Slashdot Mirror

They have to be stored in the short-term storage pools because its the only way the spent fuel gets cool enough to be stored in long-term storage. After about 5 years, the rods are cool enough to get moved from pools to spent-fuel casks which are then stored outside on a concrete pad at the nuclear facility. It is these casks that would be moved to off-site permanent storage which is stalled by bureaucracy.

These casks are over-engineerd to be very safe. One company in the UK smashed two trains into their cask and it did not rupture. They also have to pass government certification tests which costs hundreds of thousands of dollars that ensure they can withstand drops of 30+ feed and all sorts of impacts.

This link has info about that train crash:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spent_nuclear_fuel_shipping_cask

From that page:
"For a second test the same flask was fitted with a new lid, filled again with steel bars and water before a train was driven into it at high speed. The flask survived with only cosmetic damage while the train was destroyed. Although referred to as a test, the actual stresses the flask underwent were well below what they are designed to withstand, as much of the energy from the collision was absorbed by the train and also in moving the flask some distance. This flask is on display at the training center at Heysham 1 Power Station"

See this for more info:
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/dry-cask-storage.html

From that article:
"Dry cask storage systems are designed to resist floods, tornadoes, projectiles, temperature extremes, and other unusual scenarios. NRC requires the spent fuel to be cooled in the spent fuel pool for at least five years before being transferred to dry casks. Typically, the maximum heat generated from 24 fuel assemblies stored in a cask is less than that given off by a typical home heating system in an hour. As the fuel cools further, the heat generated will decrease over time. "

The bottom line here is that permanent storage should be trivial and done. This has been engineered for decades and the hold-up is really silly.

Microsoft Windows SQL virus takes down SPDS safety system in Nuclear power plant

Blaster worm linked to severity of blackout

Engineers Befuddled by Blackout

Do we go back and ask for more from the company running this?

So it would seem, according to the Unites States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, although the point is a moot one in light of the fact this particular fund appears to be sufficiently funded.

Although there are many factors that affect reactor decommissioning costs, generally they range from $300 million to $400 million. Approximately 70 percent of licensees are authorized to accumulate decommissioning funds over the operating life of their plants. These owners – generally traditional, rate-regulated electric utilities or indirectly regulated generation companies – are not required today to have all of the funds needed for decommissioning. The remaining licensees must provide financial assurance through other methods such as prepaid decommissioning funds and/or a surety method or guarantee. The staff performs an independent analysis of each of these reports to determine whether licensees are providing reasonable “decommissioning funding assurance” for radiological decommissioning of the reactor at the permanent termination of operation.

You can still see the characteristic and beautiful Cherenkov radiation at the research reactor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I've seen it a number of times.

Up until recently, it contained 1400 pounds of highly-enriched (weapons grade) U-235 in 58-pound bundles. It is in a building across from a 7-level parking ramp and an 80,000-person football stadium.

There are a number of such "Research and Test Reactors" around the US.

A 2005 ABC News report found:

- "No guards. No metal detectors. Bags were brought into the reactor room. Doors to the building are open during the day, and no IDs are required for entry."

- "The building was undergoing major renovation, and construction workers, large trucks and building materials surrounded the rear exterior."

- "The university Web site includes a 'virtual tour' and detailed photos, descriptions and diagrams of the reactor, the fuel elements and the control room. The reactor manager informed the Fellows that tours had to be scheduled three weeks in advance and that a locked door with a window view of the reactor was the closest they could get. But a friendly professor told the Fellows about a basement entry to the reactor room, where a reactor operator opened the door and let the Fellows photograph the reactor from the doorway. Two other operators allowed the Fellows to come inside carrying their tote bags, and briefly take photographs about 15 feet from the reactor's base. No campus security ever approached the Fellows."

An 2004 New York Times report found:

- "[UWNR's] fuel is weapons-grade uranium. If it were stolen, experts say, it could give terrorists or criminals a major head start on an atomic bomb."

- "[...] out of concern that the uranium might be turned into bomb fuel, the Department of Energy has spent millions of dollars to develop lower-grade fuel and convert scores of reactors to run on it. [...] But the six campus reactors in this country are not among them."

- "Campus reactors have far less security than places where the government keeps bomb-grade uranium, and they may have foreign students of unknown political sympathies."

- "[...] the fuel now in the campus reactors is dangerously radioactive, making it hard to handle. [...] however, that highly enriched uranium was an easier fuel from which to build a bomb than is plutonium."

- "The reactor operators are paid $10.50 an hour. They recently got a raise to that level [...] because someone discovered that campus file clerks were paid more than the reactor operators.

- "[...] the current fuel load will last about 108 years at current rates of use."

"The truck is the real threat. You want to make sure the truck stays away 250 feet minimum." - Ronald Timm, Former Department of Energy security analyst

Here, the primary entrance to a major parking ramp is about 50 feet away.

Also, it's not like it's really a mystery what he saw at BNL. There have only been so many reactors there in the last 60 years. It's odd, beautiful, and I suppose comparatively rare for a person to see, but it's not a big deal.

the building shakes the lights go out and there is load noises but thats about it

Residents of both Middletown and Royalton near TMI heard the TMI-2 trip in '79. This very story mentions the "loud noise heard by nearby residents." Obviously there is less drama for those isolated inside a control room. Control rooms are designed to isolate operators.

on a side note there is no steam in a PWR reactor if there is you have serious problems

There must be steam in all operating PWRs, otherwise the system is `solid' and fails catastrophically due to hydraulic forces. A steam head is maintained using the Pressurizer for exactly this reason. There is also a residual steam bubble at the top of all RPVs in PWRs... there is no reason to make the vessel solid, no mechanism exists to bleed the bubble and thus it is always present.

During a SCRAM these valves are not actuated. The secondary turbine side valves open up

The following links document a few PORV lifts during reactor trips in the last 15 years. It is the Pressurizer PORV that often actuates to relieve pressure during reactor trips in B&W PWRs. This is routine.

        http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/event-status/event/2010/20100609en.html
        http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/event-status/event/2010/20100910en.html
        http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/event-status/event/2000/20000214en.html
        http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/event-status/event/1999/19990816en.html

Depending on the design of the reactor, the power level and other factors some reactors MUST lift PORV at trip.

You are clearly ignorant of B&W reactor designs, TMI history and common operational events of PWRs. Please limit yourself to spectating on these topics.

Yep. Basically, everything worked as it was meant to. Problem will be fixed soon and life will continue as usual.
Also, if one wishes to scare greenies half to death: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/event-status/event/2012/

while the loss of radioactive rods occurs from time to time

This is a better link

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/event-status/event/

Its pretty interesting reading. I think I heard about it from RISKS digest maybe a decade ago. About a half dozen reports are filed every day. At least one will be interesting, or at least WTF worthy. The story about the weld radiographer getting the source stuck while he was up a ladder so he took the source out and wore it like a necklace as he went down the ladder a couple days ago is WTF worthy.

Gas wells exist in cities they cover them with fake houses and such. Sometimes they don't even do that.

http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/list-power-reactor-units.html
This shows just how close many are to cities. In some cases this puts them right in the suburbs.

The reality is rural areas are poorer. They are subsidized by cities. Farming subsidies are some of the biggest subsidies in our country. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT!

We should subsidize farmers to prevent another dustbowl. We should provide internet connections to rural areas so our society can be connected. We cannot and should not live as two people separated only by population density.

I think it has arisen now because the "plan A" Yucca Mountain in Nevada have been abandoned, states are suing the NRC over on-site waste storage and nuclear power plants are reaching maximum capacity in storing of waste. The solution the NRC has is for power plants to use above ground dry cask storage.

I think it has arisen now because the "plan A" Yucca Mountain in Nevada have been abandoned, states are suing the NRC over on-site waste storage and nuclear power plants are reaching maximum capacity in storing of waste. The solution the NRC has is for power plants to use above ground dry cask storage.

I found this with a quick Google search:

http://www.nrc.gov/materials/fuel-cycle-fac/laser.html

That mentions the process as being Australian, so I'm going to conclude that is likely the same process you refer to.

Looks like, at least in the US, it hasn't been buried. Maybe in AU they buried it, dunno.

1) Just to be clear: There are NO 80 year old reactors. If Chicago-Pile 1 was still operating, it would turn 70 this year. The oldest currently operating nuclear reactor is the Oyster Creek facility. This reactor came online December 23rd 1969 making it 42 years old curerntly. This is according to Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oyster_Creek_Nuclear_Generating_Station

2) All NRC regulated reactors have maintenance performed on the systems every outage, to the point that much of the facility is newer than the day it turned on. This is due to maintenance and repair activity, as well as upgrades to improve efficiency. The article calls this "midlife refurbishment". The industry does this because it is easier and less costly than a new reactor. The thought process of the industry is that it is easier to tear down and rebuild under the existing license than it is to get approval for a new license. If the industry could feasibly replace a reactor vessel, I would bet they would.

3) ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code Section 3 is a good code. Creep, Fatigue, Corrosion, and many other issues are addressed in this code that the non-nuclear codes for B&PV only tough upon exotic need, and then refer the engineer to the section 3 code. I encourage you to read it.

4) Some reactor operators send material samples to the Advanced Test Reactor at the INL for accelerated radiation age testing. This information is sought by the reactor operators to gain a better understanding for themselves about their own equipment.

5) Reactors are designed for a much longer life than 40 years, but the NRC set the 40 year license to force a mid-life review. Reactors get far better treatment than any car or plane that most people have ever have ridden in. In this context, a 40 year old reactor properly maintained is very possibly not a safety concern.

6) The Davis-Besse RPV head mentioned by the article was a case of criminal conduct in the eyes of some people, and is not considered normal operating behavior by people I have met from the industry. Whatever the facts are, the indictment can be found here. http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/documents/indictment.pdf

7) Reactors designed to operated under the NRC have a "defense in depth" safety approach. The reactor and facilities are given a design basis accident that is a conservative forecasting of potential accident scenarios.

8) The NRC has a glossary available to you http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/glossary.html note the term "meltdown" is not there. Many people associated with the nuclear field feel that it is a poor term that does not adequately describe a problem's behavior or severity. This is borne out of the use of the term for several reactor failures that all had different designs, behaviors, and severity of failure.

9) New reactor designs offer some stimulating improvements. The Generation 4 reactor effort can be found at http://www.gen-4.org/ currently the US is operating Gen 2 reactors.

The parent specified 'emergency workers', and The NRC allows a dose 5X the normal recommended max under 'exceptional circumstances' where restricting to the lower dose levels are impossible/impractical. But only once in a career.

5 REM is actually extremely safe. Depending on the specific source of the radiation. Indeed 5 REM is for 'whole body', if the radiation hazard is skin or organ specific, the limit increases to 50, except for the lense of the eye, which is 15.

These limits were established quite some time ago. Back in the '60s if I remember right. It's not some 'corporate' screw the worker level. Indeed, remember, they provide healthcare and if the limits caused too much it'd screw them financially.

The 5 REM limit is to keep the increase in chance of cancer 'undetectable' over the course of a ~40 year career.

1. I'm assuming there hasn't been too much radical human evolution since 1996.
2. Considering that modern devices likely emit lower levels of radiation simply to save battery life compared to the bricks of '96, I doubt that you are getting cooked by your iPhone in any worse way than by your grandpa's Startac.

Grandpa!?? Listen, sonny, I represent that statement!!

My first cell was the MicroTac, which predated both the StarTac and the FCC radiation standards by almost 10 years. This thing would fry your ear with heat on a call of any duration. Their anemic batteries pretty much limited duration to a medium broil.

Further, any effects of radiation from those old school phones should have been seen by now. The NRC states that

The effects of low doses of radiation, if any, would occur at the cell level, and thus changes may not be observed for many years (usually 5-20 years) after exposure.

And they are talking about ionizing radiation, not simple radio waves.

Contrary to the Summary's assertion that "there is not yet a general consensus on whether there is a real danger from mobile device radiation", there is simply no longer any debate, as every study finding even a remote statistical link has been deeply flawed, and pretty well debunked. Even the formerly hand wringing article over at Wikipedia has been forced to admit there is just no evidence. The historical/hysterical versions of that article were pretty comical at times.

Laser physicists can be used for uranium enrichment without centrifuges. The process is mentioned here, but was created in Australia. Yes, it's plausible they're trying to use him.

During radiolysis of the Pressure Suppression Pool water below the Chernobyl reactor, hydrogen peroxide was formed. Hypothesis that the pool water was partially converted to H2O2 is confirmed by the identification of the white crystalline minerals studtite and metastudtite in the Chernobyl lavas,[25][26] the only minerals that contain peroxide.[27] -Wikipedia

Or if you're not a fan of Wikipedia, here's another link for the NRC.

Though I originally read it in an interview with Russians who were at Chernobyl. I don't recall in what, but I suspect if you Googled for "Chernobyl alpha radiation" (as I just did) and paged through the results you'd find it eventually. Or maybe " - ".

Fortunately, I never had to use it. /it always seemed odd that anything involving radiation (e.g. ranging from radioactive contamination all the way up to a full-out nuclear explosion) was completely exempted from the policy. I presume that a nuclear explosion would be catastrophic to insurers (not to mention residents) covering that region which is why the exclude it (same thing with floods), but still...

They don't have to - you are covered by the 1957 Price-Anderson Act :

Claims resulting from nuclear accidents are covered under Price-Anderson; for that reason, all property and liability insurance policies issued in the U.S. exclude nuclear accidents.”

I was also (unsuccessfully) looking for the complete audio files. But the linked article has a link to the transcripts. You'll find them at: http://pbadupws.nrc.gov/docs/ML1205/ML120520264.html 3000 glorious pages of mind blowing nothingness.

1. load factor in wind is about 44%, and I quote,"Represent the highest quality resource available in the specific year".This means that, assuming nuke' load factor at 80%, that capital costs per Mwh produced goes to about 122$ for nuclear (97/0.8), and 250$ for wind (97/0.44); wind therefore seems twice as expensive;

2.another interesting piece from you source is:

"For all thirteen EMM regions combined, 1.3 percent of windy land is available with no cost increase, 5.4 percent is available with a 20 percent cost increase, 11.2 percent is available with a 50 percent cost increase, 27.3 percent is available with a 100 percent cost increase, and almost 54.8 percent of windy land is assumed to be available with a 200 percent cost increase. "

, and

"Because of downwind turbulence and other aerodynamic effects, the model assumes an average spacing between turbine rows of 5 rotor diameters and a lateral spacing between turbines of 10 rotor diameters. This spacing requirement determines the amount of power that can be generated from wind resources, about 6.5 megawatts per square kilometer of windy land, and is factored into requests for generating capacity by the EMM."

So, let's compare land use and energy density; the Westinghouse AP 1000 has a rated output of about 1.100MWh, and let's put load factor at 80%, meaning actual production through time is about 880 MWh; to have the same production, given stated density (6,5MW/KM2) and load factor (0.44), means occupying ((880/6.5)/0.44) square kilometers, [(nukes' megawatts after load factor/wind power density)/wind load factor), equaling about 300 hundred square KM, meaning a square 17 km long and 17 km deep. We've come from "the land of plenty" to "plenty of land".
incidentally, if a similar lot of available land could be found, probably the nuclear plant could not be seen from the ground, and it would make a perfect wildlife sanctuary; a military weapon range without the sound and fury, any biologist's dream.

... and that's not the only one. Here's another example of thieves merrily plasma torching their way through radiation warning signs and tungsten / lead shielding to get a source to sell to the disreputable scrap metal industry. Did I mention the GIANT RADIATION WARNING SIGNS?

There are many such noted incidents, but there are many that go unnoticed. A worker at a French nuclear plant bought a watch using steel pins mixed with a Co-60 source one of these idiots stole, and this was only found when he wore it to work where radiation monitoring is required. No one knows who was exposed or killed earlier in the supply chain.

As far as the poster blaming Brazil below, this happens here in the good ol' USA as well.

And this will keep happening, as long as laws are not enforced and thieves continue to have such a willing market in disreputable scrap metal dealers

More than the guilty parties have been exposed to dangerous levels of radiation in every single one of these incidents. Scrap metal thieves literally kill people.

Under a program initiated in 1977, resident inspectors are stationed at each nuclear power plant. There are at least two resident inspectors assigned to each site. Resident inspectors provide first-hand, independent assessment of plant conditions and performance...During the course of a year, NRC specialists may conduct 10 to 25 routine inspections at each nuclear power plant

- US Nuclear Regulatory Commission

Westinghouse employee here. The AP1000 final design certification was approved in 2006, and the design (including the predecessor AP600) began long before that (mid 90s).

Toshiba acquired Westinghouse in late 2006. Prior to that, Toshiba had partnered with our domestic rival, General Electric to build plants in Japan. We sell Pressurized Water Reactors (PWRs), they sell Boiling Water Reactors (BWRs). They're pretty different.

Even now that they own us, there is very little technical collaboration between our two entities. If there's a technological connection between Westinghouse and Toshiba that predates any of that, I'm certainly not aware of it.

Solar thermal is a great option for reducing your demand from the grid, but cannot economically handle the heavy demands.

That is completely and utterly wrong. Solar thermal is actually ideal for meeting peek demand because the molten salt used to store and transport heat is better than 90% efficient. It is easier to adjust the output than it is with nuclear.

Geothermal has huge potential, but the technology to make it viable in all areas has not been demonstrated on an industrial level. Hydro is a great source of power but only so many dams can be build. Wave and tidal power have cost, regulatory, and technological issues still.

According to "Contesting the Future of Nuclear Power" Japan has more than enough natural resources to shut down all its reactors, which is in fact what they are looking to do long term. Fukushima was entirely avoidable. They have 324 GW of achievable potential in the form of onshore and offshore wind turbines (222 GW), geothermal power plants (70 GW), additional hydroelectric capacity (26.5 GW), solar energy (4.8 GW) and agricultural residue (1.1 GW).

It is a shame they don't have room for solar thermal, but as you can see they don't actually need it to achieve their goal.

Natural gas is viable, but the price is so volatile that it could quickly become unaffordable, especially if huge demands were suddenly placed on supply. Besides gas is not as green as some of the other sources.

Actually we have plenty of our own so are in control of the cost and the supply, or at least should be. On the other hand we don't mine coal any more. That was why I mentioned it as an alternative to coal.

I cannot speak so to the 90 year clean up project on the UK reactors, but this is an anomaly. Plants have been cleaned up and decommissioned in less time. In the US all plants have a decommission fund that covers those costs.

In the US the NRC requires decommissioning within 60 years of shutdown, but they only require entombment on-site where as we want to have the land cleared. Entombment means there is going to be waste there indefinitely until someone decides to do a proper clean up. You can tell they are doing it on the cheap as their cost estimate is $300m, where as ours is several billion Pounds (double digit billion dollars).

Canada is looking at 90 years for waste processing from nuclear sites too, which like the UK ends with burial and entombment.

One subsidy that keeps getting hung over nuclear is insurance. The truth is, nuclear utilities have insurance that covers pretty much anything that could happen short of Fukushima/Chernobyl disasters.

In the UK the limit is £140m, where as Fukushima has already run up billions in costs. The tax payer is liable for anything beyond that £140m. Canada's limit is $75 million. The US has a 10 billion insurance pot, which sounds impressive until you realise that the long term cost of the Fukushima accident is likely to be at least $100 billion, with some estimates as high as $250 billion.

Remember that it isn't just the cost of clean up, you have to compensate all the businesses that lost out, re-house people, pay them benefits while they have no work, house them while to decontaminate, spend money monitoring radiation levels to ensure consumer confidence in food grown in the area etc. The economy as a whole has suffered from power shortages reducing output from factories while nuclear reactors remain offline. The cost of all that is also pulling money away from other government funded projects and causing inflation and deepening debt as they have to borrow and print money to pay for it.

I say "they" but of course I mean the tax payer, the ordinary citizen. Even without accidents it is still by far the most expensive form of large scale electricity generation.

Here in the US the Nuclear Regulatory Commission conducts force on force intrusion exercises every three years at every nuclear power plant. If they don't already, the French may want to consider adopting a similar strategy. Those Greenpeace activists are pretty lucky not to have been shot...

TL;DR version - this post is chock full of links, from a grab-bag of right-wing, left-wing, and non-partisan sources. If you only have time to read one, read the Cato Institute one. It clearly lays out the economics of nuclear power in toto, unlike all the other links that are merely documentation of individual points.

OK. Now, despite propaganda from pro-nuclear right-wing pundits, there simply is no ban on nuclear power plants in the USA. If there was such a ban, there would have to be some regulation or policy to say so, and there isn't. New reactors are on the way, according to the NRC licensing authorities.

http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/col/new-reactor-map.html

You can argue that the Clinton administration's refusal to relicense unsafe plants and active discouragement of subsidies was a de facto ban on new nuclear power sources, and I would tend to agree with that. But that argument only applies to the duration of Clinton's presidency.

http://www.google.com/search?q=bush+new+nuclear+plants

In 2005, as part of the infamous Cheney sellout of national energy policy in closed-door meetings with entrenched corporate powers, the economic landscape for nuclear was completely restructured.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0425-06.htm

The Price-Anderson act, originally a "temporary" 10-year measure to encourage the development of a nuclear power industry, was re-enacted - this time until 2025. Price-Anderson, incidentally, is a direct affront to core Libertarian principles - it caps liability for nuclear operators and forces taxpayers opposed to nuclear power to subsidize preventable failures.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act

Per-watt subsidies for nuclear power were also enacted, in the form of 1.8-cent per kilowatt-hour tax credits from new reactors during the first 8 years of operation (costing a projected $5.7 billion in revenue losses to the U.S. Treasury through 2025).

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c109:6:./temp/~c109UZ5s3O:e1304068:

This subsidy is necessary in order for nuclear-generated electricity to stay competitive with methane-powered generators, because of the total inability of the nuclear industry to deliver on the "energy too cheap to meter" promises they've been making since 1948.

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9740

In the 1980s government audits of nuclear operators determined that many of them were not setting aside decommissioning costs as required by law. The 2005 energy bill retroactively makes this legal, providing strong disincentives to any responsible operator willing to plan for the future. Allowing politically connected players to break lawful contracts with impunity is not only philosophically anti-Libertarian, it's anti-Socialist, too - I'd call it fascism.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c109:6:./temp/~c109UZ5s3O:e1336416:

Occasionally you will hear claims that government over-regulation of the nuclear industry means that licenses and permits are difficult and expensive to maintain. In reality, the industry itself rewrote the rules for licensing application in the 1980s so that permits are cheap, long-lasting and do not require any real commitment. Later policy revisions go even further and reduce the total paperwork by two thirds as well as increasing the speed of rev

and a little guidance to what is dangerous: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/bio-effects-radiation.html

Yes a decommissioning fund is accumulated through out the lifecycle of the plant but there are problems with them. I also would be curious to know how these funds or more specifically their funding would be handled under insolvency conditions for a power company. Given that a decommissioning process for a power reactor appears to take something in the neighborhood of 50 years that provides plenty of time for problems and unaccounted costs. Of course this is just the power reactor, there are plenty of other facilities involved in nuclear power requiring decommissioning/clean up. Not unlike coal.

Yes a decommissioning fund is accumulated through out the lifecycle of the plant but there are problems with them. I also would be curious to know how these funds or more specifically their funding would be handled under insolvency conditions for a power company. Given that a decommissioning process for a power reactor appears to take something in the neighborhood of 50 years that provides plenty of time for problems and unaccounted costs. Of course this is just the power reactor, there are plenty of other facilities involved in nuclear power requiring decommissioning/clean up. Not unlike coal.

-90% of German (or American) plants would not withstand impact of a plane bigger than a Cessna

False:
In the United States, the design and thickness of the containment and the missile shield are governed by federal regulations (10 CFR 50.55a), and must be strong enough to withstand the impact of a fully loaded passenger airliner without rupture. http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/cfr/part050/part050-0055a.html/

Nicer link:

http://pbadupws.nrc.gov/docs/ML1028/ML102800342.pdf

The NRC uses that notation:

http://wba.nrc.gov:8080//ves/download.jsp?actionId=view&docId=%7B%22docId%22%3A%22102800284%22%2C%22repoId%22%3A%22pu_adams%22%7D&tabId=advanced-search&docTitle=EA-10-084+-+Final+Significance+Determination+for+a+Yellow+Finding+and+Notice+of+Violation%2C+NRC+Inspection+Report+05000285-10-007%2C+Fort+Calhoun+Station.&action=view&viewText=undefined&isTbar=false

This from nrc.gov: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/news/2011/11-025.iv.pdf

From your source, http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/funds-fs.html : Claims resulting from nuclear accidents are covered under Price-Anderson; for that reason, all property and liability insurance policies issued in the U.S. exclude nuclear accidents.

Also, the Price-Anderson Act which you refer to is a pooling of funds, a form of self-insurance, which isn't the same as complete coverage insurance through a third-party private insurer. Though it's still a form of (partial) insurance, so make of that what you will. The main point being that taxpayers, the ones who benefit from electricity but don't receive profits from its sale, are the main party responsible for the consequences of accidents.

Who is paying the superfund clean-up costs (e.g. Hanford or 3-Mile Island)? Hint: it's not ANI, like you imply. Until the mid-1990s, most of the funding came from a tax on the petroleum and chemical industries, reflecting the polluter pays principle, and Congress yielded to corporate pressure. We're both guilty of a little ignorance and perhaps even FUD; and I could certainly become better informed on this topic.

American Nuclear Insurers (ANI) is a joint underwriting association created by some of the largest insurance companies in the United States. Our purpose is to pool the financial assets pledged by our member companies to provide the significant amount of property and liability insurance required for nuclear power plants and related facilities throughout the world.

http://www.amnucins.com/

See also: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/funds-fs.html
Basically, each nuclear plant has $375 million in private insurance, and then they all pay into a fund that can cover upwards of $12 billion.

But don't let the facts get in the way of your FUD.

Not that I'm a fan of putting nuclear plants on the net, but worrying about common cause issues is a bit strange considering the nuclear industry and regulators wrote the book on the subject.

A bit old, but still used as a reference for folks learning WTF a fault tree is and what it can tell you.

Mod parent up.

Some pumps were still running after the earthquake and tsunami, and they continued to run until the backup batteries ran down. Loss of power was the real cause of the disaster. If they'd some backup power source that worked, the reactors would have reached cold shutdown in a day or two, there would have been no hydrogen explosions, and no core melting.

This is really important. A plant could lose backup power for many other reasons: fire, flood, hurricanes, terrorism, contaminated fuel, tank leakage, transformer damage, maintenance outages, or exhaustion of fuel supplies. Hospitals and data centers with backup power have at times lost power for all those reasons.

Read NUREG/CR-6890, "Reevaluation of Station Blackout Risk at Nuclear Power Plants ", from 2005. Volume 2, page 22, has the line "Risk is evaluated only for critical operation, not for shutdown operation. External events, such as seismic, fire, or flood, are also excluded." That, as we know now, is an overoptimistic assumption. The NRC does a statistical analysis on backup power sources, assuming independent failure of separate units, and computes the odds accordingly.

Nuclear plants that need power to reach shutdown need power sources as tough as the containment vessel. That's now very clear.

The fact that a zone exists does not mean the zone is contaminated, and it does not mean a release has occurred. You can confusing what can happen, the reason, with the evacuation, the precaution and assuming that an evacuation means a health significant release has occurred. I don't know how else to explain it. The fact that some radiation release has occured does not mean the region is contaminated or that this is the reason the evacuation was ordered. Evacuations are done before releases occur, if possible, and in this case thats what Japan did. They declared an emergency when it was clear it would not be possible to get a cold shutdown, thats a precaution in case things get out of control to prevent exposure to the public.

So, the data, the NNSA data as of April 29 is airborne readings:

http://blog.energy.gov/content/situation-japan/

This shows some caesium detected using airborne testing (not uranium or plutonium as someone else claimed). In those areas, the vast majority of the area the hr dose is below 0.1 mrem/hr. The annual normal dose a person gets in the US gets every year is about 360 mrem. If you fly or live in higher altitudes your annual dose is considerably higher. If you work at a nuclear powerplant your annual dose is around 1000 mrem a year. If you live in Denver, CO it would be 700 mrem/yr. If you spend a year on the beaches of Brazil your dose would be 5000 mrem/yr. Incidentally, 5000 mrem/yr is the legal occupation dose limit. Its a bit conservative.

The maximum rate measured is in an area north west of the plant on a diagonal approximately 30km long. The rate measured was between 1.9-19 millrems/hr. If you were is one of the areas, and getting a maximum dose at 19 mrem/hr it would take approximately 19 hours to get Us average, or , 263 hours to get a beach dose from Brazil. This is assuming you were near an emitting source. These dose rates will not make you sick (or kill you). If you stayed there for a few weeks you may increase your chances of cancer. Even then its not a given you will get cancer, everyone is different and it depends on how healthy you are, your genetics, distance from source, shielding, etc.

http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/radiation/rad-health-effects.html

Based on information from the NRC, if you smoke a pack of cigarettes you will lose 6 years of life expectancy. If you are 15% overweight you will lose 2 years of life expectancy. If you get a 360 millirem dose, you will lose 18 days, so figure at 19 mrem/hr its about a day.

As most of the area was measured as being below 0.1 millrem an hour, and the other ranges around the northwest region around 1.9 mrem/hr down to 0.19 mrem/hr, you wouldn't be talking about an appreciable effect. At 0.19 mrem/hr thats nor much at all when the US average is 1 mrem a day.

My definition of significant may be different from yours. Significant to me means it will make you sick now. Is there a likelihood of increased cancers, in that strip of 1.9-19 millirem/hr potentially if you stayed there for a few weeks. Given that the evacuation was done a long time ago, no one should be in that area that does not have adequate protection. So the health effects should be minimal at this point, if people evacuated (which apparently most did).

Additionally, keep in mind that distance from the source will reduce exposure (the inverse square law). Shielding will also reduce exposure, so just because an area may have sources does not mean you will be equally exposed to them or that its an equal amount (hence the variance in that red region). Increased shielding will decrease exposure. Internal exposure can be prevented with masks and clothing.

Anyway, theres some data. I'm tired.

A fantastic summary, but I quibble with the "no evidence of any significant release of radiation" quote for Fukushima. Two months ago, I would have said it was impossible for a reactor in Japan to contaminate the drinking water in Tokyo, but that's exactly what happened. To the detriment of the industry (and I'm a nuclear engineer), there was a significant release of radiation.

Right. The number of casualties is small, but the area evacuated is large, and may be evacuated for decades.

For actuarial purposes, insurance for nuclear plants now has to be repriced. Total power reactor years worldwide is now about 14,000, with two major evacuation incidents. So an assumption of one evacuation of a 30km circle around the plant and acquisition of that real estate per 7000 reactor-years is appropriate for insurance purposes.

The insurance cost will vary with location. That's a big problem. Many US power reactors are sited near major cities. Indian Point in NY is probably the worst case for evacuation cost.

The discouraging thing about the Fukushima reactor disasters is that the real problem was loss of power. The earthquake and tsunami damage was contained. The cooling systems survived and ran until the batteries ran down. With no power, there was little cooling, resulting in hydrogen explosions and meltdowns in several units.

Plants are vulnerable to power loss for a variety of reasons - hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, floods, regional blackouts, poor maintenance, fuel shortages, and sabotage. Most of the NRC literature on loss of coolant accidents focuses on pipe breaks. That may have been the wrong emphasis.

"The decay heat, which is 7% of 1000 MW"

IIRC, the reactors were 1000MW *electrical* output. Because of thermal efficiencies of steam generators of around 35%, I believe that means the thermal output of each reactor would have been about 1000/.35 ~= 2800 MW thermal energy.

So, instead of 7% of 1000MW = 70MW, I think you're looking at 7% of 2800 = 196MW.

That's a LOT of heat to get rid of, even if it is a small percentage of the 2800MW full output.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_Nuclear_Power_Plant shows the plant #2 at 784MW for electrical power out.

Assuming 30% thermal efficiency (35% seems high for a 1973 reactor, but I am guessing honestly), then the full thermal load would be ~2600 MW. 7% of that would be 183MW. So, you aren't too far off.

Not sure what the water volume of the reactor would be, but if you ever have a hard time falling asleep the NRC has the standards for a BWR/4 reactor (plant #2) at this site http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/staff/sr1433/r3/v1/sr1433r3v1.pdf Note that page 1.1-5 talks about the RTP (Rated Thermal Power) of the heat transfer of the core to the coolant being 2436MW. Admittedly this is a US document but GE (the reactor designer) has usually made a point to support customer upgrades to US-NRC standards.

then you could figure the boil off rate assuming the 7% was unchanging (which it isn't, right off hand I don't recall the reported decay rate of that level). Truth is, 12 days later this won't even be close to 7% thermal load. 12 days later put the amount of Iodine through about 1.5 half lives so there would be much less Iodine left. Obviously other decay product would be on their own schedule. So, one might argue that the measurements show a restart, but if there was one, it is highly likely that it was a small localized one.

The physical laws do not lie or change, but I and others have been known to make errors in measurements and observations.

aside from this speculation of what went on based on the measurements they claim to have made.....

I find all this discusion about oceanic releases interesting since there are 5 USSR nuclear subs (3 of which had 2 reactors each), 2 US subs (with one 5SW reactor each) and one of the original 3 cores of the Lenin nuclear ice breaker all sunk in the ocean. Many of these 11 sunken reactors are in the Atlantic some up north nearer Russia, partially spent fuel and all.

Due to the US Department Of Defense plutonium breeding activities at the Hanford Nuclear Facilities many millions of curies were released into the Columbia River by primary coolant water used in the reactors there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site http://toxipedia.org/display/wanmec/River+Releases%2C+Columbia+River

then there is the release made by coal plants which according to this article is quite significant. http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html It makes an interesting point that the coal plants in the world release more uranium in their wastes than "...dozens of nuclear reactor fuel loadings...".

I respect the need for environmental controls, but I get annoyed by much of the 'sky is falling' 'the world is ending' mentality that seems to underlie much of popular news on this issue in general. Much of the science can be measured and thought about rationally. I appreciate the intention of this thread to actually put numbers to their discussion.

"when a hydroelectric damn collapses..." the nuclear power plants which rely on the man-made lake created by the damn melt down. Take a look at how many nuclear reactors depend on man-made lakes as their ultimate heat sinks.. Here are the actual requirements: http://pbadupws.nrc.gov/docs/ML0037/ML003739969.pdf Here is a list of reactors: http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/no_nukes/nukelist1.htm

Hmmmm, so some of that valuable waste can be recycled into kitchen countertops.... sounds like more WSJ junk science to me. The author of a recent WSJ piece that was story here (possibly the same guy?) was on the BBC explaining that boric acid was used to clean debris from the water jets used for cooling in reactors. Wrong. Boron and boron compounds are used because they absorb neutrons which helps to stop fission in a quantity of nuclear material that would otherwise go critical (resulting in much more heat and radiation than that see from decay).

Recycling is a good way to come up with additional fuel, but even the French (the word leaders in the field) only recycle about 1% of their fuel rods. (that figure was reported March 18th 2011 on German Deutch Welle television) And even then, there is still considerable amount of highly dangerous material left afterwards to store. Even recycling involved expensive and energy intensive enhancement. The French are doing a great deal of research, but even for them, the breeder reactors which would more efficiently convert spent material into useful fuel are not yet commercially viable. (I have not seen any news reports saying one way or the other if the earthquake led to any issues at Japans' experimental breeder reactor which is in one of the hard-hit prefects)

Unit 4 at the troubled plant in Japan had an explosion blowing the concrete from the upper walls and roof, exposing the fire in the fuel pond to the environment. There is considerable concern now that the weight of added cooling water in the pond may be too much for the damaged building to support. With far more fuel in the pond than a reactor normally holds there is danger that fuel piling up on the bottom from damaged rods could reach criticality, greatly increasing the release of dangerous materials and complicating an already difficult clean up. All that from a unit that didn't even have fuel in the reactor.

Unit 3 contains MOX (mixed oxide) fuel apparently provided by the French. If I understand correctly, with the plutonium component it is more neutron sensitive (releases more neutrons when hit by a given number). That makes it a little harder to control. Some older reactors can only use a smaller portion of the MOX type, or need additional control rods added. It may also be harder to prevent criticality in fuel that piles up from damaged rods. With the very long half-life of plutonium it's also a very nasty thing to have in the environment. Recent NHK reports indicated testing was being done to measure levels, but no word of the results.

I think it is more than a bit twisted to be describing spent fuel as valuable when there is so much that it is a great liability for nearly all. But PR folks would rather talk about the stored material as a vaulted treasure instead of the nuclear graveyard many see it as.

Union of Concerned Scientists report on 14 nuclear near-missing in the U.S. (PDF, includes Diablo Canyon back up water system being non functional for 18 months, doesn't mention the recent defective motor with rotor slipping on shaft that also affected another plant)

http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/nuclear_power/nrc-2010-full-report.pdf

PDF NRC report of failed motor at Diablo Canyon (I believe this moves a valve)

http://pbadupws.nrc.gov/docs/ML1105/ML110590892.pdf

The report does not say if the motor slippage could have been triggered by excessive stress from it still running at the end of travel due to improper calibration of limit switches or some other control system malfunction (Stuxnet etc). The report only treats it as a manufacturing defect. There are a number of the motors at other plants and one other has previous been observed with the same failure. If it is something that is only needed in an emergency, some may not encounter a defect beforehand and have a backup system that doesn't work.

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/plutonium.html

I wonder if they were really being shut down, or if the licenses were ending and they planned to get an extension as has been done fairly routinely in many other places. (until now)

If they'd really planned to shut them down, I would have expected that something to replace them would be ready or nearly so. Japan does have a few odd issues with power that complicate things though....
The northern part of the country uses 50 Hz while the rest is 60 Hz. There are only a couple of places where they're doing the conversion (not sure if it is from DC or the other frequency).

If the output of the plant is DC, it would be okay to run the generators off-speed. If that were the case, I'd think they could actually remove some heat the way it happens in operation, by having steam go through the turbine, into the condeser, and water pumped back from there to cool the reactor.

If the fuel really has melted down, doesn't that mean it's all in one blob with no moderation by control rods (as in gone critical)? Unless it can be spread out, to not have critical mass, and maybe have accomplish that at a higher mass with the help of some boric acid to absorb neutrons, it'd seem that it'd keep burning down to where it hits ground/sea water then continually spew out steamy nasties...

There were reports of large amounts of boric acid being procured from France and South Korea, and I saw reports that about 25 tons was being transported from Diablo Canyon in California by Vandenburg Air Force Base personnel

This Reactor Concepts Manual from the NRC explains the various cooling methods for these reactors. Unit 2 uses the G.E. Mark I Containment as pictured on page 16.

One of the cooling methods involves "poisoning" which is adding water with boric acid. I've wondered if any of the water being injected had boric acid in it. I haven't heard it mentioned in the NHK reports or those from TEPCO.

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/teachers/03.pdf

The airborn radiation around Japan is not as high as is has been previously.

http://www.bousai.ne.jp/eng/index.html

TEPCO Daily reports
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/index-e.html

Some of the U.S. data looks to be of questionable authenticity (but I believe that any nastier looking data still wouldn't reveal a serious threat since brief spikes don't add up to much long term) Look at various parts of the U.S. Some also show spike before the earthquake... and earlier quake or complications from other problems? (Stuxnet???)

http://www.epa.gov/japan2011/rert/radnet-data-map.html

TEPCO has been slow at some reporting in previous incidents.

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/07072001-e.html

Diablo Canyon near San Luis Obispo just shut down one of the two units due to a (secondary) cooling issue.

The reactors are much safer, but storage pools the world over basically have no backup plan in event of serious leaks and are outside of main containment ... I wonder if it will become cost effective to go to near 100% dry storage now.

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/reducing-hazards-spent-fuel.html

Keep in mind that the the Russian design (Wikipedia says there still are 11 of them going in Russia as of 2010) is far more dangerous than anything in the developed world and that the operators were taking extraordinary risks with the reactor at the time of the accident. Finally, dosages were higher because civilians weren't warned and evacuated for a significant time after the start of the accident. So yes, I can brush off however many deaths Chernobyl ends up causing precisely because it was an insane situation that has never held at commercial nuclear power sites anywhere in the developed world.

Ah, because they lied or underestimated the severity of the situation, you can blow it off. Brilliant deductive reasoning there. First of all, the number of peoples in proximity to a nuclear accident has absolutely effect on the amount of radiation released. Secondly, they lied about TMI too: at first, they assured the public there were no radiation releases (lie), then they said the radiation was released purposely to control pressure (2 more lies). Ah, so right there I have proved you wrong. You're are terrifically naive to think that no one lies in the developed world. The only thing that prevented TMI from being a Chernobyl was that there was a concrete encasement protecting the reactor, and that structure was not breached. But there was no natural disaster that caused it... it was a faulty valve and human error. What if there was an earthquake right underneath one of our safely designed domestic nuclear plants?. I don't think its so far a stretch of the imagination that an earthquake might cause breaches in concrete.

Had the Yucca Mountain facility been built, it would have been already filled more than twice by the toxic nuclear waste we now have in the US.

We can reduce the volume of waste. We can recycle nuclear fuel rods. And we can increase the size of Yucca Mountain's volume.

You don't read very well. That ship sailed. Its too late for Yucca, as bad an idea as it was to begin with. As I said, even if we had built it, and even if we had reduced the volume of waste, it would still be full. But we never even got there... the vast majority of our nuclear waste is distributed accross the eastern seaboard where most of our nuclear power plants are.... just sitting there in containment pools. Forget the reactors for a moment, I wonder how much of an earthquake one of those pools can withstand before they breach and radiated water seeps into aquifers and water supplies, emptying the pools, and opening the real possibility of nuclear catastrophe with absolutely no containment whatsoever. I know what you're gonna say "ooo... scary earthquake fear mongering!"

Seismicity of the United States
Location of reactors in the United States

At some point someone is going to have to actually pay attention to the very real possibilities of something going very wrong somewhere right in our backyard. I'd rather they did it sooner than later, and I'd rather they not be you, so you can just keep on being a cold bastard and not caring about the ridiculous amount of suffering that just a few nuclear incidents have caused just so you can avoid worrying about your electric bill.

I am not fully against nuclear power, but I am fully against this attitude that we've done nuclear power right and we continue to do it right, and the possibility of nuclear incident is small. There is just an immense amount of myopia involved with being pro-nuclear energy. I applaud these Americans favoring a moratorium, and I am releaved so many actually care. Bravo for caution.

The interesting thing to me is how completely inaccurate all of the media has been in this entire "nuclear crisis". I work for a very large energy company with some of the guys that go visit those nuclear plants every year, most of them with PHDs in Nuclear Physics. Their concerns right now focus mainly on the nuclear fuel rod storage and how they are going to handle the excess amount of heating and unspent fuel rods sitting in empty cooling pools. There are absolutely no major concerns around the radiation levels past the power plants property lines. There has so far been ONE casualty to this accident, and people think that nuclear is unsafe? People in California are taking Potassium Iodide and several of them have gone to the hospital for their stupidity. If you are interested in the information about the nuclear event, and information about the actual power plants and exposure levels? Here's some reading, enjoy :)
Things it would be nice for the news media to have read before they started talking...
GE BWR Manual
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/teachers/03.pdf
GE ESBWR - Latest Design: Unbuilt.
http://www.gepower.com/prod_serv/products/nuclear_energy/en/downloads/gea14429g_esbwr.pdf
Wiki Concerning Accident
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_I_nuclear_accidents
Wiki BWR
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BWR
Spent Nuclear Fuel Calculations
http://repository.lib.ncsu.edu/ir/bitstream/1840.16/2309/1/etd.pdf
Graphic: Plant Status
http://news.nationalpost.com/photo_gallery/japan-earthquake-graphic-nuclear-reactor-status/
Earthquake/ Radiation Levels/ No.2 / Status
http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/03/16/graphics-explaining-japans-nuclear-reactor-disaster/
Tsunami
http://news.nationalpost.com/photo_gallery/japan-earthquake-graphic-where-the-wave-hit/#more-52826
Inside Reactor 2
http://news.nationalpost.com/photo_gallery/japan-earthquake-graphic-inside-fukushima-daiichis-most-worrisome-reactor/
Meltdown Dynamics
http://news.nationalpost.com/photo_gallery/graphic-meltdown-fears/
Exposure Levels
http://news.nationalpost.com/photo_gallery/japan-earthquake-graphic-how-fast-will-radation-kill-you/#more-52930
Earthquake Data/ H2 Blast/ Radiation Spread
http://news.nationalpost.com/photo_gallery/japan-earthquake-graphic-nuclear-plant-blasts/
Nuclear Fission product Decay
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fission_product
NRC: Zirconium Cladding Fire
http://www.irss-usa.org/pages/documents/SGS_213-223_response.pdf
Reactor Status: Excel Spreadsheet
http://www.jaif.or.jp/english/news_images/pdf/ENGNEWS01_13002

The thing that *does* worry me is the fact that our plants are ~40 years old.

I'll give you something to worry about: Power uprates. This is where a utility gets the NRC to approve operation of a plant above its design power level. 105%. 115%. One day a 40 year old uprated reactor is going to fracture a main steam line and blow-down into containment. Zero pressure. The LPCI better kick in as designed because nothing else will save it.

but there was so much bitching and other bullshit

That, ultimately, is the real problem in the US. The little enthusiasm a utility might have to replace an old facility is utterly overwhelmed by the legal tar-pit that must be forded to accomplish anything. The somewhat greater desire to expand existing plants or even create a new plant is also legally infeasible. Tying up billions in capital for years on an uncertain outcome is financially infeasible; much easier and more profitable to take that money to Asia. The US can rot in its legal morass; money doesn't care.

This is a matter of political will; stimulus projects have exemptions from "environmental review." Border fence construction enjoyed that as well. When either the left or the right wants to stop muddling around and accomplish something they can make it so. They know exactly what the problem is and they know exactly how to fix it.

They just don't want to.

Read.

http://www.nrc.gov/waste/spent-fuel-transp.html

The Headline doesn't say it is a "Nuclear Power Plan. It says it is a "Nuclear Plant."

The summary doesn't say it is a nuclear power plant. It says it is "the nation's only site for refining uranium for eventual use in nuclear power plants."

The reference you provide at http://www.nrc.gov/info-finder/materials/fuel-cycle/ clearly states that the plant in Metropolis is the only plant in the nation used for Uranium Hexafluoride Production (Conversion) so how is it possible that you interviewed at two other plants that do the same kind of work?

2x, 5x, 18x are all meaning less terms without stating what the "normal levels" are. I work at a particle accelerator where I can go into one of the target halls with a survey meter and have a general background away from the target of about 20-30urem/hr. Even if I walked towards the target the levels went up by 18x, they would only be 1/10th of the 5mrem/hr required to post the area as a Radiation Area NRC 10 CFR 20

Unless they were lined with lead, I doubt the van doors provided much shielding. What does "gieger counters went off" mean? Did they have an alarm and they exceeded the alarm set point or did they just suddenly begin making noise as they began detecting events occurring in the detector? I can take a survey meter into one of the target halls, turn the audio on and walk towards the target area and as I get closer the meter will be screaming and you'll be thinking "Holy roasted nuts Batman, we're getting fried" when the measured levels are actually quite low. Going back to your van doors, if the levels outside were of any significance the gieger counters would have been screaming well before the doors were opened. The gieger counters were most likely chosen/set up to be very sensitive so that anything slightly radioactive will make a lot of noise and give you what you expected to hear.

Our radcon techs have a glazed plate made in Mexico with natural uranium in the glazing. They always bring it out at training as it makes the radiacs scream. You can do the same thing with a mantle from a gas lantern and an alpha survey meter.