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 Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant is located on the coast of San Luis Obispo County in California. Since the closure of the San Onofre nuclear plant near San Diego because of damaging caused to piping by new turbines, Diablo Canyon has become the last nuclear power plant in California. Diablo Canyon is owned and operated by Pacific Gas & Electric. It has two nuclear power reactors. The original forty year license for one reactor runs out in 2024 and the other runs out in 2025. P G & E has not announced whether or not they will seek an extension for the licenses of the two reactors.
When the Diablo Canyon plant was constructed, it was known that there were major fault lines near the construction site. The plant was designed to be able to withstand quakes equal in intensity to what the historical record showed had happened around those faults in the past. Then, it was discovered that there was another fault called the Hosgri fault just three miles off the coast near the plant. The geological record showed that this fault had produced more powerful quakes than the other nearby faults. Modifications were ordered to the plant to take the possibility of more powerful quakes into account.
The seismic upgrades were finished in 1981 but it was later found that the contractors made a serious mistake. There were two reactors and both had to be upgraded. The reactors were based on the same design. One set of blueprints were used to make the changes to both reactor buildings. Unfortunately, the contractors failed to take into account that while the reactors were based on the same design, one of the reactors was a mirror image of the other. This meant that the changes made to the second reactor did not accomplish what they were intended to accomplish. The NRC allowed the plant to keep operating even though the mandated changes had not been successfully done.
In 2014, The Friends of the Earth filed a demand with the federal court to overturn the secret decision of the NRC to make changes to the way in which seismic risk was calculated in the PG&E operating license for Diablo Canyon. These changes made it possible for PG&E to continue to operate even though the original license provisions would have forced the NRC to revoke their license. The FoE claimed that there was criminal conspiracy between NRC and PG&E to allow PG&E to continue to operate the Diablo Canyon plant.
In addition to concerns over seismic safety, there are other problems for the PG&E operation of Diablo Canyon. This year, the California State Water Resources Control Board made the “once-through” cooling system in use at Diablo Canyon illegal because of its impact on marine wildlife. The FoE estimates that Diablo Canyon “causes 80% of all the serious harm to marine life from all of the coastal power plants” in California. If this rule is enforced for the Diablo Canyon plant, the cost to make necessary changes to the cooling system could rise to eleven billion dollars.
The California State Land Commission is currently considering whether or not to extend the leases for the structures that bring water into and discharge water from the plant. Currently, these licenses are set to expire in 2018 and 2019. The Lt. Governor of California has called for a detailed and complete environmental review of the Diablo Canyon operation before any action is take on the licenses.
Please read Part Two.
5,600 Bq/Kg of Cs-134/137 from vacuum cleaner dust accumulated from this September in Iwaki City, Japan. fukushima-diary.com
The Wisconsin state assembly will vote in January on legislation that could open the door for new nuclear power plants, a spokeswoman for Speaker Robin Vos said. nuclearstreet.com
I have blogged in the past about the U.S. shortage of plutonium-238. Plutonium-238 is an radioactive isotope of plutonium which is very useful in the construction of space probes for the exploration of space. It has a half-life of eighty eight years which means that its production of heat will take that long to fall to half its original output. “It is stable at high temperatures, can generate substantial heat in small amounts and emits relatively low levels of radiation that is easily shielded, so mission-critical instruments and equipment are not affected.” It is used to create radioisotope thermoelectric generators and radioisotope heater units that can last for years, providing power and heat to a probe as it carries out deep space missions.
During the Cold War, the U.S. nuclear weapons facility at Savannah River in South Carolina produced plutonium-238. This facility was shut down in 1988 as the Cold War was ending and the production of plutonium-238 stopped. The U.S. has been purchasing plutonium-238 from Russia since 1993 after domestic production ceased. Eventually, the Russians also stopped production and their stockpiles are running out.
The U.S. maintains separate stockpiles of plutonium-238 for military and civilian use. The current useful stockpile available to NASA is about thirty seven pounds. This stockpile will be utilized for a multi-mission radioisotope thermoelectric generator (MMRTG) for the 2020 Mars Rover mission and two more MMRTG for a 2024 NASA mission. There will be about nine pounds of useful plutonium-238 left after these two missions. Without a new source of plutonium-238, U.S. deep space missions would have to be seriously curtailed. Fortunately, the U.S. has begun making plutonium-238 again.
NASA began a new project to produce plutonium-238 two years ago at Nuclear Security and Isotope Technology Division at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The Lab has just announced the creation of about two ounces of plutonium-238. The reactors at ORNL are smaller than the old Savannah River reactors and had to be modified in order to produce plutonium-238. Now that they have proven that they are able to make plutonium-238, they will work on scaling up the process to manufacture useful amounts of plutonium-238. This new production process will insure that the U.S. has sufficient plutonium-238 to carry out future space missions. The U.S. has some old plutonium-238 that has decayed past the point of usefulness. Fortunately, it can be mixed with newly-produced plutonium-238 to bring it back to “life.”
Boeing recently launched a satellite that utilizes a Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) engine. These engines are extremely efficient. “They use radio waves to ionize and heat a propellant, and magnetic fields to accelerate the resulting plasma to generate thrust.” These engines require energy to operate and plutonium-238 MMRTGs can provide that energy. In addition to being ideal for deep space probes, the VASIMR engines are being considered for launching a manned expedition to Mars. Current rocket engines would take six months or more to reach Mars, exposing the astronauts to unacceptable levels of radiation and requiring huge amounts of fuel. It is estimated that VASIMR engines could get a manned mission to Mars in about forty days which would be much more practical.
