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.
After decades of poorly regulated nuclear weapons development and manufacturing and decades more of cleanup efforts, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in central Washington State is still one of the most radioactively polluted areas on the entire planet. Shortage of money, poor oversight and incompetence are still hampering cleanup efforts. In Russia, there is a similar legacy from the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons development around Murmansk which polluted the region’s land, rivers and water table with nuclear waste. The U.S. and the Soviet Union are the two biggest builders of nuclear weapons on Earth. However, they are not the only countries with nuclear pollution left over from nuclear weapons work.
In the U.K., the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing site was built on the Cumbria coast of northwest England in the late 1940s to produce plutonium for creating the U.K. atomic bomb. The Sellafield site is also the location of the first commercial nuclear power plant in the world. Sellafield became the storage site for spent nuclear fuel from nuclear power reactors in the U.K.
Sellafield holds four of the most dangerous stores of radioactive wastes in the world. They in the 1950s. There are four ponds and silos of nuclear waste dating back to the beginning of the nuclear age that have been designated as high priority for cleanup. These silos and ponds contain hundreds of tons of highly radioactive materials left over from more than sixty years of operation. The exact contents of the ponds and silos is unknown. The silos are cracking and leaking. The ponds are leaking into the soil. There is a risk of explosions from gases that are generated by corrosion. An accident at Sellafield could have devastating consequences for the U.K.
A private consortium was created in 2008 called the Nuclear Management Partners. They were supposed to bring “world-class expertise” to the job. Now, six years later, two of the four high priority projects are behind schedule. The three hundred foot Pile pond holds spent nuclear and other waste left over from work on nuclear weapons in the 1950s and 1960s. It was supposed to be completely drained by 2025 but a new schedule published last December now says that the pond will be cleaned up by 2030. The accompanying Pile fuel cladding silo which was filled up in 1964 was supposed to be done by 2025. The new schedule called for 2029.
Last week, the U.K. government announced that it was abandoning the privatization experiment after six years of disappointing progress. The one hundred and twenty billion dollar contract with Nuclear Management Partners has been cancelled. The cleanup project will be handled by the U.K. Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. The cleanup is now scheduled to be finished by 2120 at a cost of almost three billion dollars a year.
While I applaud the U.K. government in cancelling the consortium’s contract, I am somewhat astonished that the U.K. government thinks that they can plan for a hundred year cleanup program. There are so many looming global economic, political, social and environmental problems that the U.K. would be lucky to be able to make solid plans for the next twenty years. A one hundred years program is just a fantasy.
Sellafield Pile Cladding Silo:
The U.S. Air Force has a variety of radiation detectors that are used to detect radioactive materials that might be smuggled into the U.S. by terrorists. One detector is small enough to fit in a back pack. Other detectors are designed to be used on aircraft or container ships. When there is a possibility of radioactive materials, these detectors are used to take a “radiological fingerprint” which can identify different types of radioactive materials.
These detectors are looking for gamma rays and neutron emissions from radioactive materials. They utilize helium-3 which interacts with neutrons to produce charged particles that are easily detected. Unfortunately, the supply of helium-3 is very small and it is diminishing rapidly. Most of the U.S. supply of helium-3 has been produced through the decay of tritium.
Tritium is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen. Most hydrogen atoms consists of a proton and an electron. Deuterium is a form of hydrogen that contains a neutron as well as a proton and an electron. Tritium contains two neutrons as well as a proton and an electron. It’s nucleus is unstable and will eventually emit an electron (called beta decay) and become helium-3. The half life of tritium is about twelve years. It is only present in nature in tiny trace amounts that are produced when cosmic rays interact with hydrogen in the atmosphere. It is also recovered when nuclear weapons are decommissioned. Most of the U.S. tritium has been produced in this way. As the number of warheads being decommissioned has decreased, the production of tritium has decreased and so has the recovery of helium-3.
The supply of helium-3 is not only important for national security but it is also very important in medical uses such as cryogenics and medical imaging technology. The U.S. stopped producing helium-3 in 1988. Since the 911 attack on the U.S. demand for helium-3 for radiation detectors has been rising as the supply has been shrinking. Methods other than tritium decay can be used to produce helium-3 but they are expensive and complex. A small supply of helium-3 is available from special Canadian reactors but not enough to meet demand. Research on nuclear fusion utilizing helium-3 has been hampered by the low supply of helium-3 and skyrocketing prices.
One possible future source of helium-3 is the dust on the surface of the moon. Millions of years of bombardment of the lunar surface by the solar wind has produced tritium. It is estimated that one tenth of a metric ton of helium-3 exists on the Earth but there may be millions of metric tons of helium-3 on the Moon. The U.S. government is searching for ways of producing helium-3 and limiting the use of helium-3 but no effective solution to the shortage has been identified.
Artist’s concept of a lunar helium-3 mining operation:
The United States and Russia have huge arsenals of nuclear weapons. Since the end of the Soviet Union and the Cold War, there have been disarmament treaties between the U.S. and Russia, including several Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties (START),” which have reduced nuclear arsenals in the two nations from the tens of thousands of warheads that existed at the height of the Cold War to a few thousand each today. Russia decommissioned tens of thousands of nuclear warheads and sold the nuclear materials to the U.S. to make fuel for nuclear reactors. Until recently, the trends favored an end to the insane doctrine of “mutually assured destruction” that was the basis of the Cold War stalemate. Unfortunately for the human race, relations between the two countries have been deteriorating, exacerbated by the Russian seizure of Crimea from Ukraine in early 2014.
A senior Russian military official recently stated that “continued hostility may change the way Russia views the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.” He said that given the attitude of the United States towards Russia these days may result in Moscow changing its policies towards the treaty. On the other hand, the top Russian diplomat has said that current tensions between the U.S. and Russia will have no effect on Moscow’s disarmament program. He went on to say that START is still in effect and both the U.S. and Russia say that they are implementing its provisions. He also said that neither the U.S. nor Russia have expressed any concerns with the other nation with respect to START.
The current version of START was signed in 2011. Under its terms, the U.S. and Russia are both allowed to have a maximum of one thousand five hundred and fifty nuclear warheads and seven hundred delivery systems. Considering that there are estimates that the detonation of as few as one hundred nuclear warheads could be sufficient to cause a “nuclear winter” that would bring the end of human civilization, the START numbers seem overly generous.
In June of 2013, U.S. President Obama suggested a further reduction in nuclear arms. Russian President Putin replied that Russia could not afford to take such steps in view of U.S. weapons development and missile defense systems. Putin said that Russia will continue working on space defense as a key element of the entire Russian defense system. In spite of stiff sanctions imposed by other nations after the seizure of Crimea, Russian officials said that there would be no cuts to their military budget NATO. He said that conventional Russian forces could take on NATO forces but that if Russia were losing such a fight, he would consider unleashing tactical nuclear weapons against NATO. He has also spoken about the possibility of moving nuclear weapons into Crimea.
Both the U.S. and Russia have announced plans for upgrading their nuclear arsenals. The war of words continues as Russia slides towards economic collapse. Putin’s belligerence in Eastern Europe has helped maintain his popularity with the Russian people but threatens to start a new Cold War. Although further arms reductions seems unlikely in the near future, we can hope that someday, the huge nuclear arsenals in the U.S. and Russia will be reduced to zero.
Obama signs START 2011:
TEPCO is racing against time to process 280,000 tons of tainted water at Fukushima plant. ajw.asahi.com
Ahead of US President Barack Obama’s arrival here, India and US will seek to move decisively one more time on January 21 with a meeting of the nuclear contact group to resolve the contentious liability issue. timesofindia.indiatimes.com
