Hey Look! A Distraction!

I was always one of those kids in the background doing the very thing that my friend was being yelled at for doing by the teacher.  I just figured that if the teacher is busy getting after somebody else, then I was home free...and the funny part was that most of the time I was exactly right!  While my mom was trying to clean the mud off my brother from him rolling in the mud puddles, I could roll in the puddles all I wanted and not be disturbed!

I don't think it is quite fair to say that this is what is going on with the nuclear industry right now in the United States, but hearing of the news from earlier this week, I am getting the same kind of feeling.  If you don't know what I am talking about, you should check this article out from the Wall Street Journal.  To sum it up though, the Nuclear Regulatory Committee (NRC), which is responsible for approving the construction of new nuclear power plants, just approved the environmental studies done for two proposed reactors.  What does this mean?  For one, I WILL HAVE A JOB!  But in more general terms, it means that the nuclear industry is not dying here, as much as some people would like it to.

The reason I bring up me rolling around in the mud (other than just to give you the image of a muddy me) is because it seems that some of the tensions were lifted off of the NRC while the Fukushima event was heavy underway.  I know this seems bass ackwards, but it really does make sense.  In light of such a terrible disaster in Japan, no one in their right mind would be thinking that the NRC would give a nod of approval to be building more of these things!  Just like my mother and my teacher would not believe that someone would do something while someone else was being yelled at for the exact same thing, we did not think that the NRC would take one of the biggest steps it has taken in 30 years toward the renewal of the nuclear power industry.  Not at least while one of the industries largest incidents was taking place.  I can do nothing but applaud the NRC for the effort, as they have just made a bold statement as to exactly where the United States stands on the issue.

Needless to say, the NRC has turned some heads and there are now some key members of Congress saying that we should hold back and look at other solutions.  All I can do to them is stick my tongue out at them and wave as we continue to leave them in the dust.  The nuclear industry is out to prove the point that we can provide the most power for the cheapest production cost, and we can do it safely.  That is something that 40 year old nuclear technology has been proving in the United States for quite some time, so why not let us play with our new toys (by that I mean our new technology).  Let us build the best that the human mind has conceived about nuclear power!

I might be jumping the gun a little soon about this, but it just seems that we still have the right to show that we are Americans and we can prove the impossible.  We can harness the power of the atom safely, and we have proven it.  We are way better at it now even than we were when we built the first set of successful reactors in this country.  I hope you will join me in the sticking out of my tongue and the putting of my thumb on my nose while while wiggling my fingers at those who are saying that it can't be done.  We are Americans!  Tell us it can't be done and the last thing we will do is let you be right.  The nuclear industry is as healthy as ever, if not more now that the world's eyes are upon it.

Get your coffee because this is long, but I wrote it for you

In the swing of things, there is nothing more important than outside feedback.  We, as in the members of this class, started out with the mission of getting our message out to people that had not the foggiest idea of what we were talking about.  It didn't matter whether they had a technical background, a theater background, and athletic background, or even no background at all...we all wanted to be able to share something with anybody who would even give a sideways glance at what we were talking about.

Well, it might be that I am getting better at sharing technical information in a more digestible way, but I am not always getting the content across.  Why?  Because I just have not made people care!  Being from Mines, the first lesson you learn when trying to hit on women is that if you want them give you a nice smile, roll their eyes, and swivel in their chair back to their girlfriends all in one amazingly smooth motion, just mention a number.  I don't care who you are, the world in general does not want to get a math lesson from you.   They simply don't care!  The idea of mathematically proving a fact to someone before they will ever believe what you are saying is an idea that only resides within the scientific community.  The rest of the world only wants to hear what you have to say, they don't want to hear you prove it with data and statistics.  Operating under this assumption, I want to give you an idea of why I think that nuclear power is so important...and I want to do this without using a single number or piece of technical information.  Let's just see where this takes us.

Trying to explain something from your background to someone who does not operate in the same world as you can prove to be one of the most difficult tasks known to man.  I mean, could you imagine having to explain the idea of clock to the most isolated tribes in the Amazon jungle?  Try to tell them that when the clock states a certain symbol configuration that they have to engage in the defined activity for that symbol.  I mean, this is exactly what we do in our lives.  When the clock strikes 8:00 in the morning, we all start working.  When the clock says 12:00, we all eat.  When the clock says 5:00, we all get in our cars and go home.  It is like this little machine is driving everything that we do.  At least that is how the indigenous people of the Amazon jungle who have never seen a clock before would interpret this behavior.  To them, they work when work needs to be done, they eat when they feel hunger, and they go home when it is suitable.  They don't define themselves by a little device telling them when they should do things.  Yet, that is the only way that we can keep our society synchronized.  It is perhaps the most important organizational tool we have.

Communication is difficult when those we are communicating to don't operate by the same standards as us, and if they don't come from the same background as us.  Last week, I was involved in a series of meetings in Pueblo, Colorado where they are trying to get zoning approval for a nuclear power plant to be built.  There, I ran into a whole bunch of people who were of a different background than myself, and they were all very angry and vocal, sternly informing me that my type was a danger to their livelihoods.  Not only was this a distrust for the nuclear industry, it was also a distrust for science in general, which seems to be a growing movement as of now in the U.S., but this is a different story.

As far as me personally being a danger to them, I could never quite comprehend what they were saying.  They acted like I had no concern for human life and most of all, they acted like I was exempt from what I believed in.  It was interesting to say the least, but I really have to attribute this to a general misunderstanding.

Somewhere along the way, the scientist and engineer has made himself non-human to the world outside science.  Our world is as foreign to the rest of the world as the idea of living by a clock is to the people of the Amazon.  We are cold, calculating, and dangerous.  I can't say that we have anyone but ourselves to blame for this as I too am guilty of going to parties and spouting off facts and numbers to try and convert someone to my way of thinking.  It has not worked yet and the reason is not that people can't understand, but they won't understand!  They don't feel that it has anything to do with their humanity.

What my audience does not necessarily know about me is that I am a 22 year old boy that was born and raised in the prairie right outside Pueblo, Colorado.  My favorite place to be is outside!  Hiking, camping, fishing...you name it, I am a total outdoor nut.  My environment is one of the things that I cherish most in life, and I would dare to say that I experience it more than many of the people from Greenpeace that were trying to tell me that I didn't care about the environment.  What they don't realize is that I am on their side...at least in theory, but I will get back to that later.  I got up this morning with the sun, put on my running shoes and did five miles while enjoying the colors of the sunrise.  I then came back just like them and mixed my granola cereal with my Greek yogurt and had a healthy breakfast.  I care about my health, and I enjoy nature everyday.  Right before sitting down to write this, I went for a walk to gather some thoughts were I came across one of the biggest hawks I had ever seen.  Yet, I was the only one on the path that stopped and took time to admire what was sitting there.  Nobody else even seemed to care.  Yet, I am the nuclear engineer who gives no regard for the environment.

I love life, and I love to live it to the fullest.  Being 22 years old, I am in what most would call the reckless stage of my life, saying that I feel invincible and that I have no way to conceive of the value of my life.  Well, I would tell them that they are wrong.  I have to admit, I love to live life on the edge.  Life is about pushing yourself to the limit on 14,000+ foot tall peaks, or finding out what it is like to drive sideways doing donuts in your car, or standing outside and watching the lightning storm go over your house.  Do all these things pose risks to your health?  Of course they do, but here is a news flash for you:  Life is risky, and we are going to die!  The risks I take in life might hurt me, set me back in life, or even kill me, but it is the risks in life that give you life!  They are where you get the most benefit, even in the stock market.

We are human because we take risks.  We have a God given ability to understand the risk associated with what we do, and because of this, we are the only species in the world that deals with things that endanger us.  We don't just run away and hide like deer or rabbits, we take danger, learn to harness it and then we use it to our advantage.  We are the only species on the planet that harnesses the power of fire.  Any of you guys that have dogs, you know that they are not comfortable around fires.  Animals have a natural tendency to flea the danger that fire imposes on them, but us humans have learned how to make it work for us.  Is it still dangerous?  Of course it is!  People die in house fires every year, but at the same time life as we know it would not be possible without it.

I suppose you probably see where I am going with by now and I do apologize for the rant getting here.  It is obvious that nuclear power poses risk.  The dirty secret is that everything poses risk though.  If you are afraid of being harmed by the the nearest nuclear power plant, statistically speaking you should also be making a career out of winning the lottery and never go outside out of fear of being hit by lightning and/or meteorite.  You should also be wary of the chair you are sitting on because you never know when a screw might fail and you will end up on the floor with a concussion and the base of chair sticking through your leg.  This is is more probable than being effected they the release of radiation from a nearby nuclear power plant (especially in the U.S.).

Why is it that people are so afraid?  It is a popular media disaster for a reason.  Think about it...you have this dramatic event with "meltdowns" and "explosions" and "radiation."  It has all the visual dangers as well as the scary element of the unknown.  This killer toxic that is invisible, powerful, and undetectable to most.  I mean, when painted like that, however inaccurate it may be, it plays on people's fear of the apocalypse.  It is a danger that they can't hide from, which makes it the worst kind of danger known to man.  It is easy to see why people think that we are playing with a force beyond our control.

But the truth is that we are not.  Just like with fire which is enormously dangerous to the human being, we have learned to harness and contain the power of the atom!  There have been accidents in the past, but being human, we learn from them.  Just an update to those stuck on Chernobyl, WE ARE NOT IN THE 80s ANYMORE!  We get smarter.  Our phones are not the size and weight of a brick anymore, there are computers in almost every household, we have internet everywhere we go, our cars have all the comforts of home, we can't ever be lost due to satellite navigation...the list goes on and on.  We are in an age where technology is advancing faster than ever before.  Why would anybody think that we would want to build any more nuclear power plants with the same technology we had back then?  I am sorry, but that is just an insult to my field.

In an effort to keep my long story from getting longer, let me finish by just saying that the nuclear industry is on the same side that environmentally conscious person is on.  Claims of companies only wanting to build nuclear power plants for the purpose of profit are insane.  They have the highest investment cost and risk associated with them out of all types of power generation.  This is not because they should necessarily be more expensive than other types of power generation, but largely because of the fears associated with them.  They are at risk of having construction shut down at anytime because of fear.  They have to build all new roads for the local area and new water reservoirs and many other types infrastructure because of fear.  Not saying that this is necessarily a bad thing.  Fear is what has made nuclear power safe, and without a fear and respect for nuclear power, there would certainly be many more deaths associated with nuclear power.  The fear though has made nuclear power the safest and most reliable form of power in the United States.  This is a simple fact, though it is argued away by organizations like Greenpeace spouting that the risk it poses makes it unsafe.  Its history has clearly proved otherwise, including the Fukushima incident.

I am in nuclear engineering because I believe it is one of the best power sources we can invest in for our future as well as for the future of our environment.  Why does Greenpeace oppose nuclear power?  Well, they didn't always.  Now though, they are being influenced by some other interests.  Mainly, the nuclear power industries only rival and the current producer of most of the electricity in the world.  Let me describe it this way.  Imagine someone makes his living off giving tours of the marshland in the southern parts of Florida.  He has a boat and sells his services to local tourists.  Also living in these areas though are animals such as Manatees, which are notoriously injured and killed by the boats being used on the marshlands.  One day though, there arises a need to drain the area of the marshland that the man gives tours.  This is the place where the man has established a thriving business and without it, the man has nothing.  So what does the man do?  He starts claiming that they can't drain the marshland because it will endanger the Manatees and other life in the marsh.  Though the man is not really concerned about the well-being of the animals being that he has been harming them for years, he will use their well being to save what he has established.

This has been the role of Greenpeace over the last decade or so.  The coal industry is being threatened by the only source of power that can compete with it, the nuclear power industry.  Though the coal industry cannot claim to have cared overwhelmingly for the well being of the people around coal-fired power plants or for the preservation of the environment, they can use Greenpeace to attack the nuclear industry and keep bringing up age old arguments about how dangerous and dirty it is for the future.  I must say that this move has been brilliant and has worked remarkably well to date.

So the irony here is who is actually working for the betterment of the future.  Greenpeace has claimed to be an organization dedicated to protecting the future of our environment as well as our safety.  They though are playing to the needs of the coal industry to help it keep on top.  Due to this, people like me, that is to say people going into the nuclear field, have been painted as dangerous and uncaring.  Yet, I know that I am going into the field because I know this is where we need to be to do the best thing for the world we live in.  I am not a technical expert in nuclear engineering, but at student.  All I am doing here is sharing my humble beliefs and I hope that you will take them from one environmentally conscious person to another.  Beyond politics, beyond science, and beyond beliefs there are some truths, but truth is always relative which leads us back to politics and belief.  Only science holds there to be absolute truths, but this is just another clock to our society.  It is totally foreign.  All I can do is give you a little of how I see it and maybe, just maybe you learned something about the nuclear industry here.  I just hope that I spark a little interest...I as you to open your mind and listen to more than fear.  I don't ask you to become technically fluent as that is ridiculous, but I ask that you listen to the opinions of the people trained in the nuclear field.  They are the ones that know the most about nuclear power and nobody else.  If you see them running, then I suggest you try to keep up, but until then, while they are still working headlong into the challenge of using the worlds most powerful resource, I hope that you might see there is some worth in it.

Fukushima: Just a quick update

So now it has been almost two weeks since that 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Japan.  I am still a little hesitant to make statements about the future of nuclear power at this point, but I do want to fill you guys in on some of the developments that have happened over the last week at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

If you haven't noticed, the media has seemed to move on past the nuclear incident.  I guess the media doesn't seem to think that the nuclear incident at Fukushima will result in the killing of thousands and thousands of people anymore.  The talking heads are not going to win any awards for their coverage on the situation there, so they have gone on with it.  We are now getting better coverage of what has always been more important.  I am glad the media is now getting the proper perspective and the people that deserve the attention are now getting it.  Though I do suppose that the situation in Libya has also given them a convenient way to veer away from Fukushima.  Just shows the attention span of the mass television media.  Sorry, I shouldn't sit here and cry over spilled milk.

So is the situation at Fukushima over yet?  Well, the short answer to that is no.  There are still a lot of concerns to be dealt with there.  The difference is that the media buzzwords are getting less and less meaningful.  A meltdown is no longer eminent, and we are getting the truth on what the radiation levels being measured mean.  All in all, the danger element is not near as high as I think the media would like it to be, so they are finding something with a little more action...like Libya.

Yesterday, power was restored to all the reactors.  This was a major victory in restoring cooling to reactors, but it is not the final step.  There are a lot of inspections that need to be completed to make sure that the system is safe to start again.  The last thing they want to do is further damage the cooling system by starting it when it is not ready.  What we must also keep in mind is that the reactor is now much cooler than it was last week.  Remember that the heat in the reactor cores was due to the decaying fission products?  Well even if you didn't, these fission products have largely decayed away, meaning the heat being produced in the reactor is thousands of times less than it was right after the loss of power.  The danger is no longer in the reactor it seems.

Right now, the concern is that the pools with the spent fuel rods remain full of water.  These are what we have seen the fire trucks spraying water at the last few days.  They have been successful so far in keeping the levels suitable over the past week, but now that the thermometers in the pools are once again working, we will finally be able to know what is actually happen there.

There have been rumors that there has been a reactor vessel breech, but what we are seeing from the measurements of radioactivity do no support this.  If there was a breech in the reactor vessel, we would expect to see core fission products such as cobalt-60 as well as core elements such as uranium and maybe even plutonium in the area near the reactors.  These just simply have not been observed, which gives us some confidence that the reactor containment vessels are intact.  This is encouraging and gives us some testament as to how well they were designed.

As far as the measured radiation levels near the Fukushima power plant, I don't think we have to worry about many health dangers.  For further discussion on this, I want to point you to a wonderful page that Dr. Jeffrey King has put together on facebook.  He does a great job giving a fair assessment toward the radiation releases at the plant.  I also want to point out that Dr. Schneider is also posting a lot of good articles on the site about how the nuclear industry is communicating about the event.  If you want to really learn what is going on at Fukushima, invest some time and read through what has been posted by several of the nuclear and radiation safety experts here at Mines. 

If you want a good visual to understand what radiation doses mean and what will cause health effects, I want to point you toward a great chart that XKCD put together.  And yes, the consensus among the experts here say that it is accurate.  It just gives you an idea as to how small the radiation doses being measured there are compared to what is considered to have any health effects.  To me, it is just an illustration of how little people know about radiation.  It is a scary word, and any presence of radiation to most is dangerous.  In fact, this is not true and the dangers of the radiation released at Fukushima are really low.  Even if you were in the fallout area, it appears that you would have to eat on the order of 100 gallons of contaminated dirt to get your yearly allowed dose (as pointed out by Dr. King on the facebook page).  It is pretty ridiculous to say that this is the most dangerous situation that the people of Japan are facing.

Let's not forget the destroyed petrochemical plants and industrial plants that did not have near the containment abilities of the nuclear power plants.  They were not so successful in containing their toxic waste, and now it is spilled all over the coast of Japan.  I think this says something for the regulations the nuclear industry faces.  It might be a more dangerous way of producing power, but when regulated properly, it seems that it can be safer than those that are considered less risky, something pointed out by the disaster in Japan.

Sorry that I don't have many answers for you guys now as to what actually happened.  We don't know to what extent the cores melted, nor are we 100% sure that the containment vessel is totally intact.  The truth is that these questions will take a lot of time to answer.  The only way to see if the reactor cores are still intact is to open the containment vessel, which can only be done when the reactor has been completely cooled.  Keep in mind that it was years before they were able to observe the core at Three Mile Island.  I will be sure to update as we know more about the situation, but it will be slow...so slow that I don't think it will keep the public's interest.  Such is anything with science though.

The biggest news now will be to follow how this alters nuclear power's growth in the world.  I don't want to go get too deep into it now as I will definitely in future posts, but I tend to remain hopeful about the future.  I think that the American people are smart enough to sort out what the risks and benefits are.  We have many more media outlets than we had after the Three Mile Island incident, and the people are following them.  Now that the people are looking, we just need to get out there and tell them what we have to say.  This moment is nothing more than an opportunity!

I hope that you all will continue to keep the people of Japan in your hearts.  They are truly an amazing culture and have done an amazing job at keeping calm (calmer than the rest of the world) in the face of such a tragedy.  Let's continue to support them as they move toward restoring their livelihoods.

Self Evaluation 2

Hey guys, sorry for the interruption again here, but it is once again time to attend to some class room logistics.  Just skip over this post if it does not pertain to you.

Fukushima: What I Know and What I Think

For the last week, I have been glued to a computer trying to find some accurate information on the Fukushima reactors.  Believe me, it is extremely difficult to come by for even someone who knows what they are looking for.  I really don't know how any normal person could sit down and try and figure out what is going on there.

Today has been kind of a fork in the road it seems for the media.  It seems that those news outlets that are intent on fear mongering and predicting the worst are getting worse.  They are hyping up their rhetoric and calling this an apocalypse, even though the situation has changed little since yesterday.  I can't say this wasn't to be expected though and I know that it will continue.  Fortunately it seems that a lot of the media is starting to take the time to learn what all this means.  They are asking questions like "what does a nuclear meltdown mean?" and "how much radiation is bad for us?" and these seem to really be changing the attitude among rational thinkers.

Today I just wanted to share what I have been able to make of the news coming out of Japan right now.  There is a lot of the mainstream television media that seems to be predicting the worst and using exercises of caution to prove that something is going to happen.  They are claiming that the reactors are out of water and that the meltdown is imminent.  I have to admit that they have the world watching.  Fortunately for the rest of us, I think what we see will only disappoint our natural desire to watch disaster.

The last official report that I can find came out yesterday afternoon.  As of then, it seems that reactor No. 3 had the lowest water levels, which was leaving about 1.9 meters of the core above the water line.  This is roughly six feet of the core for those of you that don't like dealing in metric units.  The other reactors are in better condition than this, most of them significantly better. 

Reactor No. 3 was also causing concern about its containment vessel being breached after being rocked by several hydrogen explosions.  As of the official report yesterday from the plant, the workers state that the possibility of the containment vessel being breached was extremely low.  The pressures in the reactors are also under control, much more so than the days right after the earthquake.

Being that the water levels are low around the reactor cores, I am sure that the cores have experienced some melting.  This just means that the uranium inside the fuel rods gets hot enough that it melts.  Prior to this happening though, the cladding containing the fuel pellets will melt first, which will cause the fuel pellets to fall into the water.  This was also designed to happen in case of low water levels. 

What does the melting mean as far as risk?  Well, not that much.  I must again point out how strong the containment vessels around the reactors are.  In case of a full meltdown, it is highly unlikely that containment vessel could be breached.  The plants were built to contain any core disaster inside that vessel, and that is what we are seeing so far.

Many people think that helicopter crews are making last ditch efforts to dump water into the reactor by dowsing the reactor as they fly over.  Well, this is just simple misinformation.  Again, the reactors are sealed and closed.  We can't get to them to simply dump water into them, which is a good thing as far as risk from the core goes.  The media seems scared of images of helicopters flying over the sight dowsing the sight with water because this is what was seen at Chernobyl.  There, the reactor had no containment vessel and blew its lid off when it flash boiled the water inside.  This made it open to the atmosphere and helicopter crews were used to drop neutron absorbing materials into the blaze to try and stop the reaction.  Such is simply not the case here.

What people are seeing with the helicopters are efforts to keep the stored fuel closed.  At the Fukushima reactors, the spent fuel rods are stored in pools directly above the reactors.  Due to limited space in Japan, the fuel is stored perhaps in too tight of quarters, meaning that when the water level gets low, the fuels can begin to heat up.  Because of this, the water level in the pools must be maintained, which is what the helicopters are trying to do by dumping water into the pools.  Unfortunately, the pools are large enough that their efforts are kind of like spitting in the lake.  I have seen estimates that it would take more than sixty helicopter drops to raise the water level in one of the pools by one meters.  Instead, ground crews are now working using large hoses and pumps to move water in the ponds.  The water temperatures in the ponds are not yet to boiling and efforts are trying to keep the situation this way.  Incidentally, most of the radiation release so far from the sight has been from water evaporating from these pools.  This is only low level radiation though, not considered dangerous to the public's health.

As far as bringing an end to the situation, there does seem to be light at the end of the tunnel.  Crews have been working to establish a new direct power line to the Fukushima reactors.  It is not said when the line is to be completed, but I read that the line is near completion and will be tried as soon as possible.  The new power lines will then be able to run the cooling pumps that should have maintained the reactor in the first place.  Once reliable cooling has been established, any fears of further mass release of radiation will be over.  We just hope that the pumps work when the power is restored.  This would be one of the few strokes of luck that workers have had though since the earthquake occurred.

As far as the radiation currently escaping from the plant, I know little.  It seems that the maximum dose rate measured at the front gate of the Fukushima facility was 1,530 micro sieverts per hour.  This seems like a large number, but it really is not.  Doing a little more research shows that a single chest CT scan yields a dose of about 6,900 micro sieverts (h/t to Rod Adams at Atomic Insights).  We are not talking about dangerous levels here, and this is at the sight itself.  As for now, it seems a little ridiculous to even talk about evacuating Tokyo, but the news makes sure to present this as a possibility.

I want to be honest here and say that we don't know for sure what will play out at Fukushima.  I can't predict the future.  There is a chance that some of the public is exposed to low level radiation.  There is a smaller chance that there might be a larger release of radiation that could make people sick.  There is even a chance of a catastrophic failure there that could kill many, but this same chance exists every day.  As a scientist, I can't ever say that there is never this chance, but I can say the risk is extremely small.  This is what the public doesn't always understand about the way scientists speak.  There is always a finite chance there is disaster, but how small of chance allows for the disaster to materialize?  That is often up for debate, but I just want to you realize a little about how scientists and engineers talk.

As for me, I still believe that the public will be exposed to only low levels of radiation, and most of the public near Fukushima will not even see that.  I know that some of the core has probably started to melt and I can see more of this happening in the next couple days.  The industry has planned for this though as required by international guidelines.  We have learned from mistakes of the past and we chose not to repeat them in the future.  This is why there has not been a significant release of radiation yet at Fukushima.

I want to leave you with a little bit of material for you to think about and perhaps motivate what you think about the situation down the road.  Mankind has always been an engineering society.  We build bridges that fall down and then we learn why they failed and build them again.  We build the Titanics of the world, but we don't stop building boats because of a failure.  We learn to put lifeboats on board and then we move on.  Our ancestors did not stop progressing because of their failures, and I think just as much as it is our duty to hand our children a better world, we need to hand our children our progress to build off of.  If we don't do that, we have failed.  Let's build an understanding from the situation and not let fear shut us down.  There is a reason we are the superior race on the planet.

Now that I have your attention...

It is my spring break this week and what a week it has been.  We were instructed to step away from our blogs for a week and relax over break, but I just can't take being silent anymore.  I was tempted to do some writing earlier this week, but I figured being caustic and bitter is not a good way to get people to listen.  I had to get my own emergency cooling systems working as well before I delved into any commenting (as some people on facebook would probably agree).

Lets just say that this week has been eventful enough that I now have enough material to write for the rest of the semester.  One thing that I can say is that the week has not been filled with facts, but it has been filled with plenty of attention to the industry.  Whether it is a good thing or not?  Most people would say that this will be the death of the nuclear industry.  I am way to optimistic for that kind of behavior.  I want to go out on a limb and say that maybe this disaster will be good for getting the public on our side if we play our cards right.

I can't go on without saying that my thoughts and prayers are with the Japanese people at this time.  They are undergoing one of the worst natural disasters that recorded human history has ever seen, and I don't think that we yet fully comprehend the extend of the damage done by the earthquake and tsunami.  It is going to be a long road of hardship and tragedy, but if anybody has enough pride to get back up from this, it is the Japanese people.  I hope I speak with the country when I say that we are here to do anything we can in aiding them.

I don't really want to sit here and tell you about the technical details of the situation in Japan.  It has been an interesting media situation over the last few days though in the way that they are showing their true weakness when it comes to technical reporting.  I have never heard so much miss use of technical terms and gross interpretations of technical data.  It hurts to watch and has resulted in a large bruise on my forehead as I have been banging my head against the wall since last Friday night.  I don't believe for a second though that all the misinformation being reported though is a result of a lack of technical ability in the mass media staff.  There are so many colorful pictures and vast quantities of informative material suitable for a layperson out there that it is almost silly.  We must remember that this is an industry that has faced an uphill battle with the general public from the beginning.  They have been creating material to depict accurate information for a long time.

So why do we get all this bad information about "nuclear meltdowns" and "concentrated radiation releases"?  I think the only accurate explanation is that the information we receive is just the mass media showing its bias and it ability to fear monger.  I thought the media was blowing it out of proportion over the weekend with the initial coverage of the situation.  Well, my perspective changed Monday morning when the media A crew took hold of the reigns again.  Watching Peter Jennings, Matt Lauer, and Meredith Vieira Monday was enough to almost make me begin writing out my last will and testament.  Personally, I don't think that I can respect what these folks say on any issue in the future given their efforts over the last week on the Fukushima incident.

Again, I don't want to over run you here with technical information about the situation at the plant in Fukushima, though I will probably do a future post doing just that.  If you are interested in more of the technical side of what is going on, I urge you to check out a wonderfully done article at the Brave New Climate site.  This is the best article on the situation that I have seen to date.  I do want to say one thing to you though concerning the technical side.  It is important to understand the containment vessels for the reactors when talking about a nuclear incident.  I encourage you to not take my word for it, but to do your own research on what a containment vessel is and how it works.  Quite fascinating and genius in my opinion.  They really show that nuclear engineers are thinking of the worst case scenarios when the reactors are designed, but of course you don't hear about this in the news. 

Anyway, what the containment vessel is designed to do in the case a meltdown is stop the fuel from inducing the so called "China syndrome."  In other words, we don't want the fuel to melt away through the ground.  So we place several layers to stop the meltdown.  The first layer of the containment vessel under the reactor is designed to catch and separate the molten core material.  Separating the material reduces the neutron flux in the material and stops fission from taking place.  The next layer is composed largely of Boron which stops the reaction entirely.  Not the reaction has stopped and the fuel has been spread out so that it will cool, meaning that it will no longer melt through the ground.  The fuel simply slumps to the bottom of the containment vessel, never coming close to even the inner steel lining of the vessel.  In the case of Fukushima, the reactor has been shut down for days and thus the meltdown would not be a full power meltdown like the vessels are designed to take.  The meltdown would thus be easily contained without ever releasing any of the molten core into the environment.  If the vessel is breached like some are saying has happened at one of the reactors at Fukushima, we are still not releasing the core into the environment.  A crack in the vessel will mainly just allow some radioactive water vapor out or at worst a small amount of particulates.  The molten core would be contained at the bottom of the vessel, which was not the case for Chernobyl which had no containment vessel.  I just put this out has "what if" type of statement as I personally don't see the six inches of steel lining the core and the meters of concrete surrounding that being breached by small hydrogen explosions.  Only time will tell though...

That is enough rambling on that though.  Coming back to my point, you are probably perplexed as to how I could possibly think that this could be a good thing for the industry.  I mean, it has given a platform for anti-nuclear activists to stand up and shout from and so far the main stream media has done a good job at supporting their efforts.  Being the optimist that I am though, I can't believe that the general public is so naive as to blindly believe what they hear.

We are living in the information age.  What we hear on the news can be instantly proven wrong with a few clicks on the computer.  Real experts are allowed to comment 24 hours a day and the debate can take place in real time.  There is a lot of information out there to sort through, but it is there.  So what is the news on Fukushima doing?  It is causing people to look for information on nuclear power!  My dad has raised me on the philosophy that "bad publicity is better than no publicity."  Does the information that people are being inundated with have to be accurate?  Absolutely not!  It is driving people to learn though, which is impossible to do in a stagnant situation.  I have been working on the blog for half a semester now and I am finding that getting a hold on someone's interest is darn near impossible when the subject is technical.  Unfortunately, a disaster is really good at doing just that.

I know that the public's interest on a disaster is about as long as that of the Tsetse fly and that people's interest will move on from the subject long before the reactors at Fukushima are under control, but for the time being, the industry has an education opportunity.  I mean, why are you reading this now?  Were you near as interested in modern nuclear reactor safety last week?  My guess for most people is that you didn't care near as much last week whether you were for or against nuclear power.  Now the general public is out their researching what it is and how they are safe.  I am sure a lot of people against nuclear power will just sink further into their positions, but there are those that will learn the facts of the debate and that is what is valuable.  Then again as my good friend Andrew Bacino likes to tell me, "Bringing facts to political debate is like bringing a knife to a gun fight."

Nuclear Reactors for My Modular Home

There is a lot of buzz going on today about a recurring idea in the nuclear industry.  The truth is that what are known as "modular reactors" are not new to the nuclear power scene, but they are being though of as a viable solution to the factors stopping the growth of the industry.  Is it true that we could be looking at the magic bullet for the energy problems?  Personally I don't think so, but let me explain myself.

A modular reactor is exactly what it sounds like.  It is a small reactor that is built as a "module" in a factory and then shipped from the factory to the site where it is installed.  For a general rundown on what they are, this article from MIT covers them pretty well.  Small module reactors (SMR's) are prefabricated exactly like a modular home, and in many ways follows much of the same strategy.  Modular homes are popular because they provide sometimes high quality homes at a low cost.  Why are they low cost?  It is not because of cheap materials or poor craftsmanship (which if you don't believe just visit some of the modern prefabricated housing - they are really beautiful homes), but they achieve a lower cost by streamlining the production.  A crew doesn't have to be sent to location and tasks best done in a factory don't have to be taken into the field.  Doing this, production is standardized and thus is made faster and more cost effective.

What we must remember though is that the power industry is an economy of scale.  In other words, it gets cheaper to produce electricity as we produce more of it.  So how can it actually be more cost effective to build smaller reactors?  Well, the answer to that is that they are not really more cost effective as far as the price per megawatt hour produced.  To build the standard 1000 megawatt plus reactor, it runs roughly $10 billion, maybe even more depending on circumstances.  The SMR's usually produce around 100 megawatts and can cost upwards of $2 billion.  Granted, this cost will drastically reduce when the process is standardized and we move beyond the research phase, but this is still an expensive endeavor.

The problem is that at a cost of over $10 billion, only the very biggest of the energy companies can even think about investing in nuclear power.  Even they, though, don't want to invest in something so risky and where they can't recoup any of the cost for up to ten years.  This is where the SMR's are coming into the picture.  They don't produce the power of the large nuclear power plants, but they also don't require such a gamble.  $2 billion is much more affordable that $10 billion, and the production time on the SMR's is roughly three years currently, which means that they can start making money from the reactor much sooner than a full size power plant.  It seems as though the SMR's offer a solution to the large capitol investment required to build a nuclear power plant.

Many are hoping for an advantage on the regulatory side of the picture as well.  The Nuclear Regulatory Committee (NRC) must currently license and permit every reactor that is proposed today.  This is a long process as the NRC must approve each individual design, each site for the design, and watch over the production of plant, permitting each step along the way.  This is part the regulatory nightmare that the nuclear industry faces.  The module reactors though offer a different way of construction.  All the sudden the design will be standardized and the production of the reactors will be uniform.  The NRC will not have to permit different designs for every site, but now just one design.  The construction process will be centralized which will allow for the production to be standardized under regulation.  This just seems to all be common sense to me, but here is where we run into problems.

Maybe you will see things differently than me, but read this NRC release on the licensing of SMR's.  It seems that the NRC is definitely willing to look into how SMR's should be treated differently than the larger nuclear power plants, but at the same time they seem to give the same "we'll see" kind of statements that a small boy gets from his mother when they talk about modifying the licensing and permitting process for SMR's.  In other words, just like we all know that when your mother told you "we'll see" meant that it wasn't going to happen, I fear that the NRC isn't sincere in making it easier to operate these reactors.  Though they will be smaller, safer, and pose less risk to the general public, they will still be held to the same standards as the large plants.  This will drastically raise the cost of producing the SMR's, and thus take them away as our magic bullet to the energy solution.  Though we are improving the technology, government just doesn't seem to budge to allow progress in this case.  This was mentioned at the end of the MIT article, and I have also heard it from professors here at school.  It seems that those in the nuclear industry are not holding their breath for this one.

Don't get me wrong though.  I really think that the SMR's are a great way for people to gain trust in the industry.  They are safe and feature new technology not yet incorporated into running reactors.  The research and development that has occurred so far in producing the SMR's has vitalized the nuclear power industry recently and give us a little taste of the potential that a little competition offers.  I believe that nuclear power offers much more potential than we even see now, but we still need a reason to develop it.  The fear society has toward it today is killing our progress.

Nuclear Burnup? Sounds Scary!

If you haven't figured it out by now, I like to engage people around me in discussions about nuclear power.  In fact, people probably get frustrated that I do this to them all the time, but I do find it an effective way of getting people to understand.  Anyway, I was concerned the other day when I was talking with a friend the other day and he pointed out something that I just realized probably scares people a lot.  Let me show you what I was able to discern.

 

This is the common image that we are fronted with everyday when it comes to nuclear power.  Knowing at what I am looking at though, I never stopped to think about what these types of images are portraying to people.  What I have always missed is the "smoke" coming out of the cooling towers!  No, it is not smoke.  It is actually water vapor that is due to the cooling water.  Like in coal-fired plants, water must be boiled to turn a turbine to create electricity.  Not all the heat is taken out of the water though into electricity.  This means that the water is still too hot to let run down a river when the plant is done with it.  The water must be cooled so that it does not hurt the environment.  The steam coming out of these stacks is a product of that.  I can easily see their being room now for a large misunderstanding here.

People live in fear about nuclear materials everyday.  The worst type of disaster we could have according to most would be a widespread radioactive contamination from something such as a dirty bomb.  The truth is that radiation is not understood well by the public and thus it is feared.  A dirty bomb would not actually be effective in creating a massive contamination, but it does create a lot of fear.  This is where it is effective.

In the nuclear power world, we often times are shooting ourselves in the foot.  We use terms like "nuclear burnup" to describe the fuel cycle, even though what we are talking about has nothing to do with burning nuclear material.  Actually, nuclear material does not even burn!  Again, a nuclear reactor works off fission, not combustion.  I have mentioned this before.  What are we referring to when we talk about burnup?  Well, when the enriched uranium is put in the reactor, it begins to undergo fission.  The fissile part (the U-235) begins to be "used up" as the reactor runs.  The burnup of the reactor just simply talks about how "used up" a reactor is.  Though this would be a much better way to talk about the subject, we continue to talk like we are burning uranium.

What does this do for us?  It makes people believe that the steam coming out of the cooling towers is radioactive smoke being released into the atmosphere.  So much for the zero emissions claims that nuclear power makes!  Can we blame people though?  We talk with terms that have different connotations and expect people to understand what we are talking about.  Communication again seems to be the problem here. 

Yes, Coal is Radioactive

 On my everlasting quest to show that nuclear power is more feared than it should be, I found an interesting article this week that was published in Scientific American.  I loved this article because it put everything in an interesting perspective!

As children, we used to laugh at my father's stories of living near a nuclear power plant.  He used to talk of three eyed fish and all the weird things that people associate with radioactivity from nuclear power.  My dad, of course, only told these stories for the humor in them, but I fear that there are many people out there that believe surrounding areas of nuclear power plants receive large amounts of radiation dose.  Well, try this view of things to put the situation in perspective.

I have mentioned in earlier posts that nuclear materials exist in much of the Earth's crust.  Uranium is found everywhere in Colorado, and isotopes of uranium, thorium, and even plutonium are found naturally in many rocks all over the world.  This, as it should be no surprise, does not exclude coal.  Both uranium and thorium are naturally found in coal, though their concentrations are not really high enough to have an effect on us.  That is, until we find a way to concentrate them.

 How would this happen?  Well, we burn hundreds of thousands of tons of coal each day in coal-fired power plants.  We burn off the carbon in the coal but the other elements remain, including the uranium and the thorium!  When the carbon is burned off, the uranium and thorium reach concentration levels ten times of what naturally occurs.  This can start to cause an effect on the surrounding area.

Coal-fired power plants are allowed to release the "fly ash" as it is known straight into the environment.  This means that coal-fired plants are exposing the population surrounding the plant to radiation.  How much exactly?  Well, studies on the bones of people that have lived near coal-fired plants show radiation doses of about 18 millirem.  This is a unit of dose used in radiological assessment, which you don't need to be familiar with now to understand my point.  To put it in context, people living around nuclear power plants only show doses of about 3 millirem, six times less than near coal-fired plants!  If farming is occurring near the coal-fired plants and growth is occurring in ash rich soil, people consuming the produce could be exposed anywhere from 50 to 200 times more than a person just living near a nuclear plant.

This sounds bad, but it really is not.  The average annual dose measured for people near the coal plant seems to be about 1.9 millirem per year.  The background dose alone for the normal person - meaning the dose you receive from the sun, bananas, and anything else you might come in contact with - measures about 360 millirem per year.  Thus, the dose from living near a coal-fired power plant is not that large.  On the other hand, it just makes a strong statement about how little the dose is from nuclear power plants.

I know that people are afraid of having nuclear power plants in their backyard, but I think this is just left over hysteria from the past.  The facts say that life near a nuclear power plant does not involve mutant babies or glowing three eyed fish.  It is actually quite safe!  Just as an extra little tidbit, the crew on board a nuclear power submarine is exposed to less radiation than the average person living on land gets from the sun.  This is despite the fact that they are living within close quarters to a nuclear reactor for months at a time.  I don't know about you, but I am really not that worried about it.