Dear Readers,
It's been almost a year since my last newsletter, although I did post a few
comments online (URL's below). But I have been busy: In the meantime, I created
nearly 300 animations illustrating what happens when people don't wear masks
(they spew Coronavirus). These animations have been viewed on Twitter more than
a million times.
Currently I've been tested for CoViD six times, all clean. However, last fall a
blood test revealed I have Mantle Cell Lymphoma, and I've been getting
chemotherapy treatments about once per month. So far, so good. Three more
treatments to go, and then, hopefully, a stem cell transplant if all goes well.
If not, my wife will let you know...
Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA
Items in this newsletter:
(1) The Hundred Year Nuclear War Against the Environment
(2) URLs for recent essays
(3) How much Tritium is in San Onofre's concrete domes?
(4) Three Tritium essays from 2004, 2006 and 2007
(5) How long does radiation last?
(6) Spent Fuel Fires and Criticality Events
(7) Atomic Veterans and Atomic Victims
(8) EIGHT SIMPLE RULES for protecting your heart
(9) Newsletter authorship notes
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(1) The Hundred Year Nuclear War Against the Environment:
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On January 21, 2021, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission will hold an
all-day virtual public hearing on the insane proposal to extend nuclear power
plant licenses to 100 years from the current maximum of 80 years, which is
already double the original life expectancy the plants were designed for: A
maximum of 40 years. The NRC is doing this not because it's safe or logical,
but because it's cheaper and easier than trying to build a new reactor. Also
because in some states, such as California, new reactors are forbidden until an
out-of-state permanent nuclear waste repository is established and operating.
(Never mind that each so-called "refueling" actually places a NEW
REACTOR (or at least 1/3rd of a new reactor) inside the reactor pressure
vessel, but who's quibbling?)
Recently, famed investigative reporter Karl Grossman published an article about
the proposal to extend the reactor licenses to 100 years. The article is well
worth reading ahead of the NRC meeting and is available online here:
https://www.nationofchange.org/2020/12/31/nrc-considers-extending-nuclear-power-plant-operating-licenses-to-100-years/
Additionally, here are some other things to consider:
One of the times San Onofre had to shut down was because a thick cable (as I
recall it was over two inches thick) finally gave out after about 30 years --
gave out because it was squished between the floor and the refrigerator-size
breakout box it was connected to -- it had been installed carelessly and took
decades to fail, but fail it did, eventually.
Also at SanO, the thickness of one of the main steam pipes to the generators
had significantly worn over the years, as much as 90% of its thickness had been
lost in some parts. But the steam-pipe deterioration wasn't noticed until after
the plant had permanently closed due to recently-replaced steam generators
vibrating and leaking.
At all reactors, there are only a certain number of sample slugs inside each
Reactor Pressure Vessel. These slugs are supposed to be removed one by one over
time for destructive testing, in order to judge how well the RPV is holding up.
How can they run the reactors safely if these slugs are all used up?
The containment domes were never designed to be strong enough to withstand
large airplane strikes, despite initial assurances in the aftermath 9/11. Over
time, the cement and iron rebar have been bombarded by radiation, and have been
weathering for many decades. It is unlikely they are as strong as they used to
be.
And lastly, nobody is left who was around during the design and fabrication of
the reactors. The plans have all been removed from local libraries and
universities, and instead are only available in Bethesda, Maryland. Nobody
knows where all the wires go anymore. More than 90% of each reactor simply
cannot be inspected even if they wanted to! Reactors operate on a
"fix-on-fail" basis because it's cheaper then pro-active
repair/replacement.
=================================================
(2) URLs for recent essays:
=================================================
These essays have not been distributed in this newsletter before:
Small Modular Reactors: Stupid 20 years ago when they were first considered,
even stupider now. (Sept., 2020):
https://acehoffman.blogspot.com/2020/09/small-modular-reactors-stupid-20-years.html
Reprocessing benefits no one in the long run... (Sept., 2020):
https://acehoffman.blogspot.com/2020/09/reprocessing-benefits-no-one-in-long-run.html
Can spent nuclear fuel be transported safely in America with the current
procedures and standards? No! (Sept., 2020):
https://acehoffman.blogspot.com/2020/09/can-spent-nuclear-fuel-be-transported.html
Is San Onofre's plan to inspect the dry cask nuclear waste storage sufficient?
NO! (Oct., 2020):
https://acehoffman.blogspot.com/2020/10/is-san-onofres-plan-to-inspect-dry-cask.html
=========================================
(3) How much Tritium is in San Onofre's concrete domes?
=========================================
The concrete dome of a typical nuclear power plant contains approximately
500,000 cubic feet of concrete (about 18,000 cubic yards). A cubic foot of
concrete weighs about 150 pounds, so a typical nuclear reactor dome contains
approximately 32 billion grams of concrete.
Tritium appears in the concrete in two ways: Some tritium is absorbed or
adsorbed into the concrete from inside the containment dome.
Some tritium is created within the concrete from neutron
absorption by lithium atoms which then decay, creating a tritium atom in the process.
Rolphton, a small early experimental CANDU reactor in Canada, had
concentrations of tritium in its concrete containment structure as high as
82,000 Bq per gram when measured in the early 1990s (1), after operating from
1962 to 1987. The Rolphton reactor was about 22 Megawatts, or about 1/50th the
size of San Onofre's reactors. The San Onofre reactors operated for about the
same length of time as the Rolphton reactor.
U.S. Light Water Reactors produce about 1/30th as much tritium as CANDU
reactors (and release about 1/20th as much into the environment while
operating).
A single Bq is one radioactive decay per second. The half-life of tritium is
about 12.3 years. For reference, the average 70 kg human gets about 5,000 Bq of
radiation from internal K-40 (2).
During decommissioning, the tritium can get released a number of ways: If the
concrete is heated to a high temperature (perhaps while cutting rebar apart)
then tightly bound tritium can get released. At lower temperatures around the
boiling point of water, loosely bound tritium can be released. Also, during
crushing of the cement, tritium can more easily migrate out of the cement into
the atmosphere.
(1) Ian Fairlie, letter to Roger Johnson
(2) K-40 value from Health Physics Society web site.
===========================================
(4) Three Tritium essays from 2004, 2006 and 2007:
===========================================
These three essays were inspired by a suggestion to learn about, and write
about, Tritium by Dr. Helen Caldicott. They were written with the help of Dr.
Marion Fulk, a tritium expert who worked at Lawrence Livermore National Labs in
Berkeley, California (mistakes, however, are surely mine):
2004:
Tritium -- A response to Mr. Richard Warnock's published comments in the North
County Times:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/onofre/2004/TritiumComments%2020041223.htm
2006:
Tritium Explained (why "Low Level Radiation" can be
disproportionately harmful):
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environment/tritium/2006/EPATritiumStandard.htm
2007:
It's all about the DNA:
https://www.animatedsoftware.com/environment/tritium/2007/ItsAllAboutTheDNA.htm
===========================================
(5) How long does radiation last?:
===========================================
The first large, intentional release of man-made radiation was the Trinity
blast in New Mexico in the summer of 1945, prior to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki
bombs. Nuclear explosions release a lot of radiation: Millions of curies. But
Trinity only released a tiny fraction -- probably less than 1% -- of the
radioactivity that a nuclear power plant creates *every day*.
Yet, more than 75 years after the Trinity blast lit up the morning sky, the
blast site in New Mexico is *still* "hot." (See quote, below.)
----------------------------------------
From:
https://www.atomicarchive.com/history/trinity/radiation.html
"Radiation levels in the fenced, ground zero area are low. On an average
the levels are only 10 times greater than the region's natural background radiation.
A one-hour visit to the inner fenced area will result in a whole body exposure
of one-half to one milliroentgen."
----------------------------------------
===========================================
(6) Spent Fuel Fires and Criticality Events:
===========================================
A spent fuel fire at the San Onofre Nuclear Waste Dump can be worse than a
reactor meltdown: It can release more radioactivity, especially if it involves
a criticality event. And that's always a possibility because any used reactor
fuel fire can result in physical damage to the reactor spent fuel assemblies.
Each assembly weighs about two tons. There are 20 to 30 (or more)
assemblies in each dry cask, and each assembly is comprised of several hundred long
thin tubes. Each tube is filled with a hundred or more pellets of Uranium fuel.
Reactor fuel assemblies are typically about 12 feet long.
All these tubes of pellets need to be kept carefully apart. And that's not easy
if anything happens which deforms the entire container, such as by crushing it.
This could happen if one of hundreds of bridges it will eventually travel on
collapses as it travels across the bridge or if the bridge itself falls on the
transport cask when the spent reactor fuel train or truck passes underneath.
Perhaps by an act of terrorism: Violent white supremacists have long fantasized
about attacking a nuclear facility. Spent fuel is the softest target,
especially during transport.
And assuming they do get moved some time in the future, how safe are these
containers during transport, what with fuel oil and chemical cars roll back and
forth on the same routes that would be used for nuclear shipments? They are
bound to be on adjacent rails or roads many times as 10,000 or more used
reactor fuel canisters are moved throughout the country.
These shipments must be made in secret (for security reasons). So you can't
disrupt the usual rail traffic very much, or terrorists would know a shipment
is going to occur.
There is plenty of risk even when the spent fuel container is not traveling on
the open roads or rails. Terrorists can place explosives inside the large air
gap between the spent fuel cask and the cement "cocoon" that
surrounds it. A jet aircraft impact can also deform a canister, as
well as earthquakes and asteroids -- and everything in between.
Keeping the spent fuel pellets apart if a fire occurs (such as after a jet
aircraft impact) is not easy, because the tubes or ("cladding") that
contains the uranium pellets are made of an alloy of zirconium (sometimes
called "zircalloy") which, once lit, burns furiously. In fact, the
cladding is pyrophoric.
Used reactor fuel is kept in a container that has been permanently (we HOPE!)
sealed after being carefully (we HOPE!) dried and then carefully (we HOPE!)
backfilled with helium. (A few grams of water always remains,
though.) The sealed (we HOPE!) container just sits there...for 10 years...20
years...100 years...300 years...
Who knows how long?
Some additional helium is created by the continuing process of nuclear fission.
This will go on for thousands of years.
Helium isn't flammable, but if an opening in the canister ever occurs in the
future, the helium is going to escape very quickly, and get replaced with
outside air, which can support a fire. Helium could be used to extinguish a
fire, except, being lighter than air, it will quickly escape, at least
everything physically below the leak point. Most of the rest will mix with
incoming air and eventually be replaced through turbulence within a leaking
canister.
The introduction of air into the canister provides a flammable environment for
the zirconium cladding. Hydrogen that might be present could also provide an
explosive environment. If any of the uranium has flaked apart -- which is
likely -- the fragmented pieces of uranium, or any uranium dust in the
canister, is also pyrophoric.
If there's a leak, then along with the helium, a variety of radioactive
particles will also be released, because the UO2 (Uranium Dioxide) ceramic
pellets are splintering, cracking and deforming, and releasing radioactive
gasses and fission products that have been trapped inside. New
fission products are still being created, but most were created while the
reactor was operating.
The thousands of pounds of combustible radioactive pellets are MOSTLY made of
uranium dioxide, mostly U-238, and also between 1 and 2% U-235, which is the
one that they split to generate electricity. Another 1% or so
is now plutonium, which is thousands of times more hazardous than U-235 or
U-238. And lastly, there are the fission products. Fission products are what's
left when a uranium or plutonium atom splits and releases a few neutrons. There
are usually two fission products after a uranium or plutonium atom splits.
Hundreds of different kinds of isotopes are created by radioactive fission, and
nearly all are radioactive, many with half-lives within human lifespans.
Nuclear fuel assemblies are removed when they become financially inefficient to
use in a commercial power reactor. This occurs after about five years in the
reactor, because by then the UO2 pellets are contaminated with the fission
products, which don't themselves fission, but they do get in the way if they
get hit by another fission event's neutrons. The U-238 also gets in the way,
but in commercial nuclear reactors, there has to be at least 80%, and normally
closer to 95% or more, non-fissile U-238 in a fuel pellet.
If your uranium object has more than 20% U-235 in it, you have either a nuclear
bomb or a military naval reactor. Some university research reactors
have up to 20% U-235, but commercial reactors are limited to about 5% U-235.
Uranium dust or small fragments are pyrophoric, but even intact uranium pellets
can burn, and fiercely. It requires more heat than a zirconium fire normally
produces to ignite UO2 pellets, but many weapons a terrorist might use will
produce sufficient heat to ignite the Uranium.
If the zirconium rods that hold the uranium pellets burn, the uranium pellets
will fall to the bottom of the spent fuel canister, and that's when a
criticality event might occur, especially if water is introduced into the cask
(which is possible -- or even likely -- for a variety of reasons).
How does water cause a criticality event? Because the nuclear reaction works
best if the neutrons are slowed down to "terrestrial" speeds
(hundreds of miles per hour, rather than their speed when they are initially
ejected, which is orders of magnitude faster (an ejected neutron probably
starts out at or near the speed of light and is mostly energy, not matter).
Water slows the neutron down to speeds where it has about the same mass as any
other neutron in the universe. That's when uranium atoms are most likely to
absorb the neutron.
This has been a simplified description of how a spent fuel fire or any
deformation of the fuel in a spent fuel canister can cause a criticality event.
There's no telling how "likely" it is, but we all better
hope it NEVER happens.
=================================================
(7) Atomic Veterans and Atomic Victims:
=================================================
A few years ago my wife and I recorded several presentations by, and did
several interviews of, atomic veterans during "Atomic Veterans Day"
at the National Atomic Testing Museum in Nevada. One veteran actually
parachuted into ground zero shortly after the blast. Many of his fellow
soldiers had long since died of various cancers by the time we interviewed him.
These recordings are available at my You Tube channel (URLs below).
From the very beginning the U.S. military has misunderstood radiation effects,
and has sought to minimize any perception of the danger to the public and to
the veterans who have been exposed. For example, the Smyth Report (published by
the U.S. Government in August, 1945) explicitly stated that little was known
about the health effects of plutonium at the time it was used for the Nagasaki
and Trinity bombs.
Fast forward to the military's use of Depleted Uranium weaponry against Falluja
during the Gulf War, which has resulted in thousands of childhood deformities
and cancers among civilians living in the area. When above-ground weapons
testing began in Nevada, the poison gas clouds were ignored completely until
the Kodak company started complaining that their film stock was being ruined!
It's long past time for the U.S. Government to come clean about what it knows
-- and doesn't know -- about radiation dangers to the public, and to properly
compensate and care for our Atomic Veterans.
------------------------------------------
Here are the URLs for the Atomic Veteran interviews and presentations:
Atomic Bomb Test Veteran Max M. Miller talks about his experience witnessing a
test
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Zg-coKQtBI&t=12s
Bud Feurt is the California Commander of the National Association of Atomic
Vets.
https://youtu.be/FlDayvO9z_k
The aircraft shown in the thumbnail is an L-20 Beaver, the type Hinshaw
maintained while on Enewetok.
https://youtu.be/j8rxeq_5Xtw
Al Tseu, Paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division. Tseu was dropped into the
radioactive "ground zero" area following a test blast at the Nevada
test site. This recording is part of an oral history project. This is the
second of two videos of Al Tseu recorded at the NATM.
https://youtu.be/e91MeIF0kvY
Al Tseu 2nd video:
https://youtu.be/9CwBeNvCf_g
Dr. Livingston's middle initial is M, not K. I apologize for the error.
https://youtu.be/EuNmZvdilys
I did a complete article about Dr. Livingston's idea for neutralizing nuclear
waste with lasers (with his help):
https://acehoffman.blogspot.com/2017/11/what-is-spent-nuclear-fuel.html
Atomic Veteran Roger Stenerson:
https://youtu.be/PmkoyQuqVjQ
Atomic Veterans Al Gettier, Larrie Adams:
https://youtu.be/NT3kypIX-pI
Atomic Veteran Wally Lyons:
https://youtu.be/FEklHAhkUto
Bonus video!
Tuskegee Airmen Tribute February 20, 2016 at Palm Springs Air Museum, Palm
Springs, CA
https://youtu.be/1S-PB3vpxf0
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(8) EIGHT SIMPLE RULES for protecting your heart:
========================================
1) Exercise hard and often.
2) Watch your diet and weight.
3) Avoid tobacco smoke and other pollutants.
4) Control your blood pressure.
5) Minimize stress and enjoy life.
6) Know the warning signs of a heart attack.
7) Get regular medical checkups.
8) Know where the nearest cardiac care facility or hospital is located.
========================================
(9) Newsletter authorship notes:
========================================
Newsletter by Ace Hoffman, Carlsbad, California
www.acehoffman.org
https://acehoffman.blogspot.com/
###
************************************************
** Ace Hoffman, Owner & Chief Programmer
** The Animated Software Co.
** Carlsbad, California
** home page: www.animatedsoftware.com
** email: rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com
** To cease contact, please put "Unsubscribe-me-please" in the
subject.
************************************************
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