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 Waste Isolation Pilot Plant is located near Carlsbad, New Mexico. It was completed fifteen years ago and dedicated to the permanent geological disposal of radioactive wastes association with the manufacture of U.S. nuclear weapons. In February of 2014, a drum of waste exploded and twenty workers were exposed to a small amount of radiation. The filtration system failed to contain the radioactive particles from the drum and they escaped from the WIPP facility. Some were detected twenty miles away near Carlsbad.
The drum that exploded had been shipped from Los Alamos National Laboratory. It was determined that the drum of waste had been treated with a new absorbent material to solidify the waste. The new absorbent had combined with some of the materials in the waste and created an explosive compound that ultimately destroyed the drum. Hundreds of barrels from LANL contained the new absorbent. Some had been shipped to WIPP, some went to a nuclear storage facility in Texas and some remain at LANL. Any of these drums may explode. The facility was shut down in order to complete analysis of the accident and to effect repairs. There were plans to reopen the facility in March of 2016.
It has just been announced that the planned reopening of WIPP has now be postponed because of “unanticipated challenges.” A new date for reopening the facility has not been given. Dana Bryson, acting manager for the Department of Energy’s Carlsbad Field Office, said in a statement on Friday: “We are disappointed that we will not meet the original target date for beginning waste emplacement.” A press release from the U.S. Department of Energy also said that “While the WIPP recovery program continues to make significant progress, the original target date of March 2016 for resuming waste emplacement operations is no longer viable due to a variety of unanticipated issues.” Some of the issues that need to be resolved include heightened DoE safety standards and problems with the ventilation system.
There are multiple reasons for this accident and they should not have been “unanticipated.” The new absorbent at LANL was used after a technician warned that someone should check on the chemistry of the new absorbent for possible problems. The records for the contents of the drums were incomplete or non-existent. The chamber where the drum exploded should have been sealed because it had been filled. The sealing of chambers was mandated by the official procedures to be thick plugs of concrete and steel. Sometime after the facility had opened, the plugs were abandoned and thin steel doors were used. Then even the use of the steel doors stopped.
If the procedures at LANL and WIPP had been properly followed, there were a number of occurrences which should have raised red flags and been addressed. Had adherence to regulations been monitored and enforced properly, this accident would never have happened. They need to repair the ventilation system and seal the chamber properly but they don’t just need new safety regulations. They need to make sure they follow safety regulations that are already in place.
A nuclear fuel reprocessing firm in northern Japan says some of its monitoring devices of high level radioactive materials have stopped working. It says the failure poses no threat to the environment. nhk.or.jp
Having spent nuclear fuel remain in Iran for years could provide plenty of time to separate some of the plutonium out of it. lipolitics.com
I have blogged in the past about the aggressive Russia push to market Russian nuclear power reactors to other countries. South Africa has recently been considering the purchase of reactors from Russia. Earlier this week, Vladimir Slivyak with the Russian environmental group Ecodefense participated in a seminar at the University of Johannesburg about future deployment of nuclear power in South Africa. The title of his presentation was “Are Russian nuclear reactors a viable solution to the South African crisis?”
In September of 2014, Russia and South Africa signed an intergovernmental agreement for the possible construction of about a gigawatt of new nuclear energy production. The agreement stipulates that the Russian nuclear utility Rosatom would build, own and operate the reactors. The agreement states that Rosatom would have a twenty year guarantee of a set price for the purchase of the electricity produced by the reactors. The project is estimated to cost between nine billion to seventeen billion dollars. The agreement is still under discussion between the two governments.
The agreement also says that Rosatom is indemnified from any liability from nuclear accidents for the life of the reactor(s). It states that South Africa is “solely responsible for any damage both within and outside the territory of the Republic of South Africa”. Slivyak is very critical of this particular part of the agreement. He points out that there have been many nuclear accidents in the six decades that nuclear power has been utilized. Rostekhnadzor, the Russian state nuclear regulator, says that there were thirty nine “incidents” at Russian nuclear power plants in 2013 alone. The main causes were “mismanagement, defects in equipment and design errors”.
Russia currently operates thirty four power reactors. Many of these reactors have had their life extended from the original thirty years to forty five years. Russia only gets about five percent of its electricity from nuclear power and is not investing heavily in new nuclear power reactors. In 2008, the Russians announced plans to begin construction of thirteen gigawatts of new nuclear power. Now, in 2015, they are only planning on five and a half gigawatts of new nuclear power because the Russian economy is having serious problems with soft energy prices and international sanctions. In addition, Rosatom apparently is only able to build one reactor a year. Rosatom has been bragging about having orders for twenty seven reactors worth over a hundred billion dollars but is only actually building reactors in China and Belarus.
Slivyak points out that if a country decides to construct new nuclear power reactors, that means that they are making a long term commitment of at least a century. One to three decades for construction, sixty years of operation and three decades for decommissioning. The decommissioning cost is currently estimated at around the cost of construction. With the cost estimate of up to seventeen billion dollars for construction, that would mean that Rosatom which would obligated to decommission the reactors would be committing to paying that cost, adjusted for inflation in a hundred years. Russia does not yet have a standard process for decommissioning so neither they nor the S.A.s can accurately gauge what will have to be done, exactly how long it will take and what the actual cost will be. There is also the problem of dealing with the spent nuclear fuel assemblies which is also the responsibility of Rosatom. This is a serious problem around the world and will not be cheap to solve. If Rosatom is unable to hold up its end of the contract for the required century, that would mean that S.A. would have to pay for the decommissioning or live with a deteriorating useless nuclear power plant.
Slivyak concludes that from an economic point of view, it does not make sense for S.A. to risk a major investment in nuclear power.
