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.
Japanese Prime Minister Abe claims Fukushima food keeps him healthy. japantoday.com
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe faces such a constant stream of stumbles and irritants, it’s hard to identify which of them is causing his biggest headache. japantimes.co.jp
The keel for the US Navy’s second Gerald Ford-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the John F Kennedy, has been laid at a ceremony in Newport News, Virginia. world-nuclear-news.org
Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif yesterday held a ceremony to mark the start of construction of two Chinese-designed Hualong One units near the coastal city of Karachi. world-nuclear-news.org
I have blogged recently about nuclear fusion as an alternative to nuclear fission for the generation of electricity. There is a huge international fusion research project underway in France called ITER based on the confinement of super hot plasma in a donut shaped configuration called a tokomak. I have blogged about problems they are having with money and management. I have also blogged about universities and companies that are working on smaller and cheaper fusion reactor designs. One of them may be able to construct a commercial prototype fusion power generator before the ITER project is completed. ITER is not even intended to actually generate more power than it consumes for more than a few second. Today, I am going to blog about another entry into the small practical fusion power generator race.
The Helion Fusion Engine is being developed by a trio of institutions. The University of Washington in Seattle is carrying out basic science research on the project. MSNW LLC was created for obtaining grants to develop the technology. Helion Energy was created to commercialize the technology with venture capital.
The Helion Fusion Engineis a new approach that is midway between the steady state confinement of a super hot plasma like the ITER tokomak design and the inertial confinement approach where a pellet of fuel is bombarded with a sphere of laser beams. In the Helion reactor, fuel is injected into a chamber where it is compressed by magnetic fields and fuses. Energy of the expanding cloud of particles that results is converted directly into electricity. The system fuses a batch of fuel about once a second.
One of the selling points for this reactor is the fact that it does not use nor does it produce radioactive isotopes. It also emits no carbon dioxide. The fuel it uses consists of Helium three which is missing a neutron and deuterium which is hydrogen with an extra neutron. Deuterium comprises more than one one-hundreth of one percent of ocean water. Helium will be captured from the exhaust of the reactor and recycled. Fuel will not be a major expense and no significant waste is produced.
Benefits of the Helion fusion reactor from the Helion Energy website:
Helion claims that funding of two hundred million dollars would be sufficient for them to build a pilot commercial fifty megawatt power plant by 2019. Then they could go into commercial production by 2022. Helion estimates that its approach will yield commercial nuclear fusion in one tenth the time of the ITER approach and at one thousandth the cost. With five different organizations all working on small economical nuclear fusion reactors, fusion power may finally be an idea whose time has come.
My last blog post involved dealing with old liquid nuclear waste at the Idaho National Laboratory. I mentioned that there were a lot of other sites in the U.S. where old nuclear waste was not being taken care of properly. Today I am going to talk about a leaking nuclear waste dump in Barnwell County, South Carolina near the Savannah River. The landfill has been in existence for over forty years and is currently managed by Chem-Nuclear.
Radioactive tritium leaks were first discovered at the landfill back in the 1970s. A plume of tritium runs downhill from the site and for years it has been trickling into a creek that flows towards the Savannah River. Chem-Nuclear has maintained that the leaks are in an isolated area and that tritium is not as dangerous as other radioactive materials at the dump.
Critics disagree, saying that tritium is more toxic than Chem-Nuclear claims and that other radioactive materials at the landfill will also leak into the environment. They have demanded that the open burial trenches containing the waste be covered in some fashion to prevent rain from washing the radioactive materials out of the landfill and into the ground water. They claim that Chem-Nuclear has done absolutely nothing to prevent rainwater from falling on the trenches of waste.
Ten years ago, the Sierra Club filed a law suit to try to force tougher disposal practices at the unlined landfill. The suit said that the DHEC had failed to make Chem-Nuclear follow state regulations for many years.
The court ultimately ruled last year that the DHEC ” failed to enforce the law of South Carolina” with respect to the two hundred and thirty five acre landfill. The court said that the DHEC did not enforce a set of specific environmental protection regulations. The court also said that Chem-Nuclear failed to follow some state regulations with respect to the handling of nuclear waste. The court ruling stated that “It is important that DHEC enforce its own regulations and require Chem-Nuclear to take action to comply with the technical requirements.The court decision gave the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control and Chem-Nuclear 90 days to come up with a written plan for correcting problems at the dump. The court said that the DHEC ” failed to enforce the laws of South Carolina” with respect to the two hundred and thirty five acre landfill. The court ruling stated that “It is important that DHEC enforce its own regulations and require Chem-Nuclear to take action to comply with the technical requirements.’’
The DHEC and Chem-Nuclear immediately appealed for a rehearing which delayed the 90 day requirement. In an August 12th ruling, the court reaffirmed its earlier analysis of the situation but gave up on the requirement of a specific timetable to improve conditions at the dump. The DHEC can now respond to the court ruling at its own convenience. A spokesperson for the DHEC said that the agency will ” ensure full compliance with the court’s opinion and the regulations we are authorized to enforce.’’
A Sierra Club lawyers said ” We have an agency that has been lawless for years in not enforcing its own regulations, and now, the court is giving it another open-ended opportunity to review itself. That is unfortunate. We are going to monitor this very carefully.”
Chem-Nuclear Barnwell County landfill:
