Dr. Taylor Loy
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tayloraloy.bsky.social
Dr. Taylor Loy
@tayloraloy.bsky.social
1.5K followers 1.1K following 2.4K posts
Virginia Tech Postdoc (STS), nuclear energy/nonpro. Former SRO instructor nuke worker. he/him. #TritiumMatters

Dissertation:
https://hdl.handle.net/10919/120638

FAS Day One 2025:
https://fas.org/publication/fusion-energy-leadership-tritium-capacity/
Posts Replies Media Videos
tayloraloy.bsky.social
With alt text.
Truth Social post from POTUS: Donald J. Trump @realDonald Trump The United States has more Nuclear Weapons than any other country. This was accomplished, including a complete update and renovation of existing weapons, during my First Term in office. Because of the tremendous destructive power, I HATED to do it, but had no choice! Russia is second, and China is a distant third, but will be even within 5 years. Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis. That process will begin immediately. Thank you for your attention to this matter! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP 153 ReTruths 531 Likes Oct 29, 2025, 6:04 PM
October 30, 2025 at 2:08 AM
tayloraloy.bsky.social
All the celery and like two pounds of carrots. I’ll do a double batch.
Image of the corner of a room that looks like a murder scene with blood sprayed all over the walls. Text at bottom says “Caption this with the 2nd to last text you sent.”
October 27, 2025 at 12:18 AM
tayloraloy.bsky.social
I swear I'm writing. h/t @alastairbaker1.bsky.social

But, sometimes I when I got back to my dissertation to use a reference, I'm surprised that I still like what I wrote.

Here's a paragraph summing up the implications of tritium as a "special" nuclear material (pg 49, link in bio):
Whether technically special or not, the common argument against strict and cumbersome control and accountancy of tritium is that absent particular configurations of SNMs such as plutonium and uranium tritium cannot by itself be weaponized. This argument presupposes that the sole goal of nuclear nonproliferation is the prevention of horizontal proliferation, keeping new nation states and highly sophisticated non-state actors from joining the “nuclear club.” Mitigating vertical proliferation more often than not is relegated to a second or third order concern. In most instances, vertical proliferation, which is the increase in an existing stockpile in quantity and/or technological sophistication, is assumed to be at the discretion of the five officially designated NWS. In other words, as long as NWS provide any reassurances that they are working toward NPT Article VI obligations of advancing the long-term goal of complete disarmament, short-term investments in vertical proliferation are often rationalized as “modernization.” These Article VI rationalizations have been a key driver for the creation and ratification of The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW)—disarmament proponents were tired of waiting for NWS to act in good faith to fulfill their legal obligations under the NPT. What the current environment inadvertently allows for is a lax regime of tritium control and accountancy that might benefit de facto nuclear weapon states like Israel, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and perhaps even Iran before long by allowing easier access to tritium and/or the accumulation of tritium for weapons use without excessive international scrutiny commonly reserved for SNM.
September 25, 2025 at 12:58 AM
tayloraloy.bsky.social
This really explains why my Krysta Now skeet bombed when the MSNOW name dropped.

Y’all are missing out!
The movie Southland Tales on Rotten Tomatoes with 41% Tomatometer and 41% Popcornmeter
September 17, 2025 at 12:20 AM
tayloraloy.bsky.social
This is the first poem I ever published (Poet Lore, Fall/Winter 2006).

It is a meditation on doing excavation work with my dad.

Happy Father’s Day to those who celebrate!
Work All we do is dig, keep our shovels moving. Move earth, mound it up, carve it with dull blades of prayer. You don't need faith to move a mountain; You make it something else, something less real. Something you couldn't believe unless you laid your hands on it. This was what my father taught me that God meant. That the real test was the labor of Isaac, how he must have known that we build our deaths on obedience—we work though, as the ram works to free itself from the thicket. In these ditches we dig out foundations, we dig paths for water, we dig basements, places for underpinning, we dig out trenches, we dig quiet places of rest, all six feet of grandfather's grave, we dig when our shovels hit clay, we dig for fear of rain, we dig to free ourselves. We dig to point toward a hill and exclaim we worked there That God may have made this world, but we work like hell to make it ours.
June 15, 2025 at 6:21 PM
tayloraloy.bsky.social
Another interesting detail in this tritium report is a postulated accident involving a T gas-filled exit sign would result in a max dose for an installer of 84 mrem!

Working in ops at a BWR I might get 10-20 mrem during a busy outage shift. My highest dose from one job, iirc, was around 50 mrem.
A recent worker safety assessment performed by Ontario Hydro staff estimates that the radiation dose to an installer as a result of an accident involving a tritium gas-filled exit sign would be 84 millirem. The calculations which generated this value were based on several conservative assumptions about the nature of the accident and worker exposure to tritium gas. The assessment also assumed a serious failure mode (total destruction) which has a very low probability of occurrence. Accordingly, the 84 millirem radiation dose can be regarded as an upper bound.
June 14, 2025 at 4:14 PM
tayloraloy.bsky.social
Check out this 1985 tritium report on the concerns of Canadian commercial tritium sales to the U.S. in/directly supporting military tritium needs.

Earliest take that: "...[DOE] treats tritium as if it were a Special Nuclear Material insofar as nuclear military acquisitions are concerned." (p 25)
Tritium is not designated technically, in the U.S., as a Special Nuclear Material. Nonetheless, in separate conversations with Mr. Ronald Cochran, Mr. Critz George, and Mr. Charles Simpson, all with the Department of Energy (Office of Nuclear Materials Production), these officials all indicated that the Department of Energy treats tritium as if it were a Special Nuclear Material insofar as nuclear military acquisitions are concerned. The apparent reason that they have not pushed to have tritium officially designated as a Special Nuclear Material (as defined in legislation), Is that the DOE recognizes that if this were done, the ensuing controls, regulations, and procedures may seriously jeopardize the range of legitimate commercial purposes to which tritium can be put.
June 9, 2025 at 10:25 PM
tayloraloy.bsky.social
Here's the chart of WBN tritium releases from my dissertation updated with the 2024 ARERR (linked below). Since WBN is in process of irradiating a record number of TPBARs, these releases will likely peak or plateau at this level.

#NukeSky

adamswebsearch2.nrc.gov/webSearch2/m...
Bar chart titled: "Watts Bar Nuclear Tritium releases (liquid)". Y Axis shows Curies started at 0 and going up to 16,000 in increments of 2,000. Watts Bar Unit 1 is shown in light blue and Watts Bar Unit 2 is shown in orange after it came online in 2017. These values are stacked to illustrate cumulative releases. A dashed black line indicates the PWR median releases in the United States from 2007-2022 which range from 400-550 Ci. X Axis shows years starting in 1996 and going to 2024. The highest cumulative release of 13,500 Ci occurred in 2024. Also noted is the installation of a 500,000 gal Tritiated Water Storage Tank ~2011.
May 9, 2025 at 2:12 AM
tayloraloy.bsky.social
Furthermore, the "composites of samples" Makhijani bemoans has a strict definition (attached image). The quasi-accusations of NPP operators taking advantages of loopholes to secretly release more tritium would in fact be an illegal process.
A composite sample is one in which the quantity of liquid sampled is proportional to the quantity of liquid waste discharged and in which the method of sampling employed results in a specimen that is representative of the liquids released.
April 30, 2025 at 10:55 PM
tayloraloy.bsky.social
There's been a passage in Arjun Makhijani's Exploring Tritium Dangers ieer.org/wp/wp-conten...
that has been bothering me since I was researching for my dissertation, and I finally had the chance to return to it. (Enjoy the insight into my provocative marginalia.)
d. Monitoring of tritium releases The NRC requires power plant operators to monitor releases of radionuclides, onsite and offsite. The onsite and offsite releases from a plant are reported every year in the Effluent Report and the Environmental Report respectively. In the Effluent Report, the plant operator is required to give quarterly data on the amount of tritium curies released from each reactor, including the concentration of tritium before the water is sent to the underground pipe, the frequency at which the releases occur, and how long the releases last. In some cases, only the total discharges from two reactors may be measured. This may make it difficult to detect problems or to infer their existence from the reported data. Further, the amount of tritium discharged from PWRs is highly variable, as noted above. Other radionuclides are also reported. Actual measurement practices at nuclear power plants vary considerably. The Offsite Dose Calculation Manual Guidance reports (NUREG-1301 for PWRs and NUREG-1302 for BWRs) direct the plant operator to have a lower limit of detection (LLD) of 2,000 picocuries per liter; that limit can be... Page 33 (continued on next page). ...increased to 3,000 picocuries per liter if no drinking water pathway exists. Most plant operators have lower LLDs (in the few hundreds of picocuries); however, these lower limits are not required. As a result, some power plant operators simply report that tritium levels are below the lower limit of detection. In some cases detection limit is not even specified. Further, tritium measurements are done quarterly, using composites of samples that are collected at various intervals, commonly monthly. This means that samples from the times tritium is discharged (many times each quarter) and the times that it is not, are put together and averaged to give a quarterly result. There are two main problems with this approach. There is generally no independent verification by the NRC of when the samples are actually taken. The NRC (and hence the public) depends on the reactor operator’s word that they are taken at the time of contaminated water discharge, and not before or after the discharge. As a result, there is no independent assurance of the representativeness of the samples and, hence, of the accuracy of the data in providing estimates of total tritium releases. Since tritium discharges are sometimes made into water bodies that are used for drinking downstream of the reactor (as is the case with the Braidwood plant), this lack of independent verification of discharges is troubling, especially in the context of batch sampling. If the time the samples are taken is not coordinated with plant discharges occurring over a period of time, the samples may not be representative of the discharges; in such cases, the estimates of total tritium discharges would be inaccurate. There is at present no independent way for communities near nuclear plants to verify the accuracy of the discharges measurements and release estimates. This has become more important in light of the controversies surrounding the failure to report known tritium leaks. Page 34.
April 30, 2025 at 10:55 PM
tayloraloy.bsky.social
For all you primitive screw-heads out there.
Middle aged white guy wearing a graphic tee with the silhouette of Ash from Army of Darkness holding up his boomstick and the logo Boom appears at the top in the style of Doom.
March 6, 2025 at 5:05 AM
tayloraloy.bsky.social
NukeSky historians, can you help me identify who the "Deputy Assistant Secretary for Intelligence, US DOE" was in June 1988?

I'm tracking down everyone involved in the 1988 Tritium Factor Workshop and the comments in this study were a provocative appendix.

Here's what I have:
Comments on “The Tritium Factor” Proposal. June 1988. Study performed for the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Intelligence, US Department of Energy. An old arms control idea has surfaced again. This is a dangerously simplistic idea that threatens US security. It is being called “The Tritium Factor" this time, but it has been floated before under other names, such as a tritium freeze. Influential nongovernment arms control advocates are briefing it right now to administration officials. It is very important to set the facts straight immediately. The tritium freeze argument is badly flawed in two respects. 1. This proposal causes an immediate and rapid degradation of existing US nuclear force capabilities. Unlike proposals that set limits on systems, this one causes an irreversible decline that would be hard to arrest. There is no margin for error. 2. This proposal incorrectly assumes that monitoring tritium production in the Soviet Union is easy. In fact, tritium is the easiest nuclear material to clandestinely produce and divert. The Soviets could easily produce all the tritium they need and we would never know it. Let’s look at the arguments as put forth by the tritium freeze advocates. This is a Department of Energy Org Chart dated September 1988. This chart does not list the role of Deputy Secretary for Intelligence. Source: https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/09/f36/DOE%201977-1994%20A%20Summary%20History_0.pdf
February 12, 2025 at 6:29 PM
tayloraloy.bsky.social
www.brookings.edu/articles/eur...
France: Gas LNG usage Chart in Gigawatt hours per year Source: Eurostat Note: Power generation includes combined heat and power BROOKINGS. Full text available at link.
December 22, 2024 at 5:32 PM
tayloraloy.bsky.social
Hey yall! Here’s your chance to be a part of history:

My dissertation now shows 999 downloads! Post here with your 1,000 screenshot and I’ll think of something cool to do.
Screenshot from Virginia Tech Dissertation page showing 999 downloads. Tritium Matters: Constructing Nuclearity and Navigating Ambivalence of a Unique Material Files Loy_TA_D_2024.pdf (997.47 KB) Downloads: 999 Date 2024-07-10 Authors Loy, Taylor Andrew
December 18, 2024 at 2:17 AM
tayloraloy.bsky.social
Yall, I just had a great idea for an awesome, long-term high-level radwaste storage!

#NukeSky
Illustration of the outline of a palace with small, rugged castle with a large skull gate in the foreground. Page text: In order to defeat the evil, He-Man would need help. In a blinding flash, the Council of Elders compressed all their strength and knowledge into a single ball of magical power. But there was a problem: if Skeletor and his evil helpers found this orb of power, they could gain control of the entire planet and perhaps the whole of the universe The Hall of Wisdom must be changed from a place of beauty to a building so frightening that no one, except the bravest of souls, would ever dare to enter. Thus, in a flash of blinding light, the very matter which made up the Hall of Wisdom was transformed. As the atoms shifted, the hall changed into a dark and frightening castle with a skull face. This was the beginning of Castle Grayskull.
November 30, 2024 at 2:27 PM
tayloraloy.bsky.social
Block. Borish troll who uses vaccinated as an insult:
@derbunkmeister.bsky.social reply including the phrase “you sound vaccinated”
November 14, 2024 at 9:22 PM
tayloraloy.bsky.social
Weird account that I blocked because they were doing some trolling on subverting peaceful transfer of power nonsense.
Naw. We’re good.
@greatlifemerch.bsky.social
November 13, 2024 at 10:29 PM
tayloraloy.bsky.social
Who wore it better?
Black and white still image with a man's eyes peering over an open door that hides his face below the eyes. On the door is written E=mc^2
August 28, 2024 at 1:01 AM
tayloraloy.bsky.social
I've gone deep down the rabbit hole of electrical safety on potential for Current Transformers (CTs) in a generator to catch fire due to a fault, and I read this and am now going to bed.

@funranium.bsky.social can I get a ruling on the veracity of this claim?
Picture is a snippet from a presentation which reads Empirical Studies: Why do we still need testing in the year 2017? "Fires is chaotic"
August 21, 2024 at 3:49 AM
tayloraloy.bsky.social
I really think we’re all missing the key question here. Why hasn’t the U.S. medaled in SHOOTING!?

Aren’t we supposed to be the best at guns?
Paris Olympics 2024 current medal count. China, South Korea, Guatemala, and Great Britain all have medals. U.S. has zero.
August 2, 2024 at 3:57 AM
tayloraloy.bsky.social
Process Complete
Snippet of a table showing my dissertation Title "Tritium Matters: Constructing Nuclearity & Navigating Ambivalence of a Unique Material", Entered on 06/06/2024, Updated 07/10/2024, and Status Process Complete.
July 10, 2024 at 4:02 PM
tayloraloy.bsky.social
My favorite Bill bit that I had to excise from my dissertation because it was exceedingly tangential was the fact that he tried to make "Hell Bomb" happen (for hydrogen bombs) by claiming it was already catching on in a 1950 h-bomb article:
Google Ngram for "Hell Bomb," "superbomb," "hydrogen bomb." In 1950, hydrogen bomb was used ~180 times more frequently and superbomb was used about 6 times more frequently than the term hell bomb.
June 15, 2024 at 7:50 PM
tayloraloy.bsky.social
If you need a lol today, just check this context and scroll replies for imitation memes. There’s gold buried here.

X

Now with alt text.
Will add thread of other imitations without alt text when I have the time.
Screenshot of Elon Musk sharing meme of smiling black guy with fade tapping his temple with a knowing look. Text reads “X is where media hoaxes go to die.”
March 24, 2024 at 8:56 PM
tayloraloy.bsky.social
You have been murdered. Who do you want on the case?
Dirk Gently smirking with Todd Brotzman giving him side-eye in a promo image for 2016-2017 Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency Series
March 23, 2024 at 3:02 AM
tayloraloy.bsky.social
#NukeSky
Has anyone read or cited Carlisle's (1996) "Supplying the
Nuclear Arsenal: American Production Reactors, 1942–1992"? (re-issused 2019 through Johns Hopkins Press)

Some information on tritium and heavy water reactors appears incorrect, and I hesitate to cite it. (details below)
Book cover image of Rodney P. Carlisle's Supplying the Nuclear Arsenal: American Production Reactors, 1942-1992. Design is blue with angular patterns.
March 22, 2024 at 6:27 PM