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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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.
TEPCO expects to begin freezing ice wall at Fukushima No. 1 by year-end.japantimes.co.jp
Preparations are underway for operationalization of the Unit-2 ofKudankulam Nuclear Power Plant in Tamil Nadu and stage is set for construction of two more reactors of 1000 mw capacity each, according to Russian company Rosatom which is building the atomic power plant. economictimes.indiatimes.com
On 10/5/2015, MHLW (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare) reported they detected significant density of Cesium-134/137 from 46 of 50 dried persimmons produced in Fukushima prefecture. fukushima-diary.com
TEPCO executives may be prosecuted for Fukushima contamination. fukuleaks.org
Lawmakers in Wisconsin have introduced legislation that would end the US state’s 32-year-old effective ban on the construction of new nuclear plants. world-nuclear-news.org
U.S. Senator Marco Rubio supports storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. reviewjournal.com
A great deal of nuclear weapons development and production took place around St. Louis during the Cold War. I have blogged before about the problems they are having with two landfills in the area. (See Radioactive Waste 28 – Bridgeton And West Lake Landfills posted on May 14, 2013.) I thought it was time for an update on the situation after a recap of the problem.
“The West Lake landfill in Bridgeton, Missouri near St. Louis contains over eight thousand tons of nuclear waste. This old waste is left over from Mallinckrodt Chemical Company’s uranium processing operation during the Cold war. The West Lake Landfill is designated as an Environmental Protection Agency Superfund site. The old landfill has none of the modern safety features such as a liner to prevent leakage into the groundwater or a cap to prevent gases from escaping. It is sitting a few miles upstream from a reservoir that supplies drinking water to St. Louis.”
“The Bridgeport landfill is located within a thousand feet of the buried nuclear waste. Normally, this should not be a reason for increased concern but, unfortunately, there is a fire burning underground in the landfill. Temperatures underground are way above normal levels. The company that manages the landfill, Republic Services, says that the horrible odor from the burning landfill that is polluting the air miles away, is not a safety hazard. On the other hand, the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services has detected dangerous levels of benzene and hydrogen sulfide in the air around the landfill.”
The West Lake landfill was the site of illegal dumping in 1973 of nuclear waste from uranium processing at Mallinckrodt Chemical. Some of the waste dates back to the Manhattan Project to create the first atomic bomb during the 1940s. The
West Lake landfill was designated a Superfund cleanup site in1990 but the EPA is still trying to figure out how to clean it up.
The Bridgeport Landfill has been burning underground since 2010. The county where the landfill is located developed a plant in 2014 to deal with a worst case scenario if the fire in the Bridgeport landfill reached the nuclear waste in the West Lake landfill. A “catastrophic event” could potentially “send up a plume of radioactive smoke over a densely populated area near the city’s main airport.” The plan to deal with that possibility was never publicized until this week when a local radio station got their hands on a copy.
The plan calls for development of emergency shelters in St. Louis Country and nearby St. Charles County. These shelters would be used to house people who would be evacuated in case of the “catastrophic event.” Private and volunteer groups as well as the federal government might be called on to help out depending on how severe the disaster was.
A county official said that the plan “is not an indication of any imminent danger.” County officials claim that the situation is “contained” and told residents not to panic. Republic Services, the company that runs both the Bridgeport landfill and the West Lake landfill said that “interceptor wells” have been dug to capture gases accumulating below the surface at Bridgeport and that there are other safeguards that should prevent the fire from reaching the nuclear waste at West Lake. A Republic Services representative said that their landfill “is safe and intensively monitored.”
Republic Services is being sued by the Missouri Attorney General over the noxious fumes emitted at the Bridgeport landfill. The AG said recently that he was concerned because radiological contamination has been found in trees outside of the West Lake landfill perimeter. In addition, there is evidence that the underground fire has moved past two of the interceptor wells and is getting closer to the West Lake landfill. The AG says that Republic Services “does not have this site under control.”
EPA aerial view and diagram of West Lake Landfill:
I grew up during the Cold War. The idea of mutually assured destruction was sort of reciprocal nuclear blackmail. Nuclear blackmail has been a favorite of movies, novels and TV shows for decades. There is great current fear that terrorists will obtain a nuclear device and use it to blackmail a nation for political purposes. The devastation of a nuclear device has an immediacy and scope that dwarfs the threat of all other weapons that exist today so it is sort of the “trump” card for intimidation.
For years, North Korea has been trying to employ nuclear blackmail to intimidate Japan, South Korea and the United States. It is thought that they have a few small bombs and they do have intermediate range missiles. They regularly threaten to turn South Korean into a radioactive wasteland. Of course, that would be suicide because they would irradiate themselves in the bargain. Lately they have been sending up satellites with more powerful rockets. Critics of the North Korean government point out that these new rockets might be able to carry missiles to the continental U.S.
Lately, Russia has been threatening other nations with its nuclear weapons. Russia has officially changed its nuclear policy and now says that it might respond to conventional warfare with nuclear weapons. Since annexing the Crimea from Ukraine, Putin has bragged that if NATO and Russia went to war in Eastern Europe, he would use tactical nuclear weapons if he was losing a conventional war. Russia has been flying nuclear bombers into the airspace of other countries with their transponders turned off risking mid-air collisions with other planes. In a recent incident over the U.K. , a Russian bomber pilot turned on an electronic system that started a countdown to arm a nuclear bomb. Russia has threatened European nations with nuclear attack if they cooperate with NATO.
The Russians have announced their intention to upgrade their nuclear arsenal and weapons delivery systems. Military sources in the U.S. recently announced that they have evidence that the Russians are developing a high-speed, stealth underwater drone that could carry nuclear bombs right up to the coastal cities of the continental U.S.
I have written about these things before but the reason for this post is that recently, the U.S. military has been talking about the need to spend more money to upgrade the U.S. nuclear arsenal and weapons delivery systems. They also want to create warning and counter measure systems for the new Russian drone subs. They have been talking about the need for more sophisticated warning systems and counter measures in case the North Koreans launch a nuclear strike against the U.S. mainland. These are proper concerns for the U.S. military. This is their job.
What angers me is a recent statement from Admiral Bill Gortney, commander of the U.S. Northern Command and Aerospace Defense Command. After talking about the possibility of a North Korean nuclear missile reaching the U.S. and the need for enhancing our detection and countermeasures, he warned that the failure of the US Congress to pass a budget for fiscal year 2016, or a resumption of mandatory budget cuts, could jeopardize the funding needed for such efforts.
There is enormous waste in military spending today. There are vehicles, planes and weapons systems that the military doesn’t even want that are demanded by Congressmen to bring jobs to their districts. There are more than a thousand U.S. military bases in over a hundred countries around the world. I can understand nuclear blackmail coming from other countries that are hostile to us but what I reject is nuclear blackmail coming from our own military. If they think that North Korea is a real threat, they can find the money to counter it without threatening the citizens of the U.S. by saying that unless we continue to waste hundreds of billions of dollars on unnecessary military spending, they will leave us vulnerable to nuclear attack.
Admiral William E Gortney:
