U.S. as well as tensions between China and Russia but apparently China does not believe that it needs to maintain a huge nuclear arsenal to deter nuclear attacks. Unlike Russia and the U.S., China does not have a large portion of its nuclear arsenal primed for immediate launch. China has a policy of support for nuclear disarmament and also says that it will never be the first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict.
China believes that a few hundred nuclear warheads should be sufficient to deter an enemy from attacking them with nuclear weapons. If China’s existing nuclear arsenal could destroy one or a few major cities of an enemy, that should be enough deterrence. China does not have to spend hundreds of billions of dollars maintaining and upgrading a huge nuclear arsenal to be safe.
Nuclear weapons are so destructive that they have little attraction for generals fighting wars. If only a hundred nuclear weapons are deployed, there is a good chance that the resulting nuclear winter would end human civilization regardless of who started the fight. Any country staging a major nuclear attack would probably be signing their own death warrant. With the money saved from building a huge nuclear arsenal, China is able to develop more conventional and unconventional weapons that might actually be used in future conflicts.
Missile silos and bomber bases are massive and make easy targets for attack. Nuclear weapons are becoming obsolete in the age of cyberwarfare. Why use nuclear weapons against a nuclear-armed adversary when it might be possible to sabotage missile and bomber command and control systems with a cyberattack at a fraction of the cost of a conventional attack? Other weapons such as biological and chemical weapons are much cheaper to create and deploy. And, they could be much more difficult to backtrack to the attacker than a missile launch that paints a big red target on its launch point or a bomber that must fly over enemy territory.
Although China has decided to maintain a small nuclear arsenal, that does not mean that they are not developing new systems like advanced multiple hypersonic reentry vehicles for nuclear warheads. These new delivery systems are designed to overwhelm any missile defense system. They are also working on anti-ballistic missiles systems to deal with possible missile attacks. China’s nuclear weapons and delivery systems may be less extensive and expensive that the nuclear arsenals of the Russia and the U.S. but they appear to be quite adequate to protect China from nuclear attack in the Twenty First Century.
Estimated ranges of Chinese nuclear missiles:
