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 Savannah River Site (SRS) is a federal nuclear reservation on the banks of the Savannah River, twenty five miles from Augusta, Georgia. It is owned by the U.S. Department of Energy and operated by the Savannah River Nuclear Solutions LLC. It was built during the 1950s to refine nuclear materials to make nuclear weapons. It has four reactors but none of them are operating at this time. The site contains the Savannah River National Laboratory and the only operational radiochemical separations facility in the U.S. It is the sole source of tritium needed for the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal.
In 2000, the site was selected as the location for a mixed oxide fuel (MOX) manufacturing plant called for by a nuclear non-proliferation treaty that the U.S. signed with Russia. The National Nuclear Security Administration is in charge of construction of the MOX facility which would the only such plant in the U.S. when completed. The MOX facility was intended to be used to convert excess weapons grade plutonium into a fuel that can be burned in commercial power reactors in the U.S. They expected to be able to process as much as three and a half tons of plutonium oxide per year. Construction of the MOX facility officially began in August of 2007. The projected cost of the facility was almost five billion dollars. It was hoped that the project could be completed by 2015.
As of 2016, four and a half billion dollars has already been spent and the MOX facility is only half done. It is now estimated that it will cost from ten to twenty billion dollars more to complete the facility. In 2015, the company constructing the MOX plant asked for a ten year extension of its construction authorization to 2025. Considering the additional costs of operation of the facility, the total additional cost of the project could be as high as thirty billion dollars. Annual operating costs have been estimated at as much as a billion dollars.
It now appears that the Obama administration is preparing to cancel the unfinished MOX project and is only asking for sufficient funding to accomplish an orderly shutdown. Sending the plutonium to storage in the troubled WIPP facility in New Mexico would only cost about three hundred and fifty million dollars a year as opposed to a billion dollars a year for the MOX processing. (The WIPP facility had to be shut down two years ago because of an accident involving the release of radioactive materials but is rescheduled to reopen soon.)
Critics of the project supporting its cancellation point to the long delays and the huge cost overruns. Several analyses of the project claim that it will cost even more and take even longer than now estimated. However, there is political pressure to keep the MOX project going because of the seventeen hundred high paying construction jobs required to build the facility. In addition to domestic backlash, if the MOX project is cancelled, then the U.S. will have to renegotiate with the Russians. Both countries were supposed to dispose of thirty four tons of plutonium under the terms of the non-proliferation treaty.
While I applaud the choice to cancel the project, the WIPP facility will have to be monitored closely to insure that management problems have been solved to prevent future accidents.
Savannah River MOX construction site:
The U.S. National Nuclear Security administration (NNSA) has just issued a twenty five million dollar grant to create the Nuclear Science and Engineering Nonproliferation Research Consortium. (NSENRC) The new organization consists of eight universities and five national laboratories with U.C. Berkley as the lead institution. The Consortium includes Michigan State University; UC Davis; UC Irvine; the University of Nevada, Las Vegas; George Washington University; Texas A&M University; and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. In addition to the universities, the following national laboratories are involved: Los Alamos National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories.
In an NNSA press release, the NNSA deputy administrator for defense nuclear nonproliferation announced the award. She said, “I am confident that more basic research efforts in academia will complement the applied efforts of the national laboratories and industry in supporting the critically important national security goals of our country.”
The new consortium is being established to conduct “cutting-edge research and development in four technical areas: nuclear and particle physics; radiochemistry and forensics; nuclear engineering; and nuclear instrumentation and radiation detection.” The Consortium will also conduct for additional activities including gathering nuclear data, creating models and simulations, studying nuclear security policy and conducting training in nuclear fields.
U.C. Berkley has received grants from the NNSA in the past for work in nuclear security. The NNSA gave U.C. Berkley a twenty five million dollar grant in 2010 to create the National Science and Security Consortium (NSSC). The former chairman of the U.C. Berkley Nuclear Engineering Department made the following comment about the two grants. “In a way, we are continuing the work that began in 2011, but we’re improving upon what we’ve done, especially in the areas of nuclear data and nuclear security policy.” He is the principle investigator for both of the NNSA grants.
Most of the partners in the new NSENRC were part of the 2010 NSSC program. George Washington University in Washington, D.C.; the University of Tennessee, Knoxville; Texas A&M University and Oak Ridge National Laboratory are new additions to the group for the NSSC.
The NNSA has charged the new Consortium with three major goals.
1. The Consortium is to work on integrating basic academic research with applied national laboratory research.
2. The Consortium is to explore concepts, technologies and paradigms that can complement research at the national laboratories for application to the mission of nuclear nonproliferation.
3. The Consortium is to train new nonproliferation experts for careers at Department of Energy laboratories and related federal facilities.
One of the most important objectives of the NSSC and the NSENRC is the training of future experts in the field of national nuclear security. Three hundred and fifty students and postdoctoral scholars have been trained by the NSSC since 2011. The NSSC has a multidisciplinary program that provides hands-on training in nuclear science, technology and policy. Students and scholars were sent to national laboratories to collaborate with over sixty laboratory scientists.
The principle investigator for both organizations pointed out that that the NSSC has received more than 140 awards for faculty and students. There have been more than 170 collaborative publications and conference proceedings produced. Over six hundred oral and poster presentations on fundamental and applied research have been given in support of the mission by the NSSC. Almost forty NSSC fellows made the leap to staff and postdoctoral positions in Department of Energy national laboratories. Other NSSC graduate went on to pursue careers in academia and at various institutes and laboratories.
There is a horrible eco-disaster playing out in the U.S. near Los Angeles, California at the Aliso Canyon Natural Gas Storage Facility. A natural gas well above a huge underground storage area for natural gas has been spewing out a steady stream of natural gas for more than two months. It will be months before it is under control. Plants and animals in the area are fleeing or dying. People have become ill and whole housing developments have had to be evacuated. Natural gas is a greenhouse gas that is a hundred times worse that carbon dioxide.
It has been reported that the authorities are grossly underestimating the amount of natural gas that has been released. In addition, there are reports that every natural gas field in the U.S. is leaking large quantities of natural gas. The natural gas leak is an ecological catastrophe but there are other dangerous substances also coming out of that well.
There is naturally occurring uranium in the soil of the natural gas field. There is also radium in the soil. Radium produces radon gas which can be a problem in the basements of houses in some parts of the U.S. Along with the natural gas leaking out of the L.A. field, there is also radon gas leaking. Every hour, about seventy four billion decaying radioactive nuclei are released in the leak. Over an eighty day period, the leak has released three hundred trillion decaying nuclei into the atmosphere. This amounts to about two and a half million lethal inhalation doses of radiation sent into the air around L.A. Some researchers suggest that some of the symptoms that are showing up in people near the leak may actually be from radiation poisoning and not from natural gas poisoning. While it is true that the radioactive substances release from the natural gas leak are being dispersed over a wide area and diluted as they mix with the atmosphere, it is still possible that some people in the area are receiving health damaging doses of radiation because of the gas leak.
The radon gas leaking from the well is colorless and odorless. Because it cannot be seen or smelled, there is less immediate public reaction to the leak than there would be to the same amounts of pollutants being sent up as smoke from a fire. The authorities have been slow to respond to the situation and the company that manages the well has been less than quick and competent in dealing with it. So far it has been treated as more of a problem for the well site than a wide-spread public health risk.
The authorities should tell the company to stop any other activity and concentrate all resources and assets on stopping that leak. If the company has to spend itself into bankruptcy to deal with the leak, then so be it. It should not be allowed to bank one cent of profit as long as that well is leaking. People’s lives and health are at stake and no effort or expense should be spared in dealing with this disaster.
Site of the natural gas leak:
CC BY-SA 3.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49138172
