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.
French nuclear power and technology giant Areva said Monday that it could post a net loss of $5.6 billion in 2014, up from $566 million in 2013. nuclearstreet.com
The US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) proposed Clean Power Plan is achievable without jeopardizing the reliability of the country’s power system, a study by the Analysis Group has concluded. world-nuclear-news.org
I have often mentioned the longevity of nuclear waste. U-235, the isotope that provides power in many nuclear reactors has a half-life of about seven hundred million years. U-238 constitutes most of the naturally occurring uranium and it has a half-life of four billion years. The Pu-239, the isotope which is produced in nuclear reactors and used as fuel or in nuclear weapons, has a half life of over eighty thousand years. If we create nuclear waste repositories for the permanent disposal of spent nuclear fuel and nuclear waste from weapons production, they will have to be secure for thousands of years at the very least. There has been a great deal of discussion about what sort of symbolic warnings could survive beyond our current civilization.
I have been blogging lately about the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, New Mexico. The WIPP is the only permanent geological repository designed to take radioactive waste and irradiated clothing, tools and equipment from the production of U.S. nuclear weapons. A year ago a drum of waste exploded and nuclear particles of plutonium and americium were released into the environment around Carlsbad. When the damage is repaired and systemic problems addressed, it is hoped that the repository will resume accepting the stream of waste from nuclear warhead manufacture. Eventually, the WIPP will be sealed and the old salt mine that the repository is located in will collapse, further entombing the waste. It is estimated that the repository should safely contain the nuclear waste for hundreds of thousands of years.
Following the sealing of WIPP, as time passes, our culture will be replaced by other cultures and our language will vanish. As the centuries turn into millennium, our world will become ancient history and much will be forgotten. Around the time that the WIPP was being constructed in 1990, the U.S. government invited geologists, linguists, astrophysicists, architects, artists and writers to visit the WIPP. Their mission was to consider how best to design some sort of marker system to warn people away from the WIPP repository for at least ten thousand years. Although the wastes will be dangerously radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years, it was thought that projecting beyond ten thousand years would be impossible. Looking back ten thousand years, most of the human race was farming in small villages. It is not possible to know how different the world will be ten thousand years from now but it is certain that it will be very different.
Since language can change enormously over thousands of years, it was understood by the team that a warning could not be text in a current language. The conversation turned to symbols. What symbol could convey “Danger!” for thousands of years. Some suggested the “Mr. Yuck” cartoon face. Others suggested the famous skull and cross bones used by pirates. However, even this ghastly image has changed meaning through the centuries. The panel decided that a particular symbol was not the answer. Another suggestion was a series of illustrative panels like a comic strip that would show someone being exposed to the waste (symbolized as the standard trefoil design for “radiation”) and getting sick. One problem with this approach was the fact that different cultures read from right to left or left to right, down the page or up the page so the original intention might be lost. An architect said that they could build a bunch of tall thorn like columns to make the are forbidding but such a place might wind up attracting attention instead of warning people away.
Ultimately, the team adopted an idea that had first been proposed in 1981 for the now cancelled Yucca Mountain Nuclear Repository in Nevada. The idea was that it might be possible to create a folk tradition that would be passed down through the ages. A species of domestic can could be bred that would change color in the presence of radiation. Legends and myths could be created about the cat and the danger associated with changing colors. This may sound clever but any message in a myth or legend can be distorted, removed, exploited, etc. The cats might become talisman of power or pets of royalty.
I don’t think that any of these ideas has any real chance of warning people away for thousands of years. It would be better for us to either find a way to eliminate these radioactive isotopes or bury them miles down where they would never be dug up or leak into the environment.
Artist’s concept of warning spikes at WIPP:
Recently I focused on problems being caused by the Soviet Union and Russia dumping radioactive ships and waste into the Barents and Kara Seas near Norway yesterday. In passing, I mentioned that all the major nuclear nations have nuclear weapons development sites that are heavily contaminated and, after decades of work, are still not cleaned up. Today, I am going to talk about some ongoing problems in the U.S. with facilities left over from nuclear weapons development.
The waste generated from decades of U.S. nuclear weapons research and development was dumped in trenches or stored in underground tanks at different sites with little concern for environmental damage and public health threats. Decades after the end of such work, the cleanup of these sites is delayed by incompetence, failure to follow regulations, lack of sufficient funds, lack of knowledge about the exact constituents of stored waste, lack of transparency, mistreatment of whistleblowers, etc.
The U.S. Department of Energy has just released an audit of old buildings at nuclear weapons development sites. The Inspector General’s report identified two hundred old buildings that are radioactively contaminated and disintegrating. These contaminated buildings are supposed to be turned over to the DoE Environmental Management Program to be cleaned up but schedules keep being delayed with many buildings currently slated for cleanup after 2025.
The Oak Ridge National Laboratory was constructed in Tennessee at the town of Oak Ridge in 1942. The site was selected to house the X-10 Graphite Reactor to demonstrate that plutonium could be extracted from enriched uranium. Building 9201-5 was a uranium-enrichment facility that was constructed at Oak Ridge as part of the Manhattan Project during World War II. After the war, the building was used for a number of nuclear projects involving uranium, mercury and beryllium among other materials.
Building 9201-5 began deteriorating after it was closed down in 2005. A 2008 Environmental Management report found that there was substantial flooding in the building. External piping and supports were corroding. Reinforced concrete roof panels were deteriorating. The report said “The assessment concluded that the combination of the large facility size, rapidly deteriorating conditions, and vast quantity of items requiring disposition made this facility one of the greatest liabilities in the Department’s complex.”
The recent Inspector General’s report stated that “However, since cleanup efforts were performed, officials informed us that the facility has degraded at an increasingly alarming rate,” the IG report said. “In particular, a 2014 NNSA site assessment indicated that roof degradation continues to be widespread throughout the facility with varying levels of severity. This has resulted in significant water intrusion and the spread of radiological and toxicological contamination.” “Additionally, the assessment identified the potential for an explosion or reaction associated with remaining contaminants and personnel safety issues related to the degraded condition as high-risk areas. Overall, the assessment concluded that this facility presents a high risk to the workers and environment and should not be accepted.”
The IG report called for reassessment of project needs and redirecting funds to deal with immediate dangers at Building 9201-5. The U.S. National Nuclear Security office of the DoE has categorized the building as the “worst of the worst.” This is only one out of two hundred buildings that desperately need attention to prevent environmental contamination. The estimate for this cleanup work is currently almost three hundred billion dollars. Any delays will certainly increase the costs of cleanup.
Building 9201-5 at Oak Ridge National Laboratory:
I have blogged about Iran’s nuclear program and the negotiations that are going on with the U.S. and other Western powers. Israel is very concerned that Iran is working on an atomic bomb which the U.S. discounts. The U.S. is willing to allow Iran to have the ability to make a bomb as long as they don’t make one. Israel is adamant that they will not allow Iran to have the ability to make a bomb. Our President has said that Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has announced that the use of nuclear weapons would be against their religion. It had been reported that Khamenei issued a fatwa or religious edict stating that nuclear weapons are “haram” which means that they are forbidden under Islamic law. Now the existence of such a fatwa is being called into doubt. Although Iran has often referred to such a fatwa since 2003, so far, a search for a published record has not found it.
There is an official statement on the web page of Iran’s Permanent Mission to the U.N. from February 19, 2012 which declares “The Iranian nation has never pursued and will never pursue nuclear weapons. There is no doubt that the decision makers in the countries opposing us know well that Iran is not after nuclear weapons, because the Islamic Republic, logically, religiously and theoretically, considers the possession of nuclear weapons a grave sin and believes the proliferation of such weapons is senseless, destructive and dangerous.” However official this statement is from the government of Iran, it is not a fatwa which would have to invoke some Islamic text or tradition.
Pakistan, a Muslim nation, started working on nuclear weapons in 1972 but only detonated its first test devices in 1998 shortly after the second nuclear bomb test by India. Pakistan has never expressed any concern or reservations about a Muslim nation possessing or using nuclear weapons. Following Pakistan’s first nuclear weapons test, Iran congratulated Pakistan and raised no issues of nuclear weapons being haram. In 1992, the vice-President of Iran said at a conference that since Israel possessed nuclear weapons, Muslim nations must cooperate to obtain nuclear weapons.
Critics of Iran’s nuclear program say that Iran only began talking about such a fatwa because of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq by Western forces searching for weapons of mass destruction. With U.S. and other troops on both its eastern and western border, it would have been wise of Iran to discount the idea that it wanted to possess nuclear weapons. These critics say that Iran is only claiming to have a fatwa outlawing nuclear weapons to encourage Western powers to accept their word on the matter and ease sanctions. They say that Iran will have no problem in changing their stated policy if and when they get nuclear weapons.
