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.
I have blogged recently about problems with the U.K. Hinkley Point C project to build two nuclear reactors. The French utility EDF is involved and the new reactors will be European Pressurized Reactors constructed by the French company, AREVA. There are questions about the integrity of the reactor design. Chinese companies have offered to invest but they want to have permission to build, own and operate a power reactor in Bradwell, England based on their Chinese design. This has upset unions in England. A plan to guarantee a price for the electricity has raised challenges from other European Union countries over subsidizing nuclear projects.
Austria is preparing to lodge a formal complaint in the European Court of Justice next week against the decision of the European Commission to allow the U.K. to proceed with the Hinkley Point C project. Austria is backed by Luxembourg, some cities and some private companies. Austria has decided that it will no longer accept nuclear power as a source for electricity because of its cost and environmental threat. Austria had been importing electricity generated by nuclear power plants in Germany and the Czech Republic but concluded in 2013 that it was going to ban all foreign electricity provided by nuclear power.
Austria stated that it was not trying to interfere with another E.U. member’s choice of sources for electricity. What they say they object to is the intention of the U.K. to use a “strike price” which would mean that if wholesale prices for electricity in the U.K. fell below a certain level, the government would step in and make up the difference so that the Hinkley Point power plant would not become unprofitable. The use of strike prices had been confined to renewable energy projects such as wind and solar in the past.
A member of the Austria Parliament complains that the nuclear “technology gives reason for security concerns, and cannot be considered environmentally nor socially sustainable, nor is it an economically competitive technology. It is therefore not qualified to support the energy and climate goals the EU has set.” “In the EU treaty, it says state aid should only be granted in exceptional cases, and Hinkley does not provide these exceptional security of supply issues, because the U.K. has other ways of ensuring its security of supply,” he said. “It has cheap alternatives, notably renewables like offshore wind, and also more interconnections. Technically, there is no emergency situation.”
The European Commission approved the Hinkley Point C plan in late 2014 after assurances from the U.K. that the changes they had made to the plan would protect ratepayers if it turned out that the reactor design had problems that would cause cancellation of the project. It is unlikely that the Commission will remove its support for Hinkley Point C plan because of the Austrian challenge but there will be an impact on the project nonetheless. Any changes that are made to the project plan could cause problems with financing and scheduling that could slow progress and upset investors.
U.K. critics of the Hinkley Point C project point out that the price of electricity has fallen to the point where may soon be below the strike price agreed to before the reactors are even built. Some critics call for the U.K. to abandon nuclear power completely because of cost overruns, scheduling delays and design problems with other EPR projects currently under construction.
Hinkley Point Nuclear Power Station:
On 6/17/2015, TEPCO announced they detected 56,000 Bq/Kg of Cs-134/137 from spotbelly rockfish caught in Fukushima plant port. This is 560 times much as the safety limit and the sample was collected near the central area of the port. Sampling date was 5/12/2015. fukushima-diary.com
Fortum’s future participation in the Hanhikivi nuclear power plant project remains unclear as the Finnish electricity producer’s talks with Rosatom and Gazprom Energo on restructuring Russia’s territorial generating company TGC-1 have yet to reach agreement. world-nuclear-news.org
Ukraine seems to be a place where many of the issues of nuclear power and nuclear weapons converge. Since Russia annexed the Crimea in 2014, they have been ratcheting up the rhetoric about a possible military confrontation with NATO. Russian officials have commented that Russia could overcome NATO conventional forces with superior tactical nuclear weapons. They have also threatened to move nuclear weapons into the Crimea. Ukrainian officials are afraid that their existing nuclear reactors might be intentional targets or accidental collateral damage in the ongoing civil war. There are concerns about how to fuel Ukrainian nuclear power plants now that Ukraine and Russia, their current source of nuclear fuel, are no longer on friendly terms. And, finally, there is a dispute over the completion of two nuclear power reactors in Ukraine that were being built by Russia.
The Khmelnitski Nuclear Power Plant is located in Netishyn, Khmelnitski, Ukraine. There are two operational VVER-1000 nuclear power reactors generating a gigawatt each. Construction of the first reactor began in 1981 and it became operational in 1987. Construction of the second reactor began in 1983 with a projected completion date of 1991. A moratorium on nuclear plant construction halted work on the reactor in 1990. The reactor was completed and brought online in 2004 after the moratorium was lifted. Construction of a third VVER-1000 reactor was begun in 1985 and a fourth reactor in 1986. Work on both of these reactors was halted in 1990 because of the moratorium. The third reactor was about three quarters complete in 1990 and about a quarter of the work on the fourth reactor was done by 1990.
An intergovernmental agreement was signed between Ukraine and Russia in 2010 for the completion of the third and fourth reactors. Late in 2010, Russia’s Sberbank said that it would loan Energoatom, the Ukrainian nuclear plant operator, a billion dollars for the project while Energoatom supplied fifteen percent of the project costs.
In early 2011, a contract for the construction was signed between Energoatom and Atomstroyexport which is the Russian general contractor for construction of Russian reactors in other countries. However, in mid-2011, Energoatom said that it was not satisfied with the interest rate that the Sberbank was offering. Following the annexation of the Crimea by Russia in 2014, the president of Energoatom announced that Ukraine would not cooperate with Russia in the completion of the two reactors at Khmelnitski.
The deputy director of the Ukrainian Ministry of Energy and Coal just announced yesterday that Ukraine is preparing the legal documents necessary to cancel its contract with Russia for the completion of the third and fourth reactors at Khmelnitski. The deputy director said “Measures are being taken to cancel the agreement signed in 2010 with Russia. Today, an instruction was received from the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, which gives the Foreign Ministry and other relevant bodies the authority to resolve this matter as soon as possible. The document will soon be prepared and sent to Russia.” The reason given for cancelling the contract was that “Russia failed to meet its obligations.”
The Ukrainian government is drafting legal documents to permit the alteration of the specifications for the two incomplete reactors so that they do not have to be Russian VVER-1000 models. The Czech company, Skoda JS, has been working with the VVER type reactors for forty years and has built three VVER-1000 reactors. The Ukrainian government wants to have Skoda JS complete the third and fourth reactors at Khmelnitski.
Khmelnitski Nuclear Power Station:
I have mentioned in previous posts the Saudi interest in acquiring nuclear weapons if it appears that Iran is working on building its own nuclear arsenal. There are rumors that Saudi Arabia has already purchased nuclear bombs from Pakistan and they will be able to take delivery any time they want. Saudi Arabia has a huge military budget and does have the resources to purchase or develop nuclear weapons if it chooses according to a Middle East expert named Nawaf Obaid who recently appeared on CNN to discuss his concerns about a possible Saudi nuclear weapons program. While some skeptics have stated that Saudi Arabia does not have the capability to develop its own nuclear weapons, Obaid laid out his reasons for thinking that the Saudis do have this capability.
Obaid claims that there are six things that a country must have in order to create nuclear weapons.
1) An adequate education system. There have been significant improvements recently in Saudi Arabia with respect to science education. They have doubled their entire education budget since 2005. In 2014, Saudi spending on education and training amounted to about twenty five percent of their budget. Over two hundred thousand Saudis have studied abroad under a huge foreign scholarship program.
2) Skilled Scientists. Saudi nuclear scientists have degrees from prestigious U.S. universities. They have been conducting advanced nuclear research at the King Abdeualiziz City for Science and Technology for decades. Saudi Arabia has an aggressive domestic nuclear energy program under the new King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable, established in 2010. The Saudis intend to build sixteen nuclear power reactors in the next twenty years to supply electricity.
3) Financial means. As one of the biggest oil producers in the world, Saudi Arabia has the financial resources necessary to develop nuclear weapons. They have the third largest military budget in the world so they are obviously willing to dedicate massive resources to the creation and/or purchase of weapons they think they need.
4) Technological Infrastructure. A robust domestic nuclear power program like the one the Saudis are embarking on will require the creation of a great deal of the infrastructure that would be necessary to develop domestic nuclear weapons. They obviously have the resources to add the weapons specific infrastructure that would be needed to proceed with the development of nuclear weapons once they have the domestic nuclear power support systems in place.
5) Belief that there is a pressing security threat. The Saudis have made it clear than they consider the possibility of Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons a major security threat. They have made many statements to the effect that an Iranian nuclear arsenal would force them to acquire or build their own nuclear weapons. Depending on the outcome of the current negotiations with Iran, Saudi may move forward with a nuclear weapons program in the near future as a matter of national security.
6) The national will and leadership to develop nuclear weapons. Nationalism is rising in Saudi Arabia and the citizens of that country look to their leaders to take strong positions on perceived threats from other countries. The new King is moving forward with “revitalized” foreign and defense policies that are welcomed by other Arab leaders in the region. The power of the Saudi monarchy and the wealth of Saudi Arabia is being mobilized to project the image of a strong country ready to unify and lead the Arab nations in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia definitely has the leadership and will necessary to develop nuclear weapons.
With the deadline for a deal with Iran on its nuclear programs looming in the near future, the world will soon find out if Saudi Arabia is on track to become a nation with a nuclear arsenal.
Artist’s concept of a carbon-neutral city to be built in Saudi Arabia by the King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy program:
