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.
The U.N. just passed a new set of more severe sanctions against North Korea in response to its recent underground nuclear test. The sanctions include ” mandatory inspections of cargo leaving and entering North Korea by land, sea or air; a ban on all sales or transfers of small arms and light weapons to the North; and the expulsion of North Korean diplomats who engage in any illicit activities.” Following the U.N. sanctions announcement, N.K. shot a few short range missiles into the sea.
There have been sanctions against N.K. since the ceasefire that effectively ended the Korean War back in the mid-fifties. There never was an official treaty or agreement to end the Korean War. A state of hostility has continued between North Korea and South Korea since the Korean War. The people of N.K. have been fed a steady diet of propaganda and publicly declare solidarity with the regime of Kim Jong Un and claim that they can survive in spite of the sanctions.
It has been widely reported in the international press that the Premier of North Korea, Kim Jong Un, has just ordered his military to have their nuclear weapons ready for immediate use. This announcement was obviously prompted partly by the new sanctions imposed by the U.N.
A dispatch from North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said “The only way for defending the sovereignty of our nation and its right to existence under the present extreme situation is to bolster up nuclear force both in quality and quantity.” The dispatch reported that Kim stressed “the need to get the nuclear warheads deployed for national defense always on standby so as to be fired any moment.”
Kim has often claimed that the U.S. and South Korea intend to invade N.K. and destroy his regime. He has threatened to invade S.K. and/or deploy nuclear weapons against S.K. He has also threatened to send nuclear missiles to the U.S. N.K. does have a huge army and at least a few nuclear warheads. There is a great deal of analysis and speculation about the actual nuclear arsenal and delivery systems that N.K. possesses. N.K. could get their nuclear warheads to S.K, by truck if their short ranges missiles can’t do the job. It is possible that they could send missiles carrying nuclear warheads to attack Japan which has also been a target of their hostility and propaganda. However, most analysts doubt that N.K. has the capability to miniaturize nuclear warheads and send them all the way to the U.S. mainland.
The U.S. and South Korea are scheduled to hold a massive joint military exercise in the near future. N.K. claims that this is actually a cover for an invasion of N.K. This is probably also part of the reason that N.K. issued the dispatch about getting all of its nuclear missiles ready. Sort of the equivalent of a angry dog making its hair stand up so it will look bigger and bearing its fangs to make it look more dangerous. Kim Jong Un may be a psychopathic dictator but I don’t think that he is suicidal. Any detonation of an N.K. nuclear warhead in a neighboring country would be suicidal for N.K. and, no matter how much they bluster and threaten, I don’t think they will pull the trigger.
Range of various North Korean missiles:
I have often mentioned “dirty bombs” in my blog posts. In a dirty bomb, radioactive materials are packed around a core of conventional explosives. The idea is that when the bomb explodes, the blast will spread the radioactive material over a wide area. The extent of the area covered will depend on the type and amount of conventional explosives in the core. The danger will be related to how much of a particular radioactive isotope or isotopes are in the shell around the core. Radioactive isotopes vary in the type and amount of radiation they emit and how long they emit radiation. A dirty bomb exploded in the core of a major metropolitan area could cause chaos and cost billions of dollars.
Although dirty bombs do not require much in the way of technical expertise and there is a lot of radioactive material around the world that is poorly secured, so far no one has built and exploded a dirty bomb. There have been plenty of stories of thieves and smugglers trying to sell stolen radioactive isotopes to terrorists. Moldavia in Easter Europe appears to be a marketplace for such transactions. Sting operations there over several years involving some U.S. law enforcement people uncovered attempts by Middle Eastern buyers to purchase radioactive materials for Al Queda and ISIS.
Last year there was an incident in Belgium that brought this concern back into the headlines. Belgium police discovered that a Belgian scientist who worked a plant that produced a lot of radioisotopes for global use was under surveillance by a Mohamed Bakkali. Bakkali was arrested last November for his part in the terrorist shootings in Paris. Tapes of the surveillance of the Belgian scientist and his family were found in Bakkali’s home. A spokesman for Belgium’s Federal Agency for Nuclear Control said that they feared that the intent was to kidnap the scientist or a member of his family to gain access to radioisotopes in order to make a dirty bomb.
U.S. authorities and analysts believe that a dirty bomb attack is virtually inevitable. An internal U.S. Department of Energy report suggested that a single individual with little expertise might be able to construct a dirty bomb. The ease of the creation of such a bomb makes it very difficult to insure that it does not happen. Detonation of such a bomb would cause such a panic that law enforcement would be overwhelmed which might provide cover for other terrorist activities in the same area.
So, the question is, why has it not happened? I believe that one of the reasons lies in the fact that, although such a bomb could wreck havoc in a major city, the actual damage would be minor and it would take years for health problems to manifest. Terrorists tend to want something that is spectacular and results in a lot of immediate deaths and as much destruction as possible. Dirty bombs just aren’t spectacular enough. And, while playing around with conventional explosives is certainly dangerous, handling nuclear materials can result in injury and death for the terrorists themselves. So the idea of a dirty bomb may seem attractive to terrorists but, actually, it does not seem to be attractive enough to any terrorists to create one.
Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power (KHNP) has agreed to send dozens of its workers to the United Arab Emirates to assist with the commissioning of the first unit at the Barakah nuclear power plant. world-nuclear-news.org
Bird poop was the likely cause of a December shutdown at a nuclear power plant outside New York City, according to the operator. abcnews.go.com
