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 in the past about the devastation that would result from a nuclear war. It is estimated that the detonation of as few as a hundred nuclear warheads could cause a nuclear winter which would end human civilization on this planet. This sort of discussion can seem dry and academic so I thought that it would be useful to talk about the local effects of a nuclear blast. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists recently republished an article based on a 2007 book titled “Whole World on Fire”. The primary thesis of the book was a critique of military planning that only assessed the immediate blast damage of a nuclear strike in a major city without also assessing the secondary damage from fire and firestorms. For an example, the book describes in detail the detonation of an eight hundred kiloton nuclear warhead above island of Manhattan.
In a tiny fraction of a second after detonation, a temperature of about two hundred million degrees Fahrenheit would be reached in the middle of the warhead. Within the first second, inside a half mile of the blast center, the asphalt in the streets would melt, paint would be burned off walls and metals surfaces would melt. After a second, there would be a mile wide fireball that would be about sixteen thousand degrees Fahrenheit. Hurricane force winds containing flames and burning material would incinerate anyone caught out in the open. Those who took shelter in basements of big buildings would probably be suffocated by gases from the fire or roasted alive as their shelters heated up.
Under normal weather conditions, the heat from the initial fireball would start fires in an area of a hundred square miles around the blast center. Powerful winds stirred up by the fireball and initial fires would carry flames into areas that were not immediately ignited. These fires would eventually merge with each other and become a single huge fire. The energy generated by this huge fire could be as much as fifty times greater than the energy released in the nuclear blast. The rising superheated air above the fire would create a powerful suction that could tear up trees as much as three feet in diameter and pluck up anyone out in the open beyond the fire.
The chaos beyond the area directly affected by the blast and fire would be enormous. All the streets would be clogged with fleeing people making access by first responders almost impossible. There would be massive injuries and casualties that would demand attention from over-extended first responders. Assistance would flood in from near and far. A much greater area than that damaged by the blast and fire would have to be evacuated for fear of radiation and housing would have to be found for the evacuees. Even if the Manhattan bomb was the only detonation in the U.S., the entire country would be thrown into turmoil. With death tolls in the millions and costs in the hundreds of billions, the U.S. economy would crash resulting in economic and social turbulence that would spread to the world as the world economic system followed the U.S. economy down.
Nuclear disarmament has returned to the headlines with the antics of North Korea and the negotiations with Iran. Considering that both the U.S. and Russia have about five thousand warheads aim at each other and there are other nuclear powers in hostile confrontation with each other, nuclear disarmament is still a priority if we want our society to survive.
Manhattan:
In addition to the nuclear waste stored on site at U.S. nuclear reactors and depositories such as the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant for nuclear weapons waste, there are other sites where less radioactive materials are dumped into landfills. In North Dakota, the radioactive filters from fracking operations are being illegally dumped in landfills because they exceed the allowed levels of radioactivity. In Texas, there is a commercial waste disposal operation that is lobbying for the legal right to accept more radioactivity in waste than it currently has while questions are being raised about the safety of what they are storing now. While citizens might balk at the thought of a radioactive landfill near their homes, there are municipal and state governments that are working on attracting nuclear waste business to their jurisdictions.
There is an old landfill near Barnwell, South Carolina operated by Chem-Nuclear, a subsidiary of Energy Solutions. This landfill is one of the few in the U.S. that accept low-level nuclear waste. This fifty year old landfill is currently losing money and has been leaking radioactive tritium into the Savannah River which is the water supply for two hundred thousand people. Chem-Nuclear has been actively lobbying the state legislature for decades to allow much more nuclear waste that is more radioactive to be disposed of in the landfill. One enticement is the offer by Chem-Nuclear to pay a special fee for the privilege of taking the more dangerous waste. State leaders in turn lobbied the U.S. Congress to allow a group of states to come together in an agreement that would allow them to bury dangerous nuclear waste in one of the participating states while not taking any such waste from a non-participating states. This effort was successful in 1986.
Opponents of nuclear waste dumps in S.C. spent fifteen years trying to get the Barnwell dump closed while also trying to join with some other states in one of the Congress approved associations. Their hope was to have another state take their waste but that attempt was unsuccessful. In 2000, S.C. finally managed to make a deal with Connecticut and New Jersey to take a small amount of their nuclear waste at the Barnwell dump. This deal went into effect in 2008.
Now Chen-Nuclear is lobbying to scrap that arrangement and take waste from other states again. One of their arguments is that they are losing money. That is ironic because the deal that was struck to have Barnwell accept some waste from only two states was deliberately structured to be a money losing proposition exactly to prevent more waste coming to S.C. Sadly, the landfill is losing so much money that unless more money comes in soon, the landfill will have to be closed and the taxpayers of S.C. will wind up paying to maintain the dump. Now there are bills being proposed in the S.C. legislature to open up the dump to more radioactive waste from other states. So the choice seems to be either the S.C. taxpayers take over the cost of the existing dump or S.C. becomes one of the main dumping grounds for nuclear waste from all over the U.S. I am sure that many in S.C. would prefer a third alternative.
Barnwell landfill:
I have blogged about the trend among nuclear nations to sell and construct nuclear power reactors in the developing world. Japan, the U.S., France, Russia and China are aggressively marketing and competing for the nuclear export market. Countries like Viet Nam, Pakistan, Bulgaria, Brazil and others are making deals with the nuclear exporters. It appears as if China may have a harder sell than other nuclear technology providers.
China has a very ambitious export plan which could be worth hundreds of billions of dollars. China also has the most ambitious nuclear power reactor building program in the world. With the assistance of foreign companies, China has spent more than thirty years developing its own nuclear reactor design based on foreign reactor designs. Just last month, China signed a preliminary agreement with Argentina for the construction of its domestic Hualong 1 reactor. However, China has not yet built and turned on a Hualong 1 reactor in China. This could be of concern to other countries interested in purchasing nuclear reactors from China.
China has promised to “stick to the highest safety standards in the creation of what are referred to as “third generation” reactors such as the Hualong 1 and the CAP1400 designs. However, a Chinese nuclear expert at the State Nuclear Power Technology Corp said recently that “Our fatal weakness is our management standards are not high enough. There is a big gap with international standards.”
The CAP1400 was designed with the assistance of Westinghouse. It is based on the Westinghouse AP1000 reactor. China is working on a test version of the CAP1400 but work has been delayed because of technical problems.
China’s first Hualong 1 reactor is currently being planned for construction in Fujian province. If all goes well, it won’t be operational until 2020. Licenses for new reactor projects were suspended for a year while China explored the implications of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011.
China is currently consolidating nuclear technology companies to reduce waste and pool intellectual property and financial resources. Following the model it used for its high-speed rail system. After obtaining technology from Western firms, China created a huge domestic high speed rail network and now it is competing with international manufacturers of trains.
One major fear that nuclear technology companies have in the international marketplace is the fear that some national governments will subsidize nuclear technology companies, giving them an unfair advantage in the market. China has stated the intention to aid Chinese nuclear firms in gaining international market share which has aroused the concern of nuclear companies in other countries.
China has arrangements with Argentina, Turkey and South Africa to construct nuclear power reactors. An official of the China National Nuclear Corporation which is working on the Argentinean reactor recently said that China has a “huge amount of work to do” before it can compete seriously in the international nuclear marketplace. China will have to demonstrate that it can build and operate its new reactor designs before other countries will have the confidence to purchase them.
Artist’s concept of Hualong-1 nuclear power reactor:
