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.
Part 2 of 3 Parts (Please read Part 1)
NATO was originally created to counter a perceived Soviet threat to Western Europe after World War II. Putin points to the fact that NATO has moved up the border of Russia with NATO members in Eastern Europe including Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia. He is attempting to resurrect the old Soviet Union “sphere of influence” in Eastern Europe by what the Russian now call “hybrid warfare.” This employs the excuse of opposing the abuse of Russian speaking native minorities in Eastern European countries to cover infiltration, destabilization, guerilla warfare, cyberwarfare and propaganda campaigns in those countries. This brand of warfare is currently being practiced in Ukraine. There are hints that Putin intends to employ hybrid warfare in Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania.
Understanding that such activities might provoke military action on the part of NATO, Putin has changed Russian nuclear strategy to allow for the use of tactical nuclear weapons in a conventional war. He has said that if Russia enters a conventional war with NATO forces in Eastern Europe and Russia appears to be losing then he will consider using tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield. Interviews with top Russian governmental officials and Russian Generals suggest that Putin believes that he can intimidate the NATO countries with the detonation of a single nuclear bomb to the point where NATO would stop fighting and basically allow Putin to keep whatever territory he had invaded during the fighting. He may be right but if he is wrong, an exchange of tactical nuclear weapons on an Eastern European battlefield could escalate to all-out nuclear war
Fighting in Latvia, Estonia or Ukraine could easily spill over the Russian border. With Moscow only a few hundred miles from the Western Russian border, foreign troops crossing the Russian border could be interpreted as an intent to move on Moscow. This would increase the probability of escalation into an exchange of ICBMs between Russia, Western Europe and the U.S.
In the past few years Russia has been flying nuclear bombers with their transponders turned off in the airspace of other nations. Last week, two Russian Tupolev nuclear bombers flew into U.K. airspace and the U.K. scrambled fighters to confront them. The Russian bombers retreated but not before the U.K. captured four seconds of an electronic signal that indicated the pilot of one of the Russian bombers had started the countdown to arm a nuclear bomb.
I have written about the new U.S. tactical nuclear bombs called the B61s. They have a variable yield, they more accurate that older versions and they can be carried by stealth fighters. This week, the U.S. moved twenty of these new bombs to Germany. The mere existence of these new bombs in Germany increases the possibility that military planners would consider using them on the battlefield.
There is a clear game of nuclear provocation and escalation going on right now between Russia and the U.S. and its NATO allies and it is getting almost no coverage in the international media. The U.S. and Russia both have thousands of megaton nuclear warheads and delivery systems that are ready to trigger on a few moments notice. The existing warning, control, launch systems and notification systems are deteriorating. The world is once again sliding toward the brink of nuclear oblivion. If we don’t get rid of nuclear weapons, they will be the end of us.
(Please read Part 3)
U.S. B61-12 Tactical Nuclear Bomb:
Part 1 of 3 Parts
I have blogged many times about nuclear weapons. Some of the blogs have been historical and some have been contemporary. I have spoken about the technology, the economics, the politics, the environmental threat, etc. of nuclear weapons. I have often said that nuclear war is a much more immediate threat than climate change, resource depletion, environmental pollution or pandemics. It is estimated that the detonation of only one hundred megaton warheads anywhere in the world would be required to cause a nuclear winter that would kill billions of people and totally destroy our global civilization.
While the world argues over whether Iran should ever be allowed to try to develop a nuclear bomb, there are more than half a dozen countries which each have enough nuclear warheads to destroy human civilization in a matter of hours. Pakistan is politically unstable and India is heading to the right politically. They both have more than a hundred warheads and, thus, they could each trigger a nuclear winter. Israel has over a hundred warheads and, if threaten with annihilation by the surround Arab countries, would not hesitate to unleash that arsenal on Middle Eastern capitals and oil fields. In addition to the horrendous damage of such an attack, the end result would be nuclear winter. But the biggest threat to the world by far are the huge arsenals of the U.S. and Russia.
I grew up with the threat of World War III during the Cold War. With the pruning of the major nuclear arsenals in the U.S. and Soviets during the Cold War and the further reductions after Russia inherited the nuclear weapons of the Soviets, it seemed as if the world was slowing drawing back from the brink of a catastrophic nuclear war although we now know that we teetered on the brink several times. Despite protests, negotiations and treaties, recent trends appear to be bringing back the specter of a nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia that could destroy humanity.
In the last few years, both the U.S. and Russia have announced major overhauls and upgrades to their nuclear arsenals. Both countries have begun working on new nuclear weapons that the other side says are violations of non-proliferation treaties. In a couple of recent posts, I gave details of Russian nuclear submarine drones and U.S. variable yield highly accurate tactical bombs. There are about five thousand operational nuclear warheads in the U.S. arsenal with about fifteen hundred delivery systems including submarines, missiles and bomb. The Russian have a comparable number of nuclear warheads and delivery systems. Each country could destroy the world at least fifty times.
Since the Russian annexation of the Crimea from Ukraine, there are indications that the possibility of the actual use of nuclear weapons has increased. Vladimir Putin, the Russian president’s power is threatened by the declining economy in Russia which is being battered by low fossil fuel prices and Western sanctions over Ukraine. He is rallying the Russia people by claiming that the U.S. and NATO are trying to destroy Russia.
(Please read Part 2 & Part 3)
I have talked about environmental problems resulting from the discharge of warm water from nuclear power plants in the past. In New England, there has been a battle raging for decades over the impact of the Salem nuclear power plant on the Delaware River. The once through cooling system essentially uses the Delaware River as a giant radiator.
A group called the Delaware Riverkeepers has charged that New Jersey’s renewal of a federally required permit for Salem’s two reactors cooling water intake systems would be “irresponsible.” They base their claim on old and new economic and ecological research. These charges were leveled at a public meeting after the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection recently extended the period for public comments after being accused of deliberately leaving insufficient time for critics to assess the massive federal permit documentation.
The previous authority for the Delaware plant to draw water from the River expired in 2006. The plant continues to draw water while waiting for decisions on the “best available technology” to reduce loss of fish, heating of the river and other environmental problems caused by the discharge of warm water from the plant. Research has shown that billions of fish, fry, eggs and other organisms are caught, and/or injured or killed on the nuclear plant’s cooling water intake guards. Even more are killed after being sucked into the plant’s cooling water systems.
The Riverkeepers new estimates of economic losses of almost six hundred million dollars over twenty years are seventy times higher than past estimates from the company that operates the power plant of eight million dollar losses over twenty years. The Riverkeepers claim that there is only one nuclear power plant in the U.S. that does greater damage to aquatic life than the Salem plant.
New federal regulations are inclined toward the use of cooling towers and water recycling for cooling nuclear power plants. Existing plants are allowed to seek exceptions to the new regulations based on an assessment of costs and benefits and lower cost approaches that protect the environment.
The Riverkeepers says that the company that operates the plant and federal regulators have failed to accurately assess the damage done by the heated water leaving the Salem plant’s cooling system. The discharge of the heated water was authorized decades ago by a waiver from the Delaware River Basin Commission. The company claims that it has complied with regulations and has done nothing improper.
Critics of the current cooling system at the Salem plant assert that a recycling cooling-water system could reduce the need for the Salem plant to draw water from the Delaware River by over ninety percent. It could cost eight hundred and fifty million dollars to retrofit the Salem plant with a cooling-water recycling system. Officials of the company that operates the plant claim that the cost could rise to as much as a billion dollars and retrofitting is too expensive to consider.
In view of the fact that climate change is leading to heating of the water in lakes and rivers, the estimated damage of the current Salem system could easily rise even higher than the River Keepers estimate. The operators and owners of the Salem nuclear power plant should change over to a recycling system or the plant should be closed.
