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 about the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, New Mexico before. The nuclear weapons waste facility is located in an old salt mine. It has been operating for over fifteen years and the operators have gotten sloppy. The are huge rooms that have been hollowed out and filled with barrels of waste from nuclear weapons research and development. When the rooms were filled, they were supposed to be sealed with thick concrete and steel doors. As time went by, the operators decided that steel doors were sufficient. Eventually, they dispensed with the doors altogether.
Back in early 2014, there was an accident at the facility. A barrel of waste from the Los Alamos National Laboratory exploded and released radioactive materials into one of the rooms that should have been sealed but wasn’t. The filtration system failed and particles of plutonium and americium were detected twenty miles from the facility. It turned out that the barrel exploded because at the LANL they changed the absorbent material in the barrel from inorganic to organic. Gases were generated which resulted in the explosion.
When records were checked it turned out the record keeping had also gotten sloppy. The exact contents of the barrels in the room where the explosion occured were not listed in detail as required by procedural guidelines. They were able to ascertain that there were about seventy more barrels in the room that had the new absorbent and were at risk for exploding. Time had to passed in order for the room to cool off enough for repairs to be undertaken.
While repairs were being made, the storage facility was closed. This resulted in a back log of barrels left at Los Alamos National Laboratory at risk for exploding. More barrels were sent to a low-level nuclear waste repository in Texas where they were monitored but not enclosed sufficiently to prevent the release of more radioactive materials if any of those barrels exploded.
The Department of Energy promised that the facility would be open back in March of 2016. An audit by the GAO says that the DoE knew when they made that promise that there was less than a one percent chance that they would be able to meet it. Pressure to repair the facility quickly led to poor safety standards for the recovery work. In 2015, the DoE admitted that they would not have the WIPP repairs done before December of 2016 at the soonest. As a result of errors and incompetence in the repair process, there has been nine month delay and an increased cost of over sixty four million dollars. The total estimate for clean up and additional operating costs at the WIPP is now over three hundred million dollars.
Skeptics are concerned, given what has happened to date, that the WIPP will not be able to open by December. If it does not open, further delays in the cleanup of contaminated sites will add millions of dollars to the ultimate cost.
Part Two of Two Parts (Please read Part One first)
In another interview, the interviewer raised the question of nuclear arms for Japan and South Korea and expressed concerns about Trump’s statements that he thought that it would be OK for those two countries to develop nuclear arms which could lead to a nuclear arms race in Asia and destabilize the region. Trump said that we had spent a lot of money defending other nations. He said that if those other nations didn’t start paying more for our protection, then we should be ready to withdraw our nuclear shield. The international defense policy of the U.S. has been specifically dedicated to providing a nuclear umbrella for other nations so those other nations would not develop their own nuclear weapons programs. For decades, the U.S. decision makers have believed that it was well worth the money we were spending on defending other nations to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. It is unclear if Trump was aware of the reasons for this U.S. defense policy but, aware or not, he was clear about being ready to abandon it.
Turning to the Middle East, Trump was asked if he was OK with the idea of Saudi Arabia obtaining nuclear weapons. He said that he didn’t like the idea but brought up the same argument about Japan and South Korea having to pay for our protection or develop their own protection including nuclear weapons. He also said that, being realistic, Saudi Arabia was going to get their own nuclear weapons someday in any case. One big problem with that is the fact that one of the goals of Al Qaeda is to take over Saudi Arabia. If that happens and Saudi Arabia had previously obtained nuclear weapons, then Al Qaeda would acquire nuclear weapons and the whole world be under threat of a nuclear terrorist attack.
Estimates are that a missile attack from Eurasia would get here in about six minutes and a submarine launched attack would take about three minutes. That means that any U.S. President would have, at most, six minutes from being notified of an attack to decide what to do and launch U.S. missiles if that was the response. Even the most intelligent and decisive man would be hard pressed to do well in such circumstances.
Taken together, these statements and responses from Trump indicate an appalling lack of knowledge about nuclear weapons and international affairs. They also demonstrate extremely poor judgement on his part with respect to nuclear weapons and the relationship between nations. In addition, Trump has displayed signs of mental instability that should disqualify him from having control of nuclear weapons. Members of the media, members of the military, the diplomatic corps, the intelligence community, the U.S. Congress and Executive Branch have all raised serious concerns about Trump being totally unsuited to deal with the threat posed by nuclear weapons. Even a majority of the supporters of Trump would not trust him with the nuclear codes to launch U.S. missiles.
Donald Trump:
