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 written in recent blogs about the recent aggressive nuclear stance of Russia. Major upgrades of Russian nuclear weapons have been announced and substantial funds allocated. Russia has been invading other countries airspace with nuclear-capable bombers lately. The Russian President, Vladimir Putin, has bragged about Russian tactical nuclear weapons and said that Russia might respond to a conventional attack by NATO with tactical nukes. There are sources that say that Putin and his advisors believe that in a battle with NATO, if they exploded one nuclear device in Easter Europe, NATO would stop fighting and retreat.
Recently, there was a report on the government television Channel One about Putin meeting with military high-command in the city of Sochi. One of the generals was seen to be studying a diagram of a new “devastating torpedo” system. The torpedo would be launched by submarine and would cause “wide areas of radioactive contamination.”
The new torpedo was called the “oceanic multi-purpose Status-6 system” and the report said that it would “destroy important economic installations of the enemy in coastal areas and cause guaranteed devastating damage to the country’s territory by creating wide areas of radioactive contamination, rendering them unusable for military, economic or other activity for a long time.”
The torpedo was said to be a “robotic mini-submarine” that could travel at speeds of over a hundred miles an hour and that it could avoid all acoustic tracking devices. There was mention of a one hundred megaton nuclear warhead which would be about twice as big as the largest nuclear warhead ever detonated. Detonation of such a bomb could cause a tsunami over sixteen hundred feet high which could travel as much as a thousand miles inland.
A Russian government newspaper has reported details of the Status-6 torpedo without showing the diagram that was seen in the television report. The article contained speculation about some sort of cobalt device that was “super-radioactive.” A cobalt bomb would be a nuclear warhead design with a layer of cobalt-59. On detonation, the cobalt-59 would be transmuted to cobalt-60 which is highly radioactive and has a half-life of more than five years. The newspaper said that such a bomb would guarantee “that everything living will be killed” and that even people in underground bunkers would not survive.
There have been recent reports in the U.S. media of some sort of robotic Russian nuclear-armed drone submarine that could travel undetected to U.S. coastal cities and cause wide-spread devastation. Apparently these reports were references to the new Status-6 torpedo.
Lately, Putin has been complaining about the U.S. Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) system being developed to counter short and medium range ballistic missiles. The U.S. has stated that the system is intended to defend Europe against the type of missiles that could be launched by Iran or other hostile Middle East countries. When fully developed, the Aegis BMD is slated to be installed in Poland and Romania.
Putin has responded to the development of the Aegis BMD system by saying that the “real” purpose of the system is to neutralize the capability of Russia to employ tactical nuclear ballistic missiles in a conflict with NATO in Eastern Europe. He said that Russia would continue working on advanced ballistic missile systems that could penetrate any anti-missile defense system.
The U.S. Department of Defense would not comment on the torpedo reports except to say that it would defer to the Russian navy with respect to the question of authenticity. There has been speculation that the revelation of the Status-6 torpedo diagram was deliberate. The Russians have engaged recently in what is being called “hybrid warfare.” This includes propaganda and disinformation. Perhaps the Status-6 torpedo does not really exist and is just being tossed out to confuse and intimidate our military.
Putin may believe that “leaking” information about an imaginary undetectable Russian nuclear torpedo would cause the Pentagon to divert resources from the development of the Aegis missile shield. In any case, the Russians already have over four thousand nuclear warheads on intercontinental ballistic missiles pointed at the U.S. I would think that these new “super” torpedoes, if they exist, would be redundant and unnecessary if a nuclear war broke out between the U.S. and the Russians.
Nuclear fuel leak at Hanford Columbia Generating Station poses “zero safety risk,” operators say. oregonlive.com
Pollinators and Other Flying Insects inside and outside the Fukushima Evacuation Zone. journals.plos.org
GE Hitatchi (GEH) moved forward with two international agreements this week, signing memorandum of understanding letters with Bruce Power in Canada and the Vietnam Atomic Energy Agency (VAEA). nuclearstreet.com
Although nuclear power is facing a stiff headwind of public rejection, rising costs and investor skepticism, they are trying to reinvigorate the industry by claiming that nuclear power is a low-carbon emission energy source and should be subsidized, if necessary, as a hedge against climate change.
Amory Lovins, one of the top energy experts in the U.S., says that nuclear power plants are so big, slow to construct and expensive that they “reduce and retard” climate protection. He estimates that every dollar spent on building a new nuclear power reactor purchases from two to ten times less carbon savings and is twenty to forty times slower than spending that dollar on other solutions that are cheaper, faster and safer. These other solutions render nuclear power both uneconomical and unnecessary. Increasing the efficiency of electrical usage, conservation, insulation of buildings, renewable alternative energy generation, and generating heat and power together which is called cogeneration all are more beneficial in the fight against climate change than nuclear power. Renewables and cogeneration together accounted for eighteen percent of the world’s electricity in 2009 while nuclear only accounted for thirteen percent. This is a reversal of their percentages in 2000. These two alternatives also accounted for over ninety percent of the new electricity added to the worlds power grids in 2008. These trends have continued to the present.
Since 2007, the expansion of nuclear power has added less to total world electricity generation than solar power which is the most expensive alternative energy source. While the cost of wind and solar power keeps dropping, the cost of nuclear power keeps rising and the additional safety features recommended since the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011 will drive the cost up even further.
There are dozens of nuclear reactor projects being touted by the global nuclear industry but most of them have no actual starting dates and some of them have been “under construction” for decades. Most of these projects are in just four countries, Russia, India, China and South Korea. Three of these countries have economic problems that will probably delay nuclear projects and all of them have strong public resistance against nuclear power. None of these four countries could build nuclear reactors without serious government involvement.
In order to be of any use in climate change mitigation, energy projects must be ramped up as quickly as possible. In addition to the problem of long licensing periods and slipping construction schedules, nuclear power is carbon intensive at the beginning. Massive amounts of carbon dioxide are emitted in the mining, refining and transportation of nuclear fuel as well as the concrete used to build the reactors and the dry casks used to store spent nuclear fuel. It may be decades before the carbon debt of a nuclear power plant is paid off. We don’t have those decades.
In light of the problems mentioned above and other problems details in other blog posts, nuclear power generation is not a viable solution to the problem of carbon emissions and climate change. It is regrettable that serious scientists and environmental activists have been taken in by this false hope. Stepping back and looking at the broad picture, it is obvious that nuclear power should not be part of the post-fossil fuel mix of energy sources for any reason.
23,461 Bq/Kg detected from mushroom in Iwaki city Fukushima. fukushima-diary.com
Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy has concluded cooperative agreements with both the UK’s Cavendish Nuclear Limited and France’s Areva NC concerning boiling water reactor (BWR) decommissioning in Japan. world-nuclear-news.org
US Government Secretly Buried Nuclear Waste Near Playground — And Thousands Now Have Cancer offthegridnews.com
23,461 Bq/Kg detected from mushroom in Iwaki city Fukushima. fukushima-diary.com
Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy has concluded cooperative agreements with both the UK’s Cavendish Nuclear Limited and France’s Areva NC concerning boiling water reactor (BWR) decommissioning in Japan. world-nuclear-news.org
US Government Secretly Buried Nuclear Waste Near Playground — And Thousands Now Have Cancer offthegridnews.com
