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.
The Nuclear Energy Agency is an intergovernmental agency that was created in 1958 as part of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Thirty one countries participate in the NEA. They represent about eight five percent of the installed nuclear power generating capacity of the world. The mission of the NEA is to” assist its member countries in maintaining and further developing, through international co-operation, the scientific, technological and legal bases required for the safe, environmentally friendly and economical use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.”
The International Framework for Nuclear Energy Cooperation was first proposed by the U.S. in 2006. The idea was to ” form an international partnership to promote the use of nuclear power and close the nuclear fuel cycle in a way that reduces nuclear waste and the risk of nuclear proliferation.” Critics of the IFNEC say that their advocacy of reprocessing spent nuclear fuel will be expensive and increase the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation. Critics also say that the Framework discriminated between countries that have a nuclear fuel cycle and countries that do not. The U.S. Congress provided far less funding than requested by the White House and, in 2009, the U.S. Department of Energy cancelled the U.S. “domestic components” of the plan. Currently, there are twenty five countries participating in the IFNEC.
The announcement of the IFNEC said that it had four main goals. ” First, reduce America’s dependence on foreign sources of fossil fuels and encourage economic growth. Second, recycle nuclear fuel using new proliferation-resistant technologies to recover more energy and reduce waste. Third, encourage prosperity growth and clean development around the world. And fourth, utilize the latest technologies to reduce the risk of nuclear proliferation worldwide.”
The NEA and the IFNEC just cosponsored a conference called Nuclear Energy’s Role in the 21st Century: Addressing the Challenge of Financing in Paris France. The conference convened “leading stakeholders from energy planning authorities, regulators and export credit agencies, as well as vendors, utilities, bankers, rating agencies and insurers, to identify key barriers and develop approaches to address the financing of nuclear projects.”
The head of the NEA told the attendees that the energy market was broken. He said that when subsidies are necessary to build power plants there is a serious problem. Prior to proposing subsidies for power plants, it is necessary to ask whether the energy marketplace in member countries was functioning as it was intended to.
He raised the question of pricing carbon emissions as a solution to climate change. If climate change mitigation is important, there will have to be a tax on carbon. Without a significant price on carbon, nuclear power will be much less competitive against natural gas.
He said that it was really impossible to give a specific price for a nuclear power plant because there are so many different variables in different places and with different designs. He pointed out that the price given for building a new plant might also include the cost of new infrastructure and transmission systems. He claims that the price of a new nuclear power plant has to be seen as an investment in a sixty year asset that will produce a lot of electricity for a long time. Although some nuclear power projects are behind schedule and over budget, he said that there were also projects that were on time and on budget. He was skeptical about the viability of small modular reactors, especially if they need to be relicensed in every country where they are installed.
He mentioned that the cost of addressing safety issues post-Fukushima was not as expensive as had often been claimed. He does not think that nuclear safety needs to be a major impact on the economics of nuclear power.
He pointed out that things have change significantly in project implementation, the nuclear supply change and the financing of nuclear projects since most of the existing nuclear power reactors were built. Deregulation in many countries has changed the financing models for major power projects. In many markets, it may be impossible to justify the construction of any power generating system without some sort of subsidy or other type of government support.
With respect to nuclear technology, new companies are supply reactors and components. New vendors are pushing advanced reactors aggressively around the world. New types of reactors will be entering the marketplace in the future. With all these changes including the pressure of climate change, financing new nuclear projects will be difficult.
The U.S. market for nuclear power has been soft for the past few years especially since the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Cheap natural gas and oil have reduced the need for developing new power sources. Sustainable renewable sources such as wind and solar are becoming competitive with traditional fossil fuel power plants and are even cheaper in some cases than new nuclear power stations. With the volatile energy market and the end of guaranteed prices for long terms for the output of nuclear power plants, investors have been reluctant to support new nuclear power projects. However, there are signs that this trend may be reversing.
Bills supporting the reduction and streamlining of licensing and regulation of nuclear power facilities are currently being considered in both the House and the Senate. Nuclear power is being pushed as both a necessary energy source for future economic growth and a low-carbon energy source for combating climate change.
Investors are pouring millions of dollars into startups that are working to develop the next generation of massive power reactors. The new reactors need to be cheaper than the old models and safer to operate. Researchers are also working on creating small modular reactors that are touted as being cheaper, easier to build and safer than traditional nuclear power stations. There are at least six companies working on nuclear fusion reactors for power generation. There has not been so much activity in nuclear research in the U.S. private sector in decades.
Other countries are also working on developing new nuclear power systems. France is pushing their new European Pressurized Reactor design. Russia is building new reactors and working on developing a new generation of breeder reactors. China has a massive building program for its new internally designed and built reactor, the Hualong 1. It is also devoting significant funds to nuclear power research. Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, has a start-up called Terra Power that just signed a deal with the Chinese. The approach of Terra Power calls for using a liquid sodium reactor to burn spent nuclear fuel from conventional reactors.
The international competition to develop new nuclear power systems has raised concerns in the U.S. Congress. Members of Congress do not want the U.S. to be left behind as other countries create new advanced nuclear power systems. There are calls for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to speed-up the licensing procedure for new nuclear reactor designs. Congressmen would also like to see the U.S. government work with private companies on nuclear reactor research and development. This would include funding the construction of test reactors at federal laboratories that would be available to private companies for testing.
There is pushback from U.S. environmentalists against this surge of interest in developing new nuclear power systems. There is still no permanent geological repository for the spent nuclear fuel that is piling up at the existing nuclear power plants. There will have to be a massive program of building temporary dry cask storage at nuclear power plants or interim storage facilities in order to empty the spent fuel pools that are rapidly reaching their limit. They are also skeptical that cheaper, safer and more economical nuclear reactors can be designed and deployed in time to help with climate change mitigation. About half of the existing nuclear power reactors in the U.S. will reach the end of their licensed life-spans by 2040. Currently, it takes ten years or more to license a new nuclear power reactor and then it has to be constructed. The U.S. will need more power generation before that so other sources may be more inviting to investors and people working on the climate change problem.
The South Australia Royal Commission into the Nuclear Fuel Cycle was formed in 2015 to consider four areas of possible participation for the Australian state in the nuclear fuel cycle. The four areas were consideration were exploration and extraction of radioactive minerals, processing of such minerals and production of materials containing radioactive substances, the use of nuclear materials to generate electricity and the storage and disposal of radioactive and nuclear waste. The final report was just issued and it made twelve recommendations for increasing the involvement of South Australia in the nuclear fuel cycle. Mining, refining and nuclear power were not considered feasible in the near future either because of regulatory issues or commercial viability. The report suggested that a multi-national spent nuclear fuel repository would be profitable.
The next stage in the consideration of the recommendations in the commission’s report will be a public review. Four hundred people will be chosen at random to make up a “citizens’ jury” to go over the proposals in the report. Twenty five thousand people will get invitations to participate. A group of 50 fifty citizens will first identify questions to be considered. There will be state-wide meetings, social media programs and a free phone in services to garner public responses to the questions selected by the first citizen jury. Another three hundred and fifty citizens will then comprise a second jury which will review the feedback after inputs from the public engagement project. The Australian Aboriginal community in South Australia will also be asked for input. A report will be issued to the state parliament next November.
The official name of the campaign for public input will be “Nu-Clear.” An independent advisory board will soon be appointed to oversee the process of gaining public input. A new government agency will be established to “facilitate” the discussion.
The Premier of South Australia said that public involvement was critical to the success of any of the commission’s proposals. He also said that there had to be bipartisan support in the South Australian parliament in order for the proposals to go forward. If there was serious political controversy over the proposals in the commission’s report, it was unlikely that any investors would be interested in becoming involved. International involvement was also unlikely unless the other participants were convinced that South Australia would support and follow through on the long term project being proposed.
The South Australian Opposition Leader is the leader of the largest minority political party or coalition of parties in the House of Representative in the South Australian Parliament. The current Opposition Leader “condemned” the use of citizen juries to help make the decision to create a multinational spent nuclear fuel repository. He said that ” We do not think that this is the right methodology of making a decision as significant as a nuclear waste repository.” It would appear that hopes for bipartisan support for the commission’s proposal for a multi-national spent nuclear waste repository may not be realistic.
