Floating Nuclear Power Station

angrysponge writes " Russia to Build World's First Floating Nuclear Power Station for $200,000. I don't know what impresses me more, the engineering chutzpah or low-ball pricetag." From the article: "The mini-station will be located in the White Sea, off the coast of the town of Severodvinsk (in the Arkhangelsk region in northern Russia). It will be moored near the Sevmash plant, which is the main facility of the State Nuclear Shipbuilding Center. The FNPP will be equipped with two power units using KLT-40S reactors. The plant will meet all of Sevmash's energy requirements for just 5 or 6 cents per kilowatt. If necessary, the plant will also be able to supply heat and desalinate seawater."

Comments

European Water

[fembots]

What happens when there is a melt down? You can't stop water from spreading to the rest of the world.

Funny that I can't find the word "safety" in the whole article.

Re:European Water

[DietCoke]

I just hope the company that makes this isn't the same company that makes their submarines.

Re:European Water

[daviqh]

It's the Russians--> they never mess up...

Re:European Water

[Frogbert]

God damn it, Nuclear != MELTDOWN OMG RUN FOR YOUR LIVES !!!ONE.

Its people like you who have no understanding of the state of the technology these days that are holding the world back. There are far more factories producing loads of toxic chemicals in the world then there are nuclear plants, and they typically don't have to have nearly as high standards of safety. I'm not flaming its just that Nuclear power generation technology has progressed a long way since chernobyl.

Re:European Water

[fiendo]

Has the "state of the technology" found some way to deal with the 100000 years of waste?

Oh, not yet?

Ok, then put a sock in it.

Re:European Water

[aelbric]

You mean instead of the thousands of tons of low-level radioactive waste that coal-burning power plants pump into the atmosphere every year? Cause we really have that problem licked.

Repeat after me: Nuclear power technology c.2005 is not nuclear power technology c. 1950

Re:European Water

[Diag]

I just hope the company that makes this isn't the same company that makes their submarines.

... or the company that builds their nuclear power stations.

Oh, wait.

Re:European Water

[penix1]

And in c. 1950 they were saying, "Repeat after me: Nuclear power is absolutely safe!"

Just goes to show it pays to be skeptical...

B.

Re:European Water

[slam smith]

And shockingly enough they were pretty much right. Nuclear power has proven to be very safe.

Re:European Water

[aelbric]

Skepticism is a rational approach to anything. Baseless fear is not.

The University of Pittsburgh put out an excellent free book on the "Nuclear Energy Option". It not only gives an excellent breakdown of the risk and benefits of nuclear power from a scientific standpoint, but it does an excellent comparison against other (heavily-used) technologies. It can be found here here

The most interesting chapter does a direct comparison of risk from high-level nuclear waste against other toxins introduced to the environment by manufacturing. Quote:

If nuclear power was used to the fullest practical extent in the United States, we would need about 300 power plants of the type now in use. The waste produced each year would then be enough to kill (300 x 50 million =) over 10 billion people. I have authored over 250 scientific papers over the past 35 years presenting tens of thousands of pieces of data, but that "over lO billion" number is the one most frequently quoted. Rarely quoted, however, are the other numbers given along with it11: we produce enough chlorine gas each year to kill 400 trillion people, enough phosgene to kill 20 trillion, enough ammonia and hydrogen cyanide to kill 6 trillion with each, enough barium to kill 100 billion, and enough arsenic trioxide to kill 10 billion. All of these numbers are calculated, as for the radioactive waste, on the assumption that all of it gets into people. I hope these comparisons dissolve the fear that, in generating nuclear electricity, we are producing unprecedented quantities of toxic materials.

Although I would be one of the first in line to adopt solar, hydro or hydrogen energy approaches, none are feasible on a global scale. My belief is that nuclear is the best choice if we can just get beyond everyone's fear of it.

Re:European Water

[colmore]

And mercury from burning coal gets in the air that flows all around the world.

There aren't any clean cheap ways of generating large amounts of electricity.

Re:European Water

[Guppy06]

"What happens when there is a melt down?"

First off, assuming the reactor is actually capable of melting down (most modern designs aren't), the pile will melt through the bottom of the hull, fall down to the ocean floor, and then melt through that until it is spent. Uranium is quite a bit denser than water.

Secondly, it's already happened. Decades ago, the Soviets had a nuclear-powered icebreaker that had a meltdown, in the Bearing Sea, if I remember.

"You can't stop water from spreading to the rest of the world."

Yes, you can. I can't speak for the particular spot where this reactor will be placed, but there are large swaths of ocean where little or no mixing occurs, due to the influence of ocean and atmospheric currents. The Southern Ocean, for example, is pretty well cut-off from water in the Indian, Pacific and Atlantic oceans by circumpolar winds and currents.

As for vertical mixing (i. e. after the core has sunk to the bottom), this is even easier to accomplish. Except for near convection-causing volcanic vents, deeper water is cold and likes to stay down, and shallower water is warm and likes to stay up. Any sufficiently experienced submariner and many scuba divers can tell you about thermoclines.

Re:European Water

[FatalChaos]

While this may be true, are the Russians using this new technology? I mean they aren't really a rich country...

Re:European Water

[ozmanjusri]

the Soviets had a nuclear-powered icebreaker that had a meltdown, in the Bearing Sea,

What a load of balls! Or perhaps you meant the Barents Sea?

In any case, you're probably thinking of the Lenin. It's three reactors, along with thirteen others from nuclear submarines, were dumped in the Kara sea.

Re:European Water

[Xenoflargactian]

Please mod parent up.

Re:European Water

[Guppy06]

Actually I did mean Bering Sea (body of water between Alaska and Siberia). I was thinking the ship's home port was Vladivostok.

Re:European Water

[celle]

unfortunately, human responsibility and attention c.2005 is not as good a c.1950.

Re:European Water

[Andy Dodd]

And if implemented properly (read: Using a graphite moderator so your power reactor can double as a weapons material production facility is a BAD IDEA).

The largest accident involving a properly designed commercial power reactor (TMI) released less radiation into the environment than your average coal-fired power pland does EVERY DAY.

Chernobyl doubled as a weapons materials production facility, which is one of the main reasons it went BOOM. The design was inherently unsafe, and in addition the operators were performing dangerous experiments on the reactor. Nearly all of the reactor's safety systems had been INTENTIONALLY disabled when it exploded.

Re:European Water

[Fordiman]

The article doesn't quite have it right.

There are at least fifty unclassified floating nuclear power stations around the world today. They're called Navy aircraft carriers.

Not to mention the hundered or so location-classified nuclear submarines floating about. Not Boomers, though those are generally nuclear powered as well. Nuclear spy subs, armed with simple chemical warheads.

(Note: I'm an ex Navy Nuclear Machinist Mate, and my statements are about as authoritative on this as you're going to get on Slashdot)

There have been no nuclear power accidents on navy vessels. None. And I would not be surprised if the powerstations are of a modified naval design. There are a number of ex navy engineers floating around and while they're not allowed to give away operational secrets (amount of fuel, specific design, etc) to civies, there's no regulation about designing a derivative plant, as long as the important things are changed.

Which, of course, you'd have to do to change from a nuke drive plant to a nuke amp-only plant. Different torque, heat, pressure requirements.

"When" there's a meltdown is a misnomer. Anymore, you don't get to put a nuclear design into production with any cutting of the corners (the number one cause of design failure is not building exactly to design). Modern fission plant designs are "Walk-away safe", meaning that the can run, unmanned, until their fuel runs out.

Additionally, if anything goes out of tolerance - the steam getting too hot, the coolant clogging, a sensor going out, anything - the mediator rods drop and the heavy water is flushed for normal water, then drained (effectively shutting the plant down until it can be "manually" restarted).

And don't count on some inscrupulous company deciding to surreptitiously cut corners and build under spec; the threat of meltdown on land is too great for any company to take. Threatening it on water is *far* worse, even with the salt in the water.

Which brings the question of your concern. A large volume of stagnant seawater (about 100 galons per gram of radioactive material for a full-on meltdown) is sufficient to break alpha and beta radiation down to non-dangerous levels in the space of a few years. For alpha, the salts capture the neutrons pretty readily becoming heavy but low-radiation isotopes, while the neutrons' kinetic energy is distributed by the movement of said salt ions (ie: the atoms don't shatter because of the weak lattices formed between salt ions and water ions). Something similar happens with beta radiation, but causing some greater problems; trace amounts of posionous chemicals are produced in the process. Since the actual mass involved is so big to so small, the ppm count is low, but it's still potentially problematic.

Meanwhile, in the ocean, you don't have stagnant water, you have moving water. Kinda like moving in a pool cools you off more quickly, the motion of the water helps to finish the fallout before it reaches your shores.

In short: I wouldn't worry about a well-off-shore plant melting down, and even if it did, the fallout would hardly be global. I would, however, want it a few miles away from *my* coast, just in case.

Re:European Water

[nihaopaul]

You mean instead of the thousands of tons of low-level radioactive waste that coal-burning power plants pump into the atmosphere every year?

actually most coal burning power plants install some very expensive filtering devices which pay for themselves over many years by selling the product "synthetic gypsum" that is created by filtering the waste, so like bacteria, not all is bad!
exspecially since it could be in your walls.. or on them :D

Re:European Water

[Fordiman]

Although I must say that the voice of the article reeks of "Titanic"...

Re:European Water

[Nick haflinger]

actually yes. There are three reasonably practicle approaches to getting rid of/using nuclear waste.

Firstly the transuranics have unique chemical/radialogical properties that are commercially exploitable Am is used in smoke detectors and some artificial elements can be substituted for other expensive metals in catalysts. But I sense you want a more comprehensive plan so..

Secondly you can extract energy from them. At close of life cycle in a typical reactor roughly 20% of the heat energy is actually being produced by decay of various products. Therefore at end of cycle we could basically just dump the output from 5 reacors in a pile and run water through to boil getting a no effert reactor that according to your completely ridiculous lifetime would last for 50K years easy as an energy source.

Thirdly if you put fissionable material in a sufficiently high neutron flux they will fission resulting in much more stable atoms with half lives on the order of 100 years which refering to note two about we can use as an energy source until they are safe. Work is currently being done to make this commercially practicle but as the research is being persued by government agencies its not going terribly fast. However even they probably will have something in a generation or two which is plenty fast enough.

Re:European Water

[TapeCutter]

" just hope the company that makes this isn't the same company that makes their submarines."

...or even worse, the company advertising "Chernobal Eco tours" on the left hand side of the page.

Re:European Water

[PsiPsiStar]

Except for near convection-causing volcanic vents, deeper water is cold and likes to stay down, and shallower water is warm and likes to stay up. ...and any sufficiently experienced nuclear engineer will tell you that a large slab of highly radioactive material will give off heat. What do you think that heat would do to the thermoclines?

I'm all for the safe use of Nuclear power, but the Russians have a history of being reckless (dumping radioactive materials in ponds that dry up, and spread the hazardous material, for instance) and I'm not inclined to trust the safety of the things that they build. They give a bad name to a very important technology.

Re:European Water

[PsiPsiStar]

There have been no nuclear power accidents on navy vessels.

Does this apply to all countries? How easy would it be to make a statement like this definitively considering that some of the vessles most likely to use nuclear are also the most likely to kept secret?

Re:European Water

[Kadin2048]

I have a suspicion that this power station IS one of their submarines.

The $200k is just to tow it from wherever it's moored and rusting to this harbor, moor it up, and connect some umbilicals to the generators.

If not that, then it's probably just a few surplus reactors they had around or were using for training, put on a barge along with the required turbines and generators.

There's no way you could come up with a price tag like that, unless the key components were all salvage or surplus.

Re:European Water

[brandorf]

Well, the Russian K-19 nuclear tragedy actually happened, but it wasn't a meltdown. http://www.nationalgeographic.com/k19/

Re:European Water

[Kadin2048]

I do not think that his statement applies to all navies.

The Soviets had several nuclear accidents on board their submarines, and at least one on the surface (a nuclear icebreaking ship).

There is a site with a list here, it seems reasonably authoritative, although the source may be biased (environmentalist):
http://www.bellona.no/en/international/russia/navy /northern_fleet/report_2-1996/11084.html

K-8 (1960): Loss of coolant.
K-19 (1961): Primary coolant system leak. 8 dead.
K-11 (1965): Reactor opened with control rods unsecured.
K-27 (1968): Unexplained, possibly leak. Sub later scuttled.
K-140 (1968): Minor. Control rods removed without warning.
K-123 (1982): Leak of liquid metal coolant in steam generator.
K-314 (1985): Refueling accident. 10 dead.
K-431 (1985): "Overheating." Possibly coolant leak.
K-192 (1989): Primary coolant system leak. Environmental release due to human error.

Not exactly a stellar safety record. However it should be noted that the majority were not due to equipment failure so much as human error, or failure to follow established safety procedures which would have prevented the accidents. When you take human error off of the table, some of the worst releases (although not K-19, which has had the most publicity of late) are no longer present.

The GP however is correct in saying that the U.S. Navy has never had a severe reactor accident. However it has lost two nuclear submarines, the Scorpion in 1968 and the Thresher in 1963. However both losses were unrelated to the reactor systems.

Re:European Water

[Anonymous Coward]

Some clarification from Russia:

First, according to Minatom (Russian Ministry of Nuclear Energy), the project's cost is about 150-200 MUSD, not thousands, and this sounds more realistic.

Second, it takes not only 1,5 hectares on water but 0,6 hectares more on land to build up this plant--the heat point, distribution unit, hot water tanks and security unit will be situated on earth.

Third, your're almost right, the nuclear reactor is actually modified Russian AK-900 a.k.a. KLT-40, which is the primary nuke drive for Russian *civil* fleet (59 vessels of 128 with this drive) at the moment.

It will be changed this way: heat power will be raised from 50 to 146 GCal/hour, but electrical power will be lowered from 65 to 50 MW.

This floating plant will also become a 'desalting plant' for civilians.

And finally, AFAIK there NEVER was a meltdown with this type of engine.

-- a chum from Russia

Re:European Water

[Rei]

So many misconceptions, so little time:

1) Almost every (note: not every. There are some anti-proliferation designs out there) uranium-fired reactor can double as a weapons materials production facility. High energy neutrons impacting U-238 produce plutonium.

2) The "largest accident" involving a "properly designed commercial power reactor" depends on what you call a "properly designed reactor". Here's just the briefest introduction into nuclear power accidents in history (note: only about a third of the entries are about nuclear power; the rest are about weapons). There are far, far more than made the list. Even modern CANDUs have had significant accidents.

Part of the problem is the environment that nuclear reactors operate in. You start with a nice, relatively simple setup, but as the reactor operates, everything breaks down. You get high temperatures and pressures. Decay products are often quite corrosive and reactive, some readily leakable (gasses, et al), etc. You get high radiation fluxes, which weaken metal lattices. Etc. Between the (relatively) low profit margins on the nuclear industry (it's heavily subsidized to stay afloat), the difficulty in maintaining hot core elements, and the extreme risks from part failures, it's not an easy task.

In *perfect operation*, the entire nuclear cycle releases about as much radiation into the atmosphere (depends on the study - one study I saw showed as little as half as much) as coal power plants. Yes, there are radiation releases in normal operation of the nuclear fuel cycle - much of it in mining, for example. That's in perfect operation, mind you, and ignores the waste which must be stored. To make it worse, most coal radiation is alpha, which isn't particularly nasty. In an accident, though, the scale of released waste can be catastrophic. It's not generally the number of casualties that's the problem - Chernobyl, Chazhma Bay, etc, had few casualties. The problem is the land that they ruin and people that they displace - in a bad location, they can be a truly monstrous economic disaster.

Of course, nuclear doesn't release quantities of soot and CO2 best measured in exponential notation. ;) Also, to back up for a minute, I should correct one of the parent posters: you don't have to have a great deal of worry about accident waste for 10,000 years or whatnot. For example, even at Chernobyl, everywhere except the reactor itself should be relatively "safe" for permanent residents in 200-600 years. The place cools an awful lot after the short lifespan isotopes are gone.

By the way, you may want to rethink what makes a reactor safe. For example, the darling of many slashdotters, the PBMR, *is* a graphite moderated reactor. Reactor safety is a complex issue, and even the void coefficient isn't the only thing you have to worry about. Residual heat, chemical reactions, and pressure buildup can all be equally problematic.

Probably the biggest thing leading to reactor safety is a containment structure. While not invulnerable (a buildup of hydrogen gas, a liquid sodium/concrete detonation, etc), containment structures have saved us many times, and will continue to for the forseeable future.

Re:European Water

[Guppy06]

"a large slab of highly radioactive material will give off heat. "

For the short term, yes. But after plunging through ~4 km of supercooled water (which also acts as a neutron moderator), it won't be hot (in either sense of the word) for very long.

"What do you think that heat would do to the thermoclines?"

At the pressures down there, not much. First, the heat would have to fight the pressure enough for the local water to expand. Then the local water would have to be hot enough to retain enough heat to make it all the way up (kilometers) to the thermocline. Then it would still have to have enough heat to be drastically less dense than the water above the thermocline in order to punch through and continue up to the surface.

If the pile is sufficiently hot for local water to actually convect up to the thermocline (i. e. temperature similar to a volcanic vent), it'd probably be more inclined to raise the thermocline than to pierce it. Between the heat conduction and pressure drop of the surrounding water as a packet of hot water moves up (1 atm every 30 m), it's just not going to stay hot or organized enough.

Re:European Water

[BACbKA]

Well, it's already Severodvinsk. I.e., home base of a lot of nuclear submarines. Each one is essentially a floating nuclear power plant, in addition to its other nuclear capabilities. A lot of nuclear-powered icebreakers are also cruising in the nothern seas off Russia. Of the reactor, the submarines, and the icebreakers I'd personally fear the aging submarines much more than a newly-built reactor. I also suspect that the reactor is built with the Chernobyl hindsight, as opposed to a lot of the nuclear subs designed way before. Also, the reactor is there probably to keep the subs ground personnel lives easier.

Re:European Water

[Fussen]

Just watch.. a nuclear cruise ship will be up next. And just watch, those atoms won't be the only thing causing friction *wink wink*

Re:European Water

[M1FCJ]

Couldn't agree more. By the time the melted core hits the bottom, the mass would have fragmented and changed shape, thus reducing any particular blob of material below the critical mass. At the end you would end up with somewhat toxic and radioactive-hot material sitting at the bottom of the sea. As long as it doesn't stay as the same big, concentrated mass it was when it was in the reactor container, it won't do any additional harm.

The China Syndrome is a very unlikely thing to happen. Once the reactivity stops, the pile will cool down quite rapidly, especially in cool deep ocean water and apart from the left-over radioactivity, it won't be generating a lot of heat, definitely not enough to melt anything or the bottom. There are thousands of rods in various pools all over the world, just waiting for the short-term radioactivity to decay.

Uranium itself is a mildly radioactive material, it is quite stable, with a halflife of 700-odd million years, Compared to Uranium the short-tem, very energitic transients are more dangerous but they tend to dissapear pretty rapidly.

Re:European Water

[dbIII]

You mean instead of the thousands of tons of low-level radioactive waste that coal-burning power plants pump into the atmosphere every year

OK, let's consider the most radioactive coal you can find on earth, since coal is made of fossilised plant matter some heavy metals can also get in there too. Now let's assume that it is burnt in a coal fired plant with not only no pollution controls at all but some sort of blower to get all the radioactive material airbourne. Now let's multiply this number by the total amount of coal used worldwide for any reason, incuding steel production where you would expect a lot of the material in the coal to end up in the steel. Now you know what was behind the paper on the ornl website and as to why there is only one that people quote in this instance. "Research" funded to produce a specific outcome should be questioned, and when those results are not duplicated elsewhere more questions should be raised. There's enough problems with coal fired power generation without making things up without some crap "coal is nuclear too" stuff coming from the nuclear lobby.

Repeat after me: Nuclear power technology c.2005 is not nuclear power technology c. 1950

Look at a functioning nuclear power station - they are still 1950's white elephants. Pebble bed may change all that before 2010, but circa 2005 it is still an experimental technology with a couple of small prototypes - 1950's style designs with a few bits tacked on to bring it into the 1960's is the status quo. I suspect the nuclear industry on insisting that everything is OK is one of the major reasons not much reasearch has been done to enable them to actually deliver on those promises that they make.

Re:European Water

[MemoryDragon]

You are right, nuclear power plant 2005 = nuclear power plant 1950 + windows pcs left and right, and one of them might mess up some kind of control element at a critical time... Cannot happen, it happened in the past, thanks to the f***** up companies which sell windows based monitoring consoles!

Re:European Water

[Anonymous Coward]

At the end you would end up with somewhat toxic and radioactive-hot material sitting at the bottom of the sea.

does this mean godzilla will be coming out onto russia and not japan?

Re:European Water

[Anonymous Coward]

Modern fission plants are walk-away safe? Certain correct operator actions are always assumed to occur, if only in limited scenarios. Not to say the plants aren't safe. They are. But I wouldn't go so far as to say they are walk-away safe.

Also, I think you carry your assumption about vendors doing shady things a bit too far. I think you'd be surprised what a vendor will do to save a buck.

In addition, your description of the protection system is a bit simplistic. Has it occurred to you that a protection system that acted when any little thing went wrong would be more dangerous than no protection system at all? Shutting down and starting up all of the time is more risky than operating at steady-state, and forcing an operator into a recovery scenario for what might be a red herring is not a safe thing to do. Protection systems care about both alpha and beta error.

Re:European Water

[Firethorn]

Look at a functioning nuclear power station - they are still 1950's white elephants.

And that's because of the fear-mongers. We have a number of modern designs, not necessarily pebble bed.

France, for example, gets a large percentage of their power from nuclear.

We can build breeder reactors that, while they have some issues with producing materials that can be used for weapons, have the advantage that they burn far, far less fuel.

An equivalent would be if the government forbid fuel cells from cars on the basis that 'somebody could use one to electricute people'.

Re:European Water

[George Tirebuyer]

The United States Navy has 12 aircraft carriers not 50. Ten of them are nuclear powered.

Re:European Water

[chris_eineke]

For example, even at Chernobyl, everywhere except the reactor itself should be relatively "safe" for permanent residents in 200-600 years. The place cools an awful lot after the short lifespan isotopes are gone.

You gotta be kidding me?

When the Chernobyl reactor went belly-up, wind was transporting radioactive material to all around Europe. There are still areas in Germany where land cannot/shouldn't be used for dairy farming because of contaminated soil.

Re:European Water

[sketerpot]

The plant will use the KLT-40S pressurized water reactor, which the US DOE considers a proven and safe design. It has numerous inherent safety features, any one of which is sufficient to prevent a Chernobyl-style meltdown.

One of the nicest features of the KLT-40S design is that it has burnable moderator poison in the fuel rods, so any increase in core temperature beyond a certain point will result in lowered power output, thus making a meltdown impossible.

Also, from the article:

Among other things, fingerprint and iris identification technologies will be used. The plant will also be protected against possible subversive attempts by terrorist divers. Much thought has been given to protecting the plant from external factors. For example, if an airliner, even one as big as a Boeing, were to fall on the plant, there is no way it would destroy the reactor.

It sounds like they've given a lot of thought to security, as well as constructing a solid containment structure. To put that in perspective, if Chernobyl had been built with a containment structure, it would have been no worse than Three Mile Island.

Re:European Water

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. Like dissolving a sugar cube, or even a rail car load of sugar in the ocean made any difference. Feel free to substitute sugar with enriched uranium. After the initial, surely lethal concentration disperses, it'll be undetectable.

Kuba

Re:European Water

[fiendo]

Your logic is illogical:

Nuclear waste == bad

But, Coal waste == bad
Therefore Nuclear waste == uh, good?

Not to mention your false dichotomy.

Not to mention that coal waste never gave rogue nations cances at making weapons of mass destruction.

Re:European Water

[wstott]

Nuclear power designed, executed and managed by scientists and engineers is safe, and arguably has always been safe. Nuclear power designed, executed and managed by politicians was not and will not be safe. I put my faith in cadre of IEEE and the like, not the MBAs and Lawyers. They have their place but not where the the truth matters more than the message.

Re:European Water

[Anonymous Coward]

Please STFU and get your own mod points.

Re:European Water

[sketerpot]

And I would not be surprised if the powerstations are of a modified naval design.

They're a modification of a reactor which has had a solid safety record on Russian ice breakers.

Re:European Water

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA

Potential terrorist threats were also taken into account when designing the plant's security system. The latest scientific and technological advances in this field have been incorporated to prevent unauthorized access to fissile materials aboard the plant. Among other things, fingerprint and iris identification technologies will be used. The plant will also be protected against possible subversive attempts by terrorist divers. Much thought has been given to protecting the plant from external factors. For example, if an airliner, even one as big as a Boeing, were to fall on the plant, there is no way it would destroy the reactor.

The project head also maintained that Russia would not sell the floating nuclear plants to other countries, should a number of them be made in the future. "Russia will only sell its products -- electric power, heat and fresh water. This means that there is no cause for concern with respect to the proliferation of nuclear technologies. A floating plant under the Russian flag would be taken up to the coasts of states that had signed the necessary agreements. It would drop anchor in a convenient place that was protected from potential natural disasters and contact local engineering services on the shore. Then it would start up its reactors and -- let there be light!" he said.

Re:European Water

[Rei]

Yes. That doesn't change the fact that in 200-600 years, depending on the location, the areas in Belarus and Ukraine around Chernobyl will be down to the normal range of urban background radiation. The most problematic releases were two isotopes of iodine, strontium, and caesium. The iodine is essentially already gone; the strontium-90 and caesium-137 have half-lives around 30 years.

The plutonium will still be there, but it isn't in concentrations great enough to be dangerous without the short lived isotopes. There are a lot of places in the world where people live where the soil is already more dangerous, natural chemical-wise, than the Belarus/Ukraine soil near Ukraine will be after a few hundred years.

By the way, Chazhma Bay (probably the second worst nuclear power accident in the world, although Windscale is a close runner-up) is already experiencing a return of industry.

Re:European Water

[line.at.infinity]

When it first starts the melt down though, as soon as it hits water I think there's going to be enormous amounts of radioactive steam that will spread to the rest of the world via the atmosphere.

Re:European Water

[quarkscat]

Your statement would seem to imply that nuclear technology has advanced so far that there are no longer any issues with this power source. AFAIK there is still a problem concerning high level radioactive waste (spent fuel, core, primary cooling system), since some of it has a half-life of 20,000 years.

Radioactive half-life does NOT mean that in 20,000 years the radiation will automagically disappear -- it only means that just half of the radioactivity will be gone in that time. It might take 10 iterations of 20,000 years for the radiation of some items (like spent nuclear fuel) to decay to the point of relative safety.

No known government or corporation has every existed for 2,000 years, let alone 20,000 or 200,00 years. The only institution that I know of that has lasted that long is the Roman (christian) Church. I have yet to see any politician, Dept of Energy bureaucrat, or nuclear industy spokesperson publically suggest the formation of a "nuclear priesthood" to keep watch over, monitor and maintain radioactive waste casks for the next 100,000 years. Nor, for that matter, have I seen any of these same people incorporate 100,000 years worth of labor, materials, or liability in their claims of "cheap nuclear power". The closest was an early Dept of Energy claim that nuclear power plants would produce electricity that would be "too cheap to meter" (, and this propaganda was found to be completely false.)

Re:European Water

[mfrank]

Carries have multiple reactors.

Re:European Water

[hisstory student]

Check out Brown's Gas at FreeEnergyNews as well as other proven nuclear remediation technologies there. You may be pleasently surprised.

Re:European Water

[Jonathan_S]

Carries have multiple reactors.

Yes. The Nimitz class have 2 reactors, and the Enterprise has 8

There are 9 Nimitz class carriers (18 reactors) and the Enterprise (8 reactors) for a total of 26.
If you want to include non-US nuclear carriers (there is only one) the Charles De Gaulle has 2 reactors.

So worldwide there are 28 aircraft carrier nuclear reactors. Not 50 as claimed by a grandparent post.

Now I admit there are plenty more reactors on submarines (although, at least in all the US subs, only 1 reactor per sub).
US subs only:
Virigina Class SSN (1 in service)
Seawolf Class SSN (3 in service)
Los Angeles Class SSN (51 in service)
Ohio Class SSBN (14 in service)
Ohio Class SSGN (4 in service)
So that is another 73 reactors.

Then there are other nations nuclear subs, there was one reactor powered cargo vessel, the US used to have some nuclear powered cruisers, the russian had several reactor powered nuclear icebreakers, etc.

So the overall point that there are a lot of Naval nuclear reactors is certainly correct.

First?

[syukton]

I beg to differ. Aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines would be the first...

Re:First?

[k512-arch]

Yeah yeah, but you can't discount the Russians for creating the first nuclear power STATION. I imagine that creates some new problems of its own, as well..

Re:First?

[RGRistroph]

Actually you are right -- the first civilan nuclear power plant was a dry-docked nuclear sub in Pennsylvania.

Re:First?

[kcb93x]

Plus, with the sheer low cost ($200,000 for an output 1/50th of that of a normal Russian nuclear power plant...so the cost of these to equal a normal Russian nuclear plant would be $10,000,000) I think that $10 million is less than the cost of a normal nuclear power plant. Perhaps we should look at this design as well, I mean, evalute it for chrissakes!

We put nuclear power plants to sea all the time. Our aircraft carriers, our submarines, for the most part have gone completely nuclear. Why not, the military uses them. Let's take a look at this. 5 or 6 cents per kilowatt...daaaannnnng.

Heck, even if we don't use these as permanant plants, how about having a few of them as floaters, for rent to cities/owners of the power grid as needed? Oh, having an excessive heat wave $CITY ? Here, for $x.xx/kilowatt, with a minimum purchase of $XX,XXX, we'll add power to your grid.

Seriously...let's take a look at this.

Re:First?

[Anonymous Coward]

The $200,000 is way off. According to this page from the DOE, this reactor is going to cost between $100 and $120 million. A tad more than $200,000.

Re:First?

[dbIII]

440-foot-long World War II Liberty ship

They put a reactor on the type of ship that is the textbook example of poor design due to cutting corners? Those ships are famous for cracking in half and sinking.

Re:First?

[nwbvt]

"Plus, with the sheer low cost ($200,000 for an output 1/50th of that of a normal Russian nuclear power plant...so the cost of these to equal a normal Russian nuclear plant would be $10,000,000) I think that $10 million is less than the cost of a normal nuclear power plant. Perhaps we should look at this design as well, I mean, evalute it for chrissakes!"

You mean 1/150?

Add to that, the 200 grand isn't the entire cost. For instance, a quick google of the project reveals that they are paying the Chinese 86.5 million for the barge. I'm guessing the quoted price is either a gross conversion error or its just for some key components of the reactor. Then they have to secure it, these are nice targets for potential terrorists.

Re:First?

[moosesocks]

From the unique reactors linked to by the parent poster:

2008: The Floating Reactor (the Severodvinsk Reactor)

In 2008, if all goes according to plan, the world's first commercial floating nuclear power plant will be ready to begin operation... Pravda, the Russian news publication, reported the project was approved by the head of the Ministry for Nuclear Power, Alexander Rumyantsev. Sevmash Enterprise, which specializes in submarine construction, will build the vessel. Rosenergoatom, the Russian nuclear firm, will supply the reactors. Two such floating power stations are planned, each anticipated to cost $100 to $120 million. The first one will supply power to the city of Severodvinsk, approximately 50 miles west of Archangel.

Looks like TFA was wrong by several orders of magnitude on this one....

Re:First?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but dry-docked != floating.

Re:First?

[ergo98]

Let's take a look at this. 5 or 6 cents per kilowatt...daaaannnnng.

I like and believe in nuclear power, but it is always oversold and underpriced. In reality every project component will go over budget, every refurbishment will cost billions more, and every cost of operation will be stated as "unanticipated". Nuclear energy is vastly more expensive than it is made out to be. Add in the fact that the world's uranium supply is just as finite as oil, and is quickly being exhausted.

Re:First?

[AnyoneEB]

Add in the fact that the world's uranium supply is just as finite as oil, and is quickly being exhausted.

Hey, you know what would be cool? If we could figure out a way to make a nuclear reactor which produced more fuel than it consumed. Err.. oh, yeah...

Re:First?

[ScrewMaster]

Only under certain conditions and it was fixable. But yeah ... they were designed to go together fast, and not much else.

Re:First?

[Chrispy1000000 the 2]

Yes, the nuclear power supply is finit. And yes, the *known* reserves are only slated to last several decades. But the same is true for other metals, even for copper. When the demand goes up, corporations will put more effort into finding deposits. Until then, why? They are not going to make any money from it? And when we start having to use breeder reactors, well, at the current rate of energy consumption, we have enough to power the world for over a thousand years. And thats only with currently known resources!

Nuclear energy is more expensive than oil. But the fuel costs for nuclear energy make up a very very tiny portion of the costs.

Re:First?

[KDN]

world's uranium supply is just as finite as oil, and is quickly being exhausted.

Excuse me? First we can burn all the weapons material from the weapons being decomissioned. Second we can use breeder reactors, which can use the 98% of the U238 that does exist instead of the 1% of U235 that normal reactors use. Third a lot of the fossil fuel beds have so much uranium and thorium that you could actually generate more energy if you use them in a nuke instead of burning it. The something deposits of Canada come to mind (there are three kinds of coal, its the worst kind). Then there are the huge deposits in some beach in India, where the sand is quite radioactive. Then there was research I saw years ago in breeding microbes that could extract uranium (and interestingly, gold) from sea water.

Re:First?

[Jeremi]

If we could figure out a way to make a nuclear reactor which produced more fuel than it consumed.

Sounds good, but how does it get around that pesky 2nd law of thermodynamics? (My guess is that the "produced" fuel contains less energy than the "consumed" fuel, so they are really just playing word games here)

Re:First?

[drerwk]

IAAP but not a NP. The 2nd law is not being bypassed. Consider, if you just have matter around and a way to convert it to energy you get your mc^2 out. In a breeder, IIRC, the fast neutrons are captured by non-fissile uranium, and become fissile. The energy is already there in the nucleus of the atoms, but until it is put in a fissile state by neutron capture it is not accessable. I'm guessing that when the material fisses, you even get the neutron back, but that is speculation. The only way to break the 2nd law here would be to get more than mc^2 out, and I don't think we are quite there yet.

Re:First?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's also one or two big Russian nuclear-powered icebreakers.

Re:First?

[ergo98]

I'm sorry, was this article talking about a breeder reactor? No, it appears it wasn't. Breeder reactors don't make fuel that is usable by normal reactors - it is usable by other breeder reactors. And if it was such a panacea that would be all people would be building (which it isn't).

Re:First?

[ErikZ]

Do a little research, the problem isn't technical or physics. It's political.

Re:First?

[Dan Ost]

Hogwash. The only reason we don't build breeders is because people are afraid that we can't secure the resulting plutonium.

Re:First?

[Aglassis]

You said: "Add in the fact that the world's uranium supply is just as finite as oil, and is quickly being exhausted."

I would not put a lot of stock in what current exploration studies have said about uranium. While these studies may be accurate about oil, we have to remember that oil is a carbon based process only in the very surface of the earth. The uranium studies are looking only in the same places as they would look for any valuable metal or substance. But uranium is not oil. Uranium is dispersed throughout the Earth, not just in the upper crust. It is dissolved in the oceans and exists in the lower parts of the crust as well.

If we believe that we are running out of uranium we are falling into the trap of ignoring the effect that technology will have on exploration studies and on mining. Just because we can only dig about a mile into the crust doesn't mean that future technologies won't allow us to dig much deeper and explore much farther.

Would you believe a study that says that we have mined 90% of the gold on the planet? It would be ridiculous! If I recall correctly, uranium is about as rare as silver.

Re:First?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's floating on bricks!

...Sorry.

Re:First?

[modecx]

No doubt, this thing's got to be more expensive. I mean, I could afford it and perhaps a lake to put it in, and I could sell what electricity I don't use (it's supposed to supply a town of 200,000) and recoup my money. Plus, it would be much more fun to be able to say to some Ferrari jerkoff that I *own* the nuclear power plant that powers (and unbeknownst to him provided the funds for) the electric car that just dusted his precious ride. Heh.

Seriously, even if this thing cost ten times as much it wouldn't be far out of the grasp of people on the low end of the wealthy spectrum, and someone like Bill Gates could reasonably afford to provide electricity and desalinated water to all of the third world.

I'm afraid there's simply no way that this is going to cost less than 500 times the price they've quoted, not because it's unfeasible even with huge mass production (heck, maybe it is possible), or because it's unsafe, or because people are afraid of it--but because under pressure of the Oil Companies the US will invade whoever has one.

Re:First?

[markass530]

With the early exceptions of the Thresher and scorpion, our Modern Nuclear Navy has a flawless record, the ruskies however not so much, Lets just hope they have learned from their mishaps. I can see why this would make sense, sea water is a cheap and plentiful coolant.

Re:First?

[Anonymous Coward]

And a reasonable fear that is! I'm sorry, I prefer to leave breeders to future generations who no longer have a choice. Today, please build Pebble Bed Reactors or the like.

Re:First?

[lga]

I prefer to leave breeders to future generations who no longer have a choice.

What makes you think that our generation has a choice?

Everyone converting to breeder reactors is a far more attractive scenario than the USA invading the rest of the world for oil.

Re:First?

[bladernr]

They put a reactor on the type of ship that is the textbook example of poor design due to cutting corners?

Perhaps you missed the point of the Liberty Ship. It was supposed to be a cheap, crappy ship with a pittifully short lifespan.

At the point in WWII right before the Liberty, the Axis powers basically owned the North Atlantic. US ships heading the England were getting sunk constantly. So, in a good example of actual thinking by the government, America came up with a ship it could build cheap and, more importantly, faster than the Germans could sink them.

That kept the Allies supplied even with the large sink rate. Once the Allies regained control of the North Atlantic from the Germans, the Liberty was not a great ship - but, by then, America had too many to throw them away.

So, in spite of bad design, they met their original purpose (keep the allies supplied in spite of huge shipping losses), and are part of what kept England from being invaded (by keeping it well supplied) until America and the Allies could beat back the Germans.

Re:First?

[dbIII]

Only under certain conditions

Those conditions being either at sea or the fitting out dock. 1289 ships with major incidents out of a total of 4694 ships made these vessels the textbook example of the consequences of poor ship design.

Re:First?

[dbIII]

The myriad excuses have been dealt with in a variety of books and papers as to why existing shipbuilding standards that would not even have raised the cost were not adhered to and as to why a remarkably stupid hatch design was used. One interesting aspect was the people who said it was a bad design for at least two years, and that the failures were put down to german submarines until one of the ships breaking in half in the fitting out dock made it obvious to all that there was a problem. Tight lips sank ships.

Like it or not, the liberty ships are a textbook example of bad design, and we have so much information on them becuase construction continued for so long without fixing the flaws. More of them sank due to structural failure than due to enemy action - which would also make them a failure by even the limited definition of success given above.

Re:First?

[Anonymous Coward]

German U boat captain planning a mission.
-No we take ze other ships firzt unt hope the liberty ships will zinkh on their own.

Hydrogen wells...

[otis wildflower]

.. Perhaps offshoring plants like this and using them to generate hydrogen + power?

Eeentaresting...

Re:Hydrogen wells...

[Anonymous Coward]

" .. Perhaps offshoring plants like this and using them to generate hydrogen + power?"

with a floating powerplant you get either power or hydrogen not both. Electrolysis of water into hydrogen and oxygen consumes energy.

Although if you had a bunch of these platforms to create an overabundance of electrical energy it might become economical to electrolyze water.

Also I can't imagine that the American public will want floating nuclear powerplants off the coasts after hurricane Katrina virtually destroyed New Orleans.

As someone who worked on the CVN21 project I think this is a good idea even with the hurricane threat . Which could probably be defeated with the plants were more ship-like than TA suggests.

Re:Hydrogen wells...

[sqrt(2)]

Then build them on the west coast, we rarely have hurricanes here :D

Adantage?

[FatalChaos]

What is the advantage of the power plant floating on water? If anything, this will make it more dangerous.

Re:Adantage?

[Oliver_Fisher]

Nuclear power needs a good heat sink. The sea is a giant heatsink. Perhaps thats the reason.

Re:Adantage?

[limon.verde]

It can be towed away. In the article it says: "Russia will only sell its products - electric power, heat and fresh water. [snip] A floating plant under the Russian flag would be taken up to the coasts of states that had signed the necessary agreements. It would drop anchor in a convenient place [snip]. Then it would start up its reactors and - let there be light!"

After 12 years, it would be towed back home, leaving no nuclear materials behind. It's like selling fish instead of fishing nets.

Re:Adantage?

[Anonymous Coward]

interesting!

Even IF they have a meltdown the water would cool it off! Course the steam might be a prob. But still what an idea!

Also solves the 'not in my backyard' prob.

Re:Adantage?

[benjamindees]

Yeah but in case of accident, the damage would be more spread out, thus less easy to prove and collect on.

Supposedly another advantage is that it makes the plants easier to standardize. Design once, place anywhere.

Also, like others have pointed out, cooling water. No need to build cooling towers or dig ponds.

These concepts aren't new. All of them are in a book I have here from the 70s.

Re:My first post?

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha sucks to be you.

long range power grid feeding

[BewireNomali]

Can you build a cluster of these and feed the electricity into the power grid in instances like the US where our power grid is well developed?

Re:long range power grid feeding

[Stickney]

What about a Beowulf cluster?

Re:long range power grid feeding

[BewireNomali]

One thing this article was not clear on is the magnitude of any fallout. Does anyone have info on the nature and degree of any fallout from this proposed power station should the core be compromised?

Re:long range power grid feeding

[mnemonic_]

What a stupid question.

Re:long range power grid feeding

[Anonymous Coward]

what an arrogant asshole.

Re:long range power grid feeding

[bhima]

You know, I can think of a lot of phrases that go with " US power grid" and none of them sound like "well developed".

"Run on Win ME" springs to mind, or maybe "Expensive Claptrap" perhaps.

Oh.. and by the way moving energy around is the single most energy extensive thing done in the US, accounting for over 1/2 of the energy generated. You'd be better off finding a way to generate the energy where you use it.

Re:long range power grid feeding

[Dun Malg]

One thing this article was not clear on is the magnitude of any fallout. Does anyone have info on the nature and degree of any fallout from this proposed power station should the core be compromised?

There would likely be none, being that "fallout" is radioactive particulate matter precipitating out of the air. You only get that from a) low-altitude atmospheric nuclear warhead detonations, or b) old-school Soviet-type plant design and operation stupidity, i.e. building a graphite moderated core and then turning off critical automatic safety systems to test secondary backup systems while the plant is operating in a dangerously unstable low-power mode, blowing the top off the core with a 100x max power surge and setting the graphite on fire (Chernobyl).

Re:long range power grid feeding

[Nick haflinger]

The article actually says 1/150th which means 30 megabucks to replace a traditional reactor which is a little high. However what I've seen on triing to make nuclear more economical suggests that mass producing smaller reactors should be significantly cheaper since capital outlays can be made to improve the efficiency of the process. My favorite candidates for this are power stations that where designed for the DEW line. They are power stations that weigh about 12 tons and prodoce about 30kW for thirty years. As for fallout that is largely a function of containment. Graphite moderated reactors, like chernoble, are so large that containment buildings for them are extremely expensive. So the soviets didn't build containment buildings for those reactors. If these really are this small and hopefully water moderated size/expense of containment should scale down and reduce fallout to near zero. In terms of engineering as long as you know what you have to face you can pretty much stop anything with enough concrete. Of greater concern to me is prolifatory implications. Sure Russia already has nukes but some of the nations interested in this don't. If they really do hope to be in the export business that needs to be carefully monitored. The hard part about constructing a nuke has always been getting your hands on fisile material. Even a non-breeder reactor will produce non-trivial amounts of chemically distinguishable fissiles over its fuel cycle. Thats what the big deal about plutonium is. You can build a bomb out of sufficiently enriched uranium or thorium but that is hard/expensive whereas you can chemically seperate plutonium from spent fuel much easier. Also most figures I've seen for costs of nuclear energy production call for costs under 2 cents per kW making this pretty expensive. Plus based on desalinization figures this looks to be approx. 20 kw which might be enough for a fifth of a miilion people in the artic circle but for those of you that want to use this in the first world, the energy use of the lifestyle which americans, canadians and western europeans have become accustomed takes about 10x that level of energy to maintain.

Re:long range power grid feeding

[cashman73]

Seriously though, two or three of these, stationed off the California coast, might actually come in handy. In addition to helping the state meet its increasingly heavy energy demands, they might actually be safer in the ocean than on land, near the San Andreas fault or something.

Re:long range power grid feeding

[__aaxwdb6741]

I cant decide wether I believe you should be modded +1, Funny or +1, Insightfull....

Re:long range power grid feeding

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever lived outside US?

man, most of other countries power grid is a mess...
here in brazil we had a huge blackout on some states while the south states simply were not affected because there was no connection between the south states(which have the biggest hydreletrical plant in the world) and the other states

Re:long range power grid feeding

[mgs1000]

Well, the USN could try to build a Seawolf cluster, but they only have three. :)

Re:long range power grid feeding

[JaredOfEuropa]

[quote]You'd be better off finding a way to generate the energy where you use it.[/quote] ...Perhaps by using many small nuclear reactors (some of them even floating)? Not the first time this has been proposed either; one group suggested small reactors (pebble bed ones I believe), sitting next to the boiler in the basement, enough to power a single city block. Even then you'd still want the lot connected to the grid, as a backup for when your reactor fails (or is serviced), or to cope with peak demand elsewhere.

Sticking power back into the grid is very common here; most glass houses are heated by a gas driven heat/power generator, which also supplies energy for the lights in the glasshouse. The (considerable) surplus is fed back into the grid (the farmer gets paid for this). Similar designs exist for solar cells for home use; if they generate more than you use, the surplus goes back into the grid.

Heh...

[fiendo]

Yeah, I think the U.S. has those too--they're called "nuclear submarines".

Re:Heh...

[Em Ellel]

Yeah, I think the U.S. has those too--they're called "nuclear submarines".

I believe $200,000 is a price of a toilet on one of those U.S. "nuclear submarines". Besides, I do not believe those nuclear subs power anything other than themselves.

Re:Heh...

[Anonymous Coward]

We're talking Russian here. That should be "Nuclear Wessels".

Re:Heh...

[Anonymous Luddite]

Wait for the $200,000 price to climb.

These guys haven't built one. It sounds like they haven't even got anyone convinced to finance it yet. The sales pitch is great, but perhaps we should treat it with a little skepticism initially.

It might cost more and do less than advertised.

Re:Heh...

[fiendo]

And the subs can also defend themselves from pretty much anything, which is more than I can say for this Russian terrorist honeypot.

In other words, the cost of 200k is just the downpayment--your installment plan will kick in when the Chechens blow your terrorist honeypot skyhigh.

Re:Heh...

[Anonymous Coward]

except the submarines don't power anything but themselves and the toilets alone cost $200,000. ;)

Re:Heh...

[Ironsides]

Don't forget AirCraft carriers. According to Wiki, the Enterprise was the first nuclear powered carrier. According to an article in the Navy Times, current carriers have over 8-12 nuclear power plants on them. Soon to be dropping if they can convert the four screws over to electric propulsion instead of steam. (Currently each screw has it's own small nuclear reactor to create steam for it.)

Re:Heh...

[KylePflug]

You've obviously never seen the head on a nuclear submarine. I highly doubt anything in the "Personal Living Space" department costs much at all, if dimensions have anything to do with cost.

Re:Heh...

[Em Ellel]

You've obviously never seen the head on a nuclear submarine. I highly doubt anything in the "Personal Living Space" department costs much at all, if dimensions have anything to do with cost.

No one said it was WORTH that. Just a small joke at the expense of DoD -- hey if they pay over $600 for a toilet seat, the toilet should be pretty expensive too. :-)

Actual point of my post is that there is a difference in nature (and cost!) of a nuclear sub vs a power plant powering a city (200,000 is a small city, but a city non-the-less)

-Em

Re:Heh...

[Em Ellel]

And the subs can also defend themselves from pretty much anything, which is more than I can say for this Russian terrorist honeypot.
 
... Our subs have nothing to fear but fear itself.... ... well, that and running into underwater mountains at high speed...

In other words, the cost of 200k is just the downpayment--your installment plan will kick in when the Chechens blow your terrorist honeypot skyhigh.

Yes, because, you know, terrorists could never attack a US military vessel

Besides, if you bothered to read the article ... wait ...... I now understand the error of what I am saying ..... reading the article ... it's just not the Slashdot way ... *sigh* ... nevermind...

Re:Heh...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you mean nuclear wessels.

Re:Heh...

[HermanAB]

Russia actually has a long history of using retired nuclear subs to power towns.

Re:Heh...

[fiendo]

You would compare the defenses of a U.S. nuclear sub to this nuke-in-a-pot? Ok let's! According to TFA, the Russian nuke-to-go has an ID based entry system---ooooh that ought to stop a terrorist in their tracks. And the salesmen claim that they cold have a Boeing drop on it--gosh if the salesman really say that, well then ... oh wait ... they're *salesmen* to quote you: ... *sigh* ... nevermind...

You're right, a saleman's reassurance and some ID card entry system should be equal security to a U.S. sub's.

What was I thinking.

Re:Heh...

[quiet_guy]

Um....not even close. Yes, ENTERPRISE was the first carrier; she has 8 small reactors. All the NIMITZ class ships have 2. Number of screws has nothing to do with number of power plants - making one screw/shaft that could produce the horsepower of two makes for a bloody huge propellor (and they are already big). Treat the Navy Times like /. - don't even bother to RTFA - they are rarely correct.

Re:Heh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you do anything but talk about how great America is?

No, no you can't because you're an idiot and patriotism is all you have.

Shut the fuck up.

expensive

[RevengeOfPoopJuggler]

for just 5 or 6 cents per kilowatt

I hope they mean kilowatt-hour otherwise that is pretty damn expensive

Re:expensive

[sploxx]

for just 5 or 6 cents per kilowatt

I hope they mean kilowatt-hour otherwise that is pretty damn expensive

Just pay your electricity in euro/dollar hours and you'll be fine :-)

Oh damn...

[MagicDude]

Now electricity is being offshored. When's it going to end?

Re:Oh damn...

[Anonymous Coward]

When's it going to end?
When the white man offshores himself and leave the continent to the Indians.

MOD PARENT UP

[Bigby]

Exactly. Aircraft carriers and submarines have been nuclear powered for ages....and they certainly aren't walking on the ground.

Safety

[greening]

Just out of curiousity, what would happen if something big were to happen in the area of the floating power plant (something like Katrina, etc.)?

Re:Safety

[Bigby]

What if an aircraft carrier or submarine was destroyed? Well, it seems that those are taken care of. I think the engineers have somewhat of a brain.

Re:Safety

[niXcamiC]

Just out of curiousity, what would happen if something big were to happen in the area of the floating power plant (something like Katrina, etc.)?

Hurricanes are tropical/semi-tropical storms, this plant is being built in the white sea. think about it.

Re:Safety

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe but the first two can get out of the way in time

Re:Safety

[Alien Being]

"Well, it seems that those are taken care of. I think the engineers have somewhat of a brain."

Riiiiight, Russians never fuck up with nukes. Are you daft?

Re:Safety

[RobertF]

Well, if it's built to survive an impact by a commercial jet aircraft, then I think it's good. Besides, at most what would a hurrican do (That is, if a tropical storm were to travel over land, into arctic waters and retain its strength)? Sink it? The russians know a thing or two about sunken nuclear ships...

Re:Safety

[bigtrike]

Much more than $200,000 goes into the power plants those carriers and submarines. I would guess that they're engineered a lot better than this plant will be.

Re:Safety

[cgenman]

Meltdown requires heat, and water forms a pretty effective barrier against nuclear radiation. I'd guess that at the first sign of trouble, you sink the whole thing. It's only 200k, after all.

Re:Safety

[Bastian]

Yeah, I'm sure those have all sorts of safeguards because, ya know, military organizations have always been careful to avoid leaking radiological material and other toxic agents into the environment .

Re:Safety

[ScrewMaster]

Well, if something big were to get close just unplug the damned thing and move it.

Re:Safety

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that there are lots of radioactive isotopes resulting from a meltdown. And many of those have long half-lives. They can be carried by currents and eventually can end up close to populated areas.

Of course, it's not easy to get a reactor to melt these days unless you try really hard.

Re:Safety

[nwbvt]

If a category 4 hurricane were able to make it up to the White Sea, I think you may end up with bigger issues than a little radioactive waste on the sea floor. In order for it to still be that powerful when it got that far north, think of how powerful it would have to have been when it flew over a densely populated Europe. Though you may not want to put one of those off the coast of Florida.

Re:Safety

[jasonditz]

I guess in all fairness there could still be an earthquake/tidal wave situation. Probably not something to lose sleep over.

Interesting power delivery concept.

[Sv-Manowar]

These guys seem to have borrowed some ideas from the latest electronics & software releases. They claim the plants will be operated as a service where russia retains the ownership, control of the plant and the like while the power plant is just hooked up to the grid of the native country. It's also pretty amazing that the cost of this plant is estimated to be $200,000. That's pocket money compared to the sums spent on current stations (although this one does claim to be 'small').

Re:Interesting power delivery concept.

[FatalChaos]

Well its possible if they bought all the parts from RUSSIAN companies that it would be this small, b/c 200k american dollars is a huge amount in russia.

It's easy to save money --

[VAXGeek]

they bought the fuel rods on ebay.ru!

Re:It's easy to save money --

[jrockway]

more like allofnuclearfuel.com

Re:It's easy to save money --

[Vadim Makarov]

they bought the fuel rods on ebay.ru!

Seriously, there is no ebay.ru. We have molotok.ru.

Sounds a bit like Molotov cocktail, that's right :)

Re:I Guess...

[cduffy]

Three Mile Island was hardly a disaster, and Chernobyl was a plant with a horrifically poor design by modern standards.

Just because you say nuclear energy is a bad idea doesn't make it so -- and of the alternatives, they either do far worse environmental damage or cannot practically be scaled to meet demand.

Re:I Guess...

[Bigby]

Do you know anything about current nuclear technologies. You couldn't have a nuclear meltdown if you tried anymore. Plus, with pebble bed reactors, nuclear plants can be practically anywhere.

Many people are against Nuclear plants because of Chernobyl. Did you know that a coal plant releases more radiation outside its walls than a nuclear plant?

I guess it's people like you that are the reason no new plants (in the U.S.) have been built in decades.

First?

[sanctimonius hypocrt]

How about the Sturgis, a "440-foot-long World War II Liberty ship that the Army converted into a floating 45-megawatt nuclear power plant."

More about Unique Reactors

$200K???

[CrazyTalk]

How is that possible? You can't even buy a one bedroom condo for that in a major city! Must be a misprint, or due to government subsidy.

Re:$200K???

[Anonymous Coward]

What they don't tell you is that this is in 1930 dollars.

Re:$200K???

[J Mack Daddy]

Easy, real-estate in the middle of the sea off the coast of a third-world nation is cheaper than that in a major city...

Re:$200K???

[tktk]

You could if there was a nuclear powerplant in one of the bedrooms.

Not that I disagree with you, I'm just saying...

Re:$200K???

[g0at]

Must be a misprint, or due to government subsidy

You're suggesting that the Russian Federal Nuclear Energy Agency (government) is being subsidized by the government?

-b

Re:$200K???

[CrazyTalk]

Even if the land (or sea) was free, the cost in materials alone would far exceed 200k

Go Russkies!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure what they do if a significant chuck of ice floats their direction. I guess just shut the bloody thing down, you know?

All the, uh, "Chernobyl" stuff got worked out. They ain't using plants to make plutonium bombs anymore. It's too bad, too, because that was one hell of a breeder reactor. One Chernobyl could've supplied all of Europe and America with enough plutonium to run hundreds of reactors.

Anyway, it's a good idea for the environment that it's in. Wouldn't work out, say, off the coast of Louisiana or Flordia.

Go Russkies!

Power Station?

[grahamsz]

You can certainly argue that a nuclear sub has a power station, or even that my car has a power station. However I think this article means "the sort of power station that sits on a grid"

Not very clear, but with a bit of qualification then their point probably stands.

Makes me wonder about htat little reactor that powered the US antartic ops.. It was probably on a boat yet did provide power to buildings and research facilities.

Re:Power Station?

[i.r.id10t]

Which (without having rtfa) is how they are probably doing it. How much less expensive would one of the small aircraft carriers be if you didn't have to worry about armour, weapons, gas storage, ammo storage, flight gear (elevator, etc) and so on? Build an anchor station similar to an oil rig for the boat to dock to, have the Big Cable going from the rig back to shore ...

Re:Power Station?

[nolife]

Only two things prevent a navy ship tied to a pier from powering the grid. Procedure and an automatic reverse power trip on the shore power supply breakers. Both are in place to protect the ships own electrical bus and generation equipment. The reactor is not normally running in port and the backup power to shore power consists of diesel engine(s) and the battery. These are very limited and designed only to supply enough to power the ships vital equipment.
A simple turn 1/4 turn of a single rheostat on the electical plant control panel is all it takes to change the ships load on shore power from positive to negative but the shore power reverse trips are on a delay to prevent tripping during transients.

I don't think the navy would exactly jump at the chance to power the grid with the nuclear plant running either though. Not having complete control of the load or being kept informed of expected load changes would probably freak people out. We've all heard of the network and system administrators from hell, through training and experience, many navy nuclear operators are the same.

Re:Power Station?

[Aglassis]

I was a Navy Nuke and just got out after 6 years. Your first step will be going to boot camp where you get to play with ridiculously stupid people for about 10 weeks. The key to boot camp is that they are unofficially evaluating people to see if they will follow their orders even if there are better alternatives available. Those who are able to follow stupid orders will pass. Just remember, that's the point of boot camp. When you signed up you probably had a preferred rating (EM, ET, or MM). This doesn't mean that you will get the rating that you want. The assignment is fairly random, with a very slight bias to the smarter people to qualify as EMs or ETs. But don't take this to mean that MMs are stupid. Remember, the bias is very small.

After boot camp you will go to Naval Nuclear Power Training Command (NNPTC) in Charleston, SC. You will be assigned to your rate's school (which was basically randomly selected in boot camp). This will last up to 6 months. The purpose of this school is to train you in your rate and (more importantly) show you the standards of education that will be required to pass Nuclear Power School and other future Navy nuclear schools. Most people find it very challenging, saying that it puts their previous experience in college to shame. There is no question that it is a steep learning curve (and it will continue to get steeper). A significant amount of effort is required, but there is a lot of help available to succeed. I estimate that I only saw about 25% of my class fail out.

After your rating's 'A' School you will go to Nuclear Power School. There is typically a delay from about 2-8 weeks (though it may take longer if you have issues on getting a security clearance). Here you will learn the theory on how a Naval nuclear power plant operates. This is typically considered the hardest enlisted school in the US armed forces. 80 hour works weeks (of study) are not uncommon. From what I saw, about 10-20% failed out during this school. Still, there is a lot of help available, and the Navy is trying to make everyone succeed. They are only trying to weed out people who after they try their hardest still cannot meet the standards. Your study habits in 'A' school are essential to pass^H^H^H^Hsurviving this school.

Then you go to a nuclear reactor prototype unit (2 in NY, and 2 in SC). This 6 month school is the practical counterpart for Nuclear Power School. Expect about 60 hour work weeks. It is much more laid back, but all of the requirements for passing are no longer put on passing tests in the classroom, but instead put on getting interviews from instructors and operators on different topics. Instead of the standard essay question that you will be used to in NPS, you will instead have to answer by showing it on a blackboard with an oral interview. It is a much higher standard for learning. You will now need to memorize procedures and schematics of equipment. You will have to be able to tell how a nuclear reactor works from the bottom up (regardless of rate) and how you are required to operate it. Additionally, you will stand a supervised watchs and perform supervised maintenance (on a real nuclear reactor). At the end of this school you will have a final written exam (comprehensive) and a final oral board. The memorization portion of this part of the nuclear pipeline is easy for some people and hard for others. I estimate that about 25% fail out in this school. If you pass this school you are now certified to be able to learn how a nuclear power plant operates on your ship (it's not over yet!).

At your ship (you can volunteer for submarines or be assigned to a carrier), you will start learning how your ships nuclear reactor works. It will be similar to your prototype experience, except that you will qualify one watch at a time, and you will have to spend your time learning when you are not working or standing watch. For some, this can mean that you have even worse hours than you had in NPS or prototype. But the stre

Re:Power Station?

[nolife]

Basically.... what he said would have been my reply as well.

The second school, Nuclear Power School, was a bitch for me for the exact reason Aglassis said. The memorization portion of this part of the nuclear pipeline is easy for some people and hard for others.
It took me a while to learn how to learn and I could not stay awake at all because of the excessive hours I had to study. The earliest I EVER left after class (7am-4pm) in the entire 6 months of that school was 10:45PM but I typcially stayed until 11:30PM. I also put an average of 15-20 extra hours in on the weekend. I was floating on the "2.5 to stay alive" line with my GPA until about 6 weeks left when everything started to click. My GPA went up from there and I finished the NPS final with a 3.6. Many were not so lucky. "A" school and the prototype training were relatively easy. Long hours but much easier.
Overall, "nukes" make rate/rank very fast. It is not uncommon to see an E6 with only 6 years in. Seems a little odd but you can be an E5/E6 at the ripe age of 21-24 and be responsible for the maintenance and operation of a running and shutdown reactor and propulsion plant. Someday you too may be adjusting that MG voltage regulator on the electrical panel to prevent overloading and losing shore power.

Re:Power Station?

[whopis]

Actually, it is even really the first floating nuclear power plant to sit on a grid:

After one of the particularly bad typhoons of the 90s (I can't recal if it was Paka or another one), Guam had lost 1/3 of it's power production. The US Navy connected a nuclear submarine to the power grid to provide supplemental power until the power plant came back online.

Today's Nuclear Power

[quark101]

is actually very safe. Because of tremendous advances in both safety and efficiency, nuclear power is actually a very viable alternative to fossil fuels for power generation. However, due to very high profile disasters (ala 3-Mile Island and Chernobyl), the American public is deathly afraid of just the idea. In contrast, I know that France supplies a large part of the power through the use of these more modern generators, and to my knoweledge, there have been no problems.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[jfengel]

Well gosh, we may have made parts of the world unliveable for decades to come in the past, but this time we've got the problem licked. You can trust our figures: we've got a vested interest in selling nuke plants!

Sorry for the sarcasm; I'd really like to see something replace our fossil fuel dependencies, and I'm even willing to consider the long-term problems that nuke plants saddle us with in exchange for it.

But many people are deathly afraid of the idea with good reason: when nuke plants fail they fail really, really badly. And the people who are telling us they're safe now told us the same things when they built the first generation of nuke plants.

So what I'm saying is: I'm willing to be convinced, but it'll take a lot of work.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[Anonymous Coward]

But many people are deathly afraid of the idea with good reason: when nuke plants fail they fail really, really badly

So? Coal plants do that when operating as designed. They just look better on CNN while they kill people, that's all.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[dbIII]

France ... to my knoweledge, there have been no problems

The incident with liquid sodium killing a few people during decommissioning of a nuclear plant in France got some press at the time.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[Quadraginta]

I'm willing to be convinced, but it'll take a lot of work.

Well, I doubt it, although perhaps I am being overly cynical with respect to you personally.

My experience is that all that is required for people to rapidly abandon principle is a steep rise in the expense of maintaining that principle. It's amazing how clever people are about talking themselves into a new universal principle when the old one runs up against sheer basic personal need.

So, let the price of electricity from fossil fuels rise a factor of 10 or so, and I think we'll be amazed at how little work it will take to convince people formerly passionately opposed to nuclear power to accept it.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[Dachannien]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[poemofatic]

However, due to very high profile disasters (ala 3-Mile Island and Chernobyl), the American public is deathly afraid of just the idea.

How convenient. The big costs with nuclear power is managing the waste. You have to store it for a billion years. At a couple of bucks a year, it's not so cheap now, is it? And of course, the cost is more than a couple of bucks a year. But that cost is borne by the taxpayers, who are not so enthusiastic, for obvious reasons.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[vandan]

Declaring something safe isn't enough to make it so. You can reduce the risk of an accident, but can't rule it out completely. When an accident happens ( and it would be incredibly naive of you to suggest that it "just can't happen" ), the impact is devastating.

Sure, people are aware of the big ones like 3-mile and Chernobyl, but there are thousands of accidents that have already happened. It's quite common, for example, for a reactor to leak a couple of thousands of tons of irratiated water from the plant's cooling system. Or for waste to go 'missing'. Or for traffic accidents to occur in transporting fuel / waste. The list goes on and on. There are even accidents in the mining process that have a devastating effect on the ecosystem around the mine.

If the American public is afraid of the idea of nuclear power, then I may have to admit that they have more intelligence than I've been giving them credit for in recent years. It is right to be afraid of something with such potential for catastrophe. Radioactivity doesn't just dissipate back into the environment quickly like other pollutants. Some of the isotopes have a half-life of hundreds of thousands of years. That means that they half in radioactivity every couple of hundred thousand years.

Oh, sorry, I didn't read all your post. You say that the French are doing it, and to your knowledge, there have been no problems. Well clearly that changes everything. With that one reference to the French and their apparent 'lack of problems', you have convinced me that all my knowledge of radioactivity is completely invalid, because the French have proved it 'safe'. Cool.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[Anonymous Coward]

nuke plants fail they fail really, really badly

Really? Compared to what? Large hydroelectric dams?

How many people were killed at Three Mile Island? ZERO.

The U.S. nuclear power industry has been operating for over 50 years without ONE fatality to a member of the general public.

Hydro, coal, and oil cannot say the same.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[jcnnghm]

I really don't understand why we don't just build nuclear reactors a couple of hundred feet underground with radiation sensing colapsible stacks. Wouldn't that do a lot to mitigate the risk, since even if the plant's crew was killed, it could premptively collapse a small section of the exhaust stack sealing of the reactor (in the event of a sealing mistake, it would be trivial to dig out the tunnel)? Say a design like so:

ASCII DESIGN LINK; /. won't let me post it inline http://compucatedsolutions.com/ascii.txt.

And America has tons of unused land, what would prevent us from building reactor clusters underground out in the boonies and piping the electricity into populated areas? If we were generating enough energy cheaply enough with nuclear power, we would be able to give up fossil fuels completely.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[cheesybagel]

The incident with liquid sodium killing a few people during decommissioning of a nuclear plant in France got some press at the time.

That would have been Superphoenix, the sodium cooled fast breeder reactor. It was an experimental reactor, not a production unit. Besides, no one died in any of the leaks. Compare that to the number of people dying thanks to coal dust every day. Bet you do not see those in the news.

It is like Stalin said: The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic. (compare nuclear accident news reports vs road fatalities).

France generates its nuclear power using reliable liquid water reactors.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[JackDW]

It is a tragedy that nuclear power has not been exploited more this century. It really is much safer than it once was. It is also the only solution to our energy problems in the oil-free world that is getting ever closer. Environmentalists who protest about nuclear plants do not know what they are saying, since they condemn us to dependence on the other fuels, which are worse. Just like animal rights protesters who eat meat. Morons.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[EraserMouseMan]

Um, the media hype over chernoble and nukes in general is totally blown out of proportion (pardon the pun). People live in Chernoble now. People are still alive that were working at the plant when it blew. USA detonated over a thousand test nukes in the Nevada desert and surrounding areas and we're all fine. Nukes only have a devistating effect when they explode in populated areas. Anytime else, they just spew some radiation that gets completely dissapated and is thereafter harmless.

Seriously, do you know anybody who knows anybody who knows anybody who has ever had radiation poisioning even in a minor way?

There may be a few /. readers who have heard/read stories about people getting radiation poisioning. But after all the thousands of test nukes that the nuke-enabled countries have blown in the past decades we're all still here. The fishies are still swimming around and the babies are still just as healthy as they've ever been.

Which would you rather have, 1% of your air polluted with fossil fuel emmissions or over the course of a lifetime inhail maybe 100 radioactive atoms that do you no harm whatsoever?

Do humanity and the earth a favor, become a pr nuclear power activist.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[Anonymous Coward]

So what I'm saying is: I'm willing to be convinced, but it'll take a lot of work.

Lucky me, all the work is already done :
http://www.manicore.com/anglais/documentation_a/ar ticles_a/idea_nuclear.html
(if you're in a hurry, the section of interest begins at "Nuclear energy is a very dangerous activity").

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[siggy_lxvi]

Storeage? Ummm. We've got lots and lots of unused desert. build some nice big buildings out in the middle of an unpopulated area of desert and put it there.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[cheesybagel]

So what? Just dump it in the ocean, in a subduction zone between tectonic plates.

The reason we are storing the so called "waste" is that most of it is actually precious unburned fuel, in the form of plutonium and uranium.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[Reality Master 101]

USA detonated over a thousand test nukes in the Nevada desert and surrounding areas and we're all fine.

Well, except for the fact that nuclear testing killed John Wayne, Susan Hayward and Agnes Moorehead, along with many others. It's pretty amazing that so few people are aware of this.

That said, I'm still in favor of nuclear power. But don't kid yourself that we knew what we were doing in the 50s. We did a lot of insane things.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[EraserMouseMan]

That's kinda the point. Even in the 50's when we had no clue what we were doing blowing off hundreds of megatone class nukes it really didn't affect anybody (unless they happened to be near where the testing was happening).

The actors in the link provided were on a set that was close to these tests. And even then they died of cancer 30 years later.

Not that horrifying, really.

To put this in perspective, if China managed to launch a nuke and it hit in these deserts of Nevada nobody would be be affected. We would all go to work on Monday and be just as healthy as we are now.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[Fweeky]

"You have to store it for a billion years"

You do? What radioactive byproducts do we produce that's both dangerously radioactive and remains that way for such a long time? Or did you just pick a random large number that sounded good?

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[dubl-u]

But many people are deathly afraid of the idea with good reason: when nuke plants fail they fail really, really badly.

Interestingly, a while back The Economist did a long article on the pros and cons of using more nuclear power in the US. They concluded that it wasn't economical without huge government subsidies, which come in the form of free insurance. If nuke plants had to pay the full cost of the insurance to cover catastophes, they would cost well more than fossil fuels do.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[zippthorne]

It's my understanding that although a "disaster," 3-mile island was a success in terms of appropriate action taken: everything failed according to plan.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[tajmorton]

Right, and were do we bury all the "nuculer" waste for 10,000 years? How about in your yard? Would that be a good start?

Don't answer that with another question, or an excuse (e.g., coal plants generate more waste than nuclear plants). Really, where? How?

Taj

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[ScrewMaster]

Like the instructor in Heinlein's Starship Troopers said to his class, "Society abides by the morals that it can afford".

That's from the book: that line didn't make it to the movie.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[quark101]

You really want an answer? Ok. I won't use the excuse that coal plants generate way more waste than the nuclear ones do. You've heard of Yucca Mountain, right? A big huge mountain, out in the middle of Nowhere, Nevada? As it stands right now, Yucca Mountain can safely contain the nuclear waste for ~10,000 years. Personally, I think that that is more than adequate. If we aren't off this planet in 10,000 years, than we all deserve to die a slow, painful death of radiation poisoning. Look how far we have come in the last 2,000 years. Now, just try to imagine where we will be in the next 5,000 alone. And besides, there is only a finite amount of resources in the world. We will eventually have to get more from somewhere else.

You ask if I would be willing to have a nuclear waste repository in my backyard? Actually, it wouldn't bother me a bit. Unlike some people, I geneally try not to be unreasonably afraid of things that aren't going to harm me. The new reactors are safe, and the way that they are planning on storing the material is safe.

Have you ever looked at the plans for Yucca Mountain? It isn't just a shoddy, half-assed government project like many people have come to expect. The material is buried almost literally in the heart of the mountain, in living stone? Do you know what that means? The rock is still growing and chaning. The tunnels in the Yucca Mountain complex are slowly sinking down, to eventually seal off the material even more than we will have already done so. The containers are made to be highly corrosion resistant, and did I mention that it is in the middle of nowhere?

It is one thing to fear something. It is quite another to have a baseless, irrational fear of the same thing.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[RexRhino]

Nuclear power plants DONT fail really really badly. Chernobal is the only example of a catastrophic failure, and the death toll was comparible to a bad chemical spill (remember bhopal india?), and orders of magnitude less that the most destructive hydoelectric mishaps (230,000 died in the 1975 hunan dam bursts in China, and thousands die in dam accidents every year throughout the world, certainly more than were killed from Chernobal). 50,000 people die each year from diseases related to burning fossil fuels in North America alone (and that is without any mishap).

Nuclear power is the safest power generation system ever put into real large-scale use.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[ScrewMaster]

Which will be completely irrelevant when push comes to shove. Given a choice between a. living in the dark. or b. not living in the dark, I have few doubts that the majority of us will choose option "b". That means that nuclear power plants will get built, and that the government will indemnify them to whatever degree is required.

Conventional power generation isn't necessarily immune to liability issues either. I mean, a whole lot of people are dying of ailments directly related to the use of coal-fired powerplants. The way I figure it, if they can sue a gun maker because a thug shot somebody, they can go after power plant operators for causing cancer and other ailments.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[Anonymous Coward]

Because there is no way we can be sure that in 5000 years the warning sign will still be there. Maybe somebody will dig a hole there and kill lots of people. I do not think we have the right to put landmines down there for future civilizations to step on. We know nothing about how things will look that far ahead in the future. What if the pyramids contained a huge pile of nuclear waste that got out when opened by some curious person today?

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[bombadillo]

Really? Compared to what? Large hydroelectric dams?

How many people were killed at Three Mile Island? ZERO.

The U.S. nuclear power industry has been operating for over 50 years without ONE fatality to a member of the general public.

Hydro, coal, and oil cannot say the same.

It's really a case of guilt by association. When was the last time you heard some one say," We need to Hydro/Coal/Lube that country" ?

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[hritcu]

Chernobal is the only example of a catastrophic failure, and the death toll was comparible to a bad chemical spill (remember bhopal india?), and orders of magnitude less that the most destructive hydoelectric mishaps

This is because you only count immediate casualties of the Chernobyl disaster (only 30 people died immediately, at least according to the soviet autorities). What about all the people who died in the folowing months because of the very high radiation levels (nobody counted them)? What about the children who are born every year with very serious birth defects? What about the increased cancer rate for the population of Ukraine and the surrounding countries? For example in Ukraine the number of Thyroid Cancer cases increased 10 times after the incident (and it is still extremely high even after almost 20 years).

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[Jim_Callahan]

We would, but they seem to have all done it to themselves already. Damn those missed chances...

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[Jim_Callahan]

What risk exactly are we trying to mitigate here? Based on past performance, you have approximately a 0.000000000000000000000000% chance of being harmed by an american-designed nuclear reactor. Well, unless you've invested heavily in coal-burning plant futures or something. Really, a 0% risk is rather difficult to reduce.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[Jim_Callahan]

Is 'a billion years' the new version of '40 days and 40 nights' or something? It's not that hard to find the actual numbers, man. Just use Google. Besides, we'd just dump it into a destructive tectonic plat border if we really cared. We keep high-level waste around because it's useful, and we keep the low-level waste around because if we dumped it in landfills the way we do everything else without waiting a couple of years, some bum would end up wearing a contaminated lab coat and setting off all of the geiger-counter wielding nukies in Berkeley.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[hritcu]

Your ignorance is amazing. Radioactive contamination (poisoning) is not any better or any worse then chemical poisoning, it is just different. Even when the exposure level is very low, and there are no apparent symptoms for the iradiated person, the potential for cancer and mutation of genetic material increases. After the Cernobyl accident the thyroid cancer rate increased 10 times in Ukraine (over a period of 10 years) and it is still extremely high even after almost 20 years. And this is only one type of cancer. Also think about the children who are born every year with very serious birth defects because one of their parents was exposed to a rather small radiation dose.

Maybe today's reactors are safe enough so that the risk of radioactive contamination is very low (compared to the harm of burning fossil fuel poses to people and the environment). However you must understant that this risk will never be zero, and the effects of an accident are not just negligible. Will this stop nuclear power from getting more widespread? Probably no.

This is just the opinion of one of the children in the many countries adjacent to Ukraine who had to take one iodine pill every week in order to mitigate the thyroid cancer risk. BTW, they are still giving these pills in schools, and it's almost 20 years from the dissaster.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[pipingguy]

But many people are deathly afraid of the idea with good reason: when nuke plants fail they fail really, really badly. And the people who are telling us they're safe now told us the same things when they built the first generation of nuke plants.

Search and replace:

But many people are deathly afraid of the idea with good reason: when airplanes fail they fail really, really badly. And the people who are telling us they're safe now told us the same things when they built the first generation of airplanes.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[cow-orker]

we may have made parts of the world unliveable for decades to come in the past

Not "we", rather "they", the Russians who built a cheap and unsafe plutonium production reactor and then scaled it up for civilian use. But even though, the unlivable part of the world is just half a square kilometer.

when nuke plants fail they fail really, really badly.

Incorrect overgeneralization. RBMK type plant fail really, really badly in that they don't reliably shut off and may burn after the accident. PWR fail by shutting off, at worst (nearly impossible) by melting without releasing anything into the environment. More modern designs (MSR, pebble bed reactor) cannot even melt by design.

Even TMI (an old BWR) actually failed by simply breaking without releasing anything. Only some stupid asshole thought the hydrogen in the pressure vessel could explode (it couldn't, there was no oxygen) and vented it, thereby releasing small amounts of radioactivity.

Really, I wish people acquired some basic understanding before making sweeping generalizations.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[cow-orker]

For example in Ukraine the number of Thyroid Cancer cases increased 10 times after the incident

This is a total of just 1800 cases of cancer. These people were treated and only about 10 of them died. In absolute numbers it doesn't sound as bad anymore, does it? Even those 1800 cases might be occult cancers discovered due to increased scrutiny.

What about the children... with very serious birth defects? What about the increased cancer rate?

Well, what about them? The total incidence rate of all types of cancer in the Ukraine has decreased after the accident. Mind you, it's probably a statistical anomaly, but it is also no increase.

The only study I've seen that linked Chernobyl and birth defects (Down's syndrome in this case) turned out to be misapplied statistics.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[cow-orker]

Even when the exposure level is very low, and there are no apparent symptoms for the irradiated person, the potential for cancer and mutation of genetic material increases.

This is actually unsupported. The knowledge about the effects of radiation basically originates at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where it was possible to study the effects of high radiation doses. There's no data for low doses. Therefore the findings for high doses have been linearly extrapolated, this is the so called "linear, no threshold" (LNT) hypothesis. It's the most pessimistic assumption. For all kinds of chemical poisoning, low doses are less than proportionally dangerous.

The Chernobyl accident is the first opportunity to study the effects of low radiation doses. So far, it seems there is no measurable effect besides thyroid cancers caused by ingestion of I-131.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[hritcu]

Just look at this: Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR VII - Phase 2)

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[jcnnghm]

The risk that the American populace is so scared of nuclear power that they refuse to allow plants to be built anywhere near them because of the well publicized disasters that have occured.

Something has to be done to demonstrate that nuclear power is safe to the average person, and besides, a perfect safety record today doesn't mean a perfect safety record tomorrow. Chernobyl had a pretty good safety record until it took out the city, and that is what most people are afraid of.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[theLOUDroom]

However, due to very high profile disasters (ala 3-Mile Island and Chernobyl), the American public is deathly afraid of just the idea.

I don't think it's really just the disasters that are the problem. My parent's generation spent quite a while being afraid of getting vaporized in a nuclear holocaust. For them, the word nuclear has some pretty strong negative connotations.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[TheGavster]

Except that they didn't bury chernobyl in rebarred concrete until after it blew up. An American plant is already in its tomb, so when something goes heinously wrong it's just a big building that gets contaminated. I live next to a nuclear power station, and have seen the feet of steel and feet of concrete between the reactors and the atmosphere, and feel perfectly safe.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[Firethorn]

I remember reading somewhere that people living in Colorado have lower rates of cancer than people living at lower altitudes.

Ah, found it: Higher background radiation, less cancer?

"Three reviews by Brues, Henry, and Oakley concluded that the inverse correlation between background radiation and cancer mortality was general. (Brues 1959; Henry 1961; Oakley 1972)
"In spite of this information, Frigerio and associates at ANL started a new survey with the working hypothesis that all radiation is carcinogenic and persons living with high background radiation should have a higher rate of cancer mortality than those living in low radiation areas. (Frigerio 1973) The extensive data gathered from the contiguous U.S. led to exactly the opposite conclusion!

"Also, an inverse correlation between altitude and leukemia mortality was noted: '...the leukemia rate actually appears to decrease with increasing altitude.' (Eckhoff 1974) Yalow noted that Colorado residents have one of the lowest cancer death rates while receiving more radiation from cosmic rays and uranium rocks and buildings than is received by workers in the nuclear industry in other parts of the country. (Yalow 1981)

"Sauer et al. had exhausted possibilities for any correlation between the death rates of white males in the eastern coastal areas and about 30 possible factors. (Sauer 1980) Factors examined included air and water composition, factories, economic status, ethnic background, and social status. When background radiation was considered, the inverse correlations between background radiation and total death rates, cancer death rates or cardiovascular death rates were found to be statistically significant, p <0.01. (Sauer 1982) In one area, metropolitan Denver, no differences were found in childhood cancer when it was compared with other geographic areas. (Savitz 1987)

From this, just like chemicals, I'd tend to say that type and dosage matters. Iodine is noted for concentrating in the thyroid. Thus, contaminated iodine will collect there, causing a localized, extreme response.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[RexRhino]

The U.N. World Health Organization did a study a few years ago and they put the death toll at several hundred. They said that the effects of Chernobal were highly sensationalized and exasurated at the time (and what they didn't say explicitly but could be read between the lines is that there just might have been a good dose of cold-war anti-Soviet propoganda involved).

For example, the case that is always mentioned of thyroid cancer. The way they determined the rate of thyroid cancer was they did an autopsy on people who died, and if they had any growths in their thyroid, they considered that a case of thyroid cancer (even if the person died of a heart attack, or was hit by a bus). If you did that kind of screening on people in North America, you would suddenly find thyroid cancer "rates" increasing by orders of magnitude (because most thyroid growths would never be discovered if you weren't especially looking for it... most will not turn into anything fatal in a persons life time).

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[dubl-u]

Which will be completely irrelevant when push comes to shove. Given a choice between a. living in the dark. or b. not living in the dark, I have few doubts that the majority of us will choose option "b". That means that nuclear power plants will get built, and that the government will indemnify them to whatever degree is required.

Yes, but why is it only nuclear that deserves such massive operational subsidies? Not just in insurance, but in waste disposal, security, and fuel supply? Not to mention R&D subsidies and construction incentives.

It seems to me that if the government is going to get involved, a carbon tax is the most obvious option; then the best tech can duke it out in the marketplace. But if it's going to play favorites, why not favor something that doesn't carry the apparently substantial risk of a Katrina-sized evacuation and cleanup effort?

Conventional power generation isn't necessarily immune to liability issues either. I mean, a whole lot of people are dying of ailments directly related to the use of coal-fired powerplants. The way I figure it, if they can sue a gun maker because a thug shot somebody, they can go after power plant operators for causing cancer and other ailments.

There are two main obstacles that I know of. One is that the causal chain is impossible to establish. I can easily prove who made the gun that killed my spouse and demonstrate that they didn't exercise due care in designing, advertising, and selling them. But I can't prove who made the particular soot particles that caused her asthma or lung cancer.

The other is that power producers are extensively regulated, emitting waste at levels the government has determined to be safe.

In the case of another Chernobyl, though, it's pretty obvious who is at fault, and a disaster like that is probably above EPA limits even these days.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you understand anything about half-life at all?

Anything still radioactive 5000 years from now will have such a long half-life that you could bathe in it and not get a very large dose of radiation.

Here's the basics of how radioactivity works:
-Short half-life === highly radioactive
-Long half-life === not very radioactive

Short half-life substances break down quickly.

I laugh every time I hear them designing Yucca Mountain for 5000 years.

Re:Today's Nuclear Power

[quarkscat]

How very "Polyannaish" of you. Yucca Mountain was picked because it has abandoned salt mines that will be used to store casks of highly radioactive waste. Unfortunately, much radioactive waste has an "active" lifetime of far more than 10,000 years. Pt (or Plutonium) has a half-life of 20,000 years, so it may take 10 iterations of 20,000 years for that portion of the radioactive waste to become (relatively) safe. The storage casks are not designed to last 10,000 years -- the DoE designed "monitoring safegaurds" to detect when a cask starts leaking. And, of course, the DoE HAS projected maintainance costs (labor, materials, and liability) out 10,000 years as part of their budget -- NOT!

Finally, vast portions of the desert Southwest was an inland sea thousands of years ago (hence the source of the salt that was mined there.) There is no guarantee that climactic changes, like global warming, will not turn that desert back into an inland sea well before the radioactivity has reduced to safe levels in those "leak-proof" casks. Nor is there any reason to believe that mankind will advance technologically for another 5,000 years instead of blowing ourselves up and back to a new "stone age". Certainly, this vague hope of advancement cannot be used to justify actions that are already known to be deadly poisonous to every living thing on this planet.

Nuclear power is cheap and convenient only so long as the long term impact (financial and environmental) of the safe disposal of high level radioactive waste is left out of the calculations. Reliance upon unknown future technological advances in the storage of radioactive waste is about as smart as reliance upon the Second Coming of Christ to deal with such human "foolishness". But the regime currently in power apparently subscribes to one or the other (or both) of these "solutions" to the long term safe storage of nuclear waste. I, for one, do not.

Fire Ze Missiles!

[Billy the Impaler]

Isn't this the area in Russia where the Bond flick (and uber popular video game) Goldeneye took place?

Re:Fire Ze Missiles!

[Knossos]

That was Severnya(sp?), I can't find any real sources so I'll just post a google instead ;) http://www.google.com/search?hs=B4D&hl=en&lr=&c2co ff=1&client=opera&rls=en&q=goldeneye+severnya&btnG =Search

Re:Trolls

[Anonymous Coward]

Yah, it is funny that you can read at the same level as your IQ.

Two-hundred thousand?

[AutopsyReport]

So why not throw in $30,000 more and upgrade to some hardwood floors :)

Radiation shielding

[Crixus]

They've obviously opted not to go with that expensive and heavy lead stuff, and use recycled aluminum foil. :-)

Cheap Price

[Maxwell42]

We all know why it is that cheap...

They already have all the nuclear material floating or sunken in the area :)

Floating?

[drsquare]

Obviously they're short of land in Russia...

Re:Floating?

[Em Ellel]

Obviously they're short of land in Russia...

Hehe, one big benefit I can see is portability - the plant is built in one spot and tugged to its location and, if need be, can be moved to another location. US been talking about reactors like this mounted on trucks for same reason (was on ./ a while back)

Other benefit is easy acccess to salt water for desalinization, which is another service this plant provides.

Re:Floating?

[A beautiful mind]

Troll? Get a sense of humour people...

it's a bomb in disguise.

[grahamsz]

at 5c/kW this thing is going to output 200000/0.5 = 4GW of power.

I suspect chernobyl probably got close to that power output, just not for very long.

Re:it's a bomb in disguise.

[Bloater]

> this thing is going to output 200000/0.5 = 4GW of power.

>I suspect chernobyl probably got close to that power output, just not for very long.

I suspect chernobyl was capable of outputting an awful lot more. Oxfordshire has a plain old coal fired power station that is rated at 2GW.

Fitting location

[rxmd]

Severodvinsk on the White Sea is a major nuclear disaster area. There are a number of nuclear submarine repair sites there. This power plant is probably either a former submarine reactor or built from one.

My wife's uncle used to serve as chief engineer on Soviet and later Russian nuclear submarines. He still lives near Severodvinsk and says that the overall radiation level at those sites is higher than in Chernobyl. He managed to have two healthy children and asked both of them to study and work somewhere else.

Re:Fitting location

[celle]

tagline reads -- "As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)" Has anyone seen the size of the american lawbook lately? Obviously history hasn't taught us much.

Re:I Guess...

[Mostly a lurker]

Nuclear power is not and will never be safe.

Driving cars will never be completely safe either. The question is whether nuclear power can be made safe enough that the benefits outweigh the risks. Unfortunately, it is very difficult for the layman to evaluate those risks, so we either (i) say (rather illogically) that there are no circumstances where nuclear power can ever be justified; or (ii) have to rely on the word of experts who are usually not impartial.

Right now, in most countries, nuclear power seems not to be justified economically, and (while alternative energy sources usually also have a very negative environmental impact) nuclear power produces some seriously polluting byproducts. If those issues can be addressed, I would definitely be willing to consider the arguments as to the risks.

Re:I Guess...

[steviechambers]

I used to know a very smart and very frustrated nuclear engineer. Nuclear power is the best shot we've got of (1) generating enough power for our needs, and (2) avoiding coal/oil (and therefore dependencies on the producing countries). He knew nuclear technology inside out upside down, and he was a northern lad, completely down to earth, and if he told me that nuclear energy was the safest and best option, then I'm a believer - and pls don't anyone say that "he would say that, it was his job" - this guy was so smart he could do any type of engineering, and God knows he wasn't going to be a millionaire. Nuclear is the way forward - fission or fusion.

strange article

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems to be more of a commercial than a actual article. First there is the price tag, what is up with that?
then there are lines like this: "When the plant is decommissioned and pulled out, it leaves absolutely no pollution,"
of course not they move it somewhere else, but there are still lots of radioactive material to deal with.

More info on the KLT-40S

[Lally Singh]

From: http://www.nuclear.com/n-plants/index-Floating_N-p lants.html :

* A floating nuclear power plant design, under development by OKBM in Russia, uses the KLT-40s reactor system, and involves a "special-purpose non-self-propelled ship" (a barge) intended for operation in a protected water area. There are plans to build a nuclear heat and power generating plant with a floating power-generating unit in the area of Pevek, Chukot Peninsula, in northeastern Siberia, and in Severodvinsk (Archangelsk region). The technical and economic characteristics of this power plant are:
* Electric power - 60 MW
* Heat output - 50 Gcal/h
* Number of reactor systems and main turbogenerators - 2
* Overall plant lifetime - 40 years

These power plants are multipurpose in terms of possible applications, since they provide electric power generation while also providing heat supply for various purposes, including seawater desalination.

[Source: Georgy M. Antonovsky (Chief Specialist, OKBM-the Experimental and Design Bureau of Mechanical Engineering, in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia) et al., Table IV - "Technical and economic characteristics of a floating nuclear power station with the KLT-40s", in "PWR-type reactors developed by OKBM", Nuclear News, March 2002, p. 33]

* The KLT-40s is based on the KLT-40, which the US DOE has called a proven, commercially available, small PWR system because its design is based entirely on the nuclear steam supply system used in Russian icebreakers. The KLT-40 is a portable, floating, nuclear power plant intended mainly for electric power generation, but it also possesses the capability for desalination or heat production. The reactor core is cooled by forced circulation of pressurized water during normal operation, but in all emergency modes, the design relies mainly on natural convection in the primary and secondary coolant loops.

The KLT-40 is mounted on a barge, complete with the nuclear reactor, steam turbines, and other support facilities. It is designed to be transported to a remote location and connected to the energy distribution system in a manner similar to the Mobile High Power nuclear power plant operated by the U.S. Army in the 1970s. The designer and supplier of the KLT-40 is the Russian Special Design Bureau for Mechanical Engineering (OKBM).

Fuel for the KLT-40 is a uranium-aluminum metal alloy clad with a zirconium alloy. 200 kg of U-235 gives a core power density of 155 kW per liter on average (that's relatively high for a reactor, according to the DOE report), and the fuel may be high-enriched uranium (U-235 content at or above 20 percent). The fuel assembly structure and manufacturing technology are proven, and its reliability has been verified by the long-term operation of similar cores.

The KLT-40's primary system involves four coolant pumps feeding four steam generators. The secondary system uses two turbogenerators with condensate pumps, main and standby feed pumps, and two steam condensers. As much as 35 MWt energy can be transferred from the condensers to a desalination plant via an intermediate circuit.

The KLT-40 includes a steel containment vessel designed to withstand overpressure conditions. A passive-pressure suppression system condenses steam that might escape into the containment building.

The KLT-40 has a variety of "inherent safety characteristics". One involves the prodigious use of "burnable poison" in the fuel such that cold shutdowns are assured (because any increase in core temperature results in a lowering of core power -- it's what's called having a large negative temperature coefficient for the reactor core).

The KLT-40 is designed using a plug-and-play philosophy. It gets built at the factory and is able to be transported over water to remote locations. Although the KLT-40 requires refueling every two to three years, the transportability of the entire plant to maintenance centers provides enhanced pro

Nice!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is great news. Rather than getting yet another house I think I will upgrade this one with a Nuclear generator in my garage.

Back when I was a lad ...

[John Jorsett]

I remember during the "energy crisis" of the early seventies, one of our colleagues at a Navy laboratory that happened to be near a submarine base suggested that we tap into the multi-megawatt output of docked nuclear subs to supply some of our lab's power. Needless to say, the "no nukes" eco-freaks that worked at the lab came unglued. I never knew if he was serious or just trying to get a rise out of people. If the latter, it certainly worked.

Why bother when you can use batteries?

[apule]

The British figured out the source of easy power months ago: D-cells. (Via Strange Proportion.

Meltdown ain't the safety issue..

[Sefert]

It's not the risk of a Chernobyl type reaction that's the issue. It's the nuclear waste. Where the hell do you put something that will never stop being incredibly dangerous? This is a problem that has never been resolved, and still has no solution in the offing.

Re:Meltdown ain't the safety issue..

[ebrandsberg]

Never? The more radioactive the waste, the faster it decays. Did you know that US standards say that if a piece of Granite were taken into a nuclear facility, it would be considered waste? Why? It's too radioactive. Yes, the stuff people make kitchen counters out of. This isn't to say you can bury the stuff for 20 years and it will be significantly less hazardous, but it can at least be contained, unlike the output from a coal fired power plant.

Final point, NEVER, EVER use absolute statements to make a point as exceptions will always bite you in the ass.

Re:Meltdown ain't the safety issue..

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you've got several erudite responses, so I'm just going to say "Australia".

Re:Meltdown ain't the safety issue..

[tezbobobo]

Yeah, unlike the huge amount of CO2 and Methane that are currently being pumped into the atmosphere. It is the management of waste which is an issue. If greenhouse emissions were locked up tight, there wouldn't be an issue with our ongoing obsession with fossil fuels. The logevity of nuclear material is not really an issue. Why? The amount of waste caused by nuclear plants compared with their impact on the environmnet is minimal. The management of nuclear waste, as in logistics, is trivial compareed to fossil fuel emissions. I assure you that events such as Katrina will keep happening and get worse in the next 50 years. Much Worse. Greenhouse effectors will severly hamper the world more than nuclear waste will (for the two reasons outlined). One important aside, whilst Katrina was bad, check the mortality rate for natural disasters in Africa, Asia, and to a certain extend, South America. In these places the chances of getting killed in a natural disaster are about the same as they were for the victims of Katrina. The Economist ran an interesting article on it. We in the 'western' world live very shltered and fortunate lives. Don't let this aside detract from my points though.

Re:Meltdown ain't the safety issue..

[ankhank]

> The more radioactive the waste,
> the faster it decays.

Well, yes, and into what?

The Chernobyl exclusion zone has now been extended because -- after these few years -- some of the the highly radioactive fallout that was relatively safe isotopes of highly radioactive elements -- for example alpha emitters -- have now decayed.

And changed thereby, some of them, into longer lived and yet more dangerous beta and gamma emitting isotopes.

Alphas are stopped by tissue paper, you know, even a lot of them don't do a lot of damage as long as you don't inhale and wash up well.

But the fission daughters of some of those alpha emitters, oh, my.

Re:Meltdown ain't the safety issue..

[MarkRose]

If granite is too radioactive, what do they use for smoke dectectors?

Re:Meltdown ain't the safety issue..

[__aaxtnf2500]

Piling all of our waste together will not make it go away faster, this is wrong. Yes, if you accumulate more radioactive material, the total rate of decay will increase, because you have more material decaying... The probability of an individual radionuclide undergoing radioactive decay is independent of external influences save interaction with incident sub-atomic particles and the unique case of electron capture. If you took a piece of granite into a US nuclear facility, it would not be considered waste, much less radioactive waste. There are equipment and materials with radiation levels lower than your chunk of granite, however because these materials have DETECTABLE concentrations (> DAC/MDA) of program generated nuclides they will not be released to the public. It is the origin that is important. Case in Point: A worker at a hypothetical (ahem) nuclear facility receives radiopharmaceutical treatment without informing his superiors. He uses the restroom, somehow spreading urine all around the toilet. Later, another work treads the radioactive urine into a radiologically controlled area where the radio-urine is detected on his boots upon egress. The contamination is traced back to the restroom and the contaminant is identified as a radiopharmaceutical by isotopic analysis. The urine is cleaned up without radiological controls due to the origin of the radionuclide.

Re:Meltdown ain't the safety issue..

[Sefert]

Actually, I think that's the best response to my comment overall. You're right I think, it is the least of the evils. My father just retired from the coast guard, where he did high end analysis type work, and was responsible for educating people to boot. As you can well imagine, environmentalism is very high on the coast guards' agenda. One of the most interesting pair of facts he told me was the following: 1. CO2 levels normally flucuate over thousands of years between 100 ppm to 300 ppm (we know this from glacier samples). Once it hits the upper or lower limits 'something happens'. In short, there is a correction that nature takes. 2. We're currently at 400 ppm. Interestingly, the impact isn't that we have more 'serious' events like tidal waves and hurricanes. In fact, it's almost exactly the same number every year, predictably so. (sits around 160 world wide). However, the severity of these events has increased substantially. Something like 150 of the 160 last year were the most severe in recorded history.

Re:Meltdown ain't the safety issue..

[DJCF]

Use a breeder reactor, which uses its own waste as fuel. Incidentally, this is what most of Europe has been doing for some time now. (In the far distance, I can see Hinkley Point. I'm rather proud all my electricity is being produced cleanly, not through fossil fuels.)

Re:Meltdown ain't the safety issue..

[ebrandsberg]

I think you mis-read what I had said--it was that the more radioactive a particular type of waste, the shorter it's half-life. I may stand corrected on the Granite issue, although it is still a fact that Granite has higher levels of radioactivity than what would be allowed to be released if it were program generated materials. My main point is that you can't say never, and the timeframes people quote for the materials to degenerate completely are far longer than would be needed for the materials to degenerate to the point of background levels because of what levels are acceptible.

Re:Meltdown ain't the safety issue..

[__aaxtnf2500]

Agreed. The ignorance of the public is the anti-nuclear power movement's most powerful tool.

Atlantic Generating Station

[Spazmania]

You laugh, but in the early '70s, the US very nearly built the Atlantic Generating Station, a nuke plant in the shallow waters just off Atlantic City, NJ. The Russians are using a very similar design.

Re:Atlantic Generating Station

[3waygeek]

John McPhee wrote an excellent article on this project back in the 70s. It was originally published in the New Yorker, and later found its way into McPhee's anthology Giving Good Weight. Highly recommended.

I would think that the USA...

[xxdinkxx]

I would think that the usa would be all over this project. I don't see how this could be potically good for russia to develop-- if they are just going to sell it off to china as the article suggest. and at $200,000 for a 1/50th the output of a normal Nuclear Powerstation, that is still disturbing. My quetion is, can this thing turn those rods into wepon grade plutonium? Surely, this project is going to be controversial. Also, what are they going to do with the waste. Please don't tell me they are going to drop it in a canister and let the ocean take it from there. The list goes on and on.

Re:I would think that the USA...

[xxdinkxx]

politically.. sorry.. spelling apparently is not all there today.

Re:I would think that the USA...

[Anonymous Coward]

When producing weapon grade plutonium, the fuel rods are in the reactor only for a relatively short time. If you leave the rods in the reactor for too long, too much 240Pu and 242Pu will be produced by neutron capture. These isotopes have got a high spontanous fission rate and thus produce much background neutrons. The neutron background should be very low in a nuclear weapon to minimize the probability of a pre-ignition. For plutonium to be called weapon-grade the fraction of isotopes with high neutron emission has to be below a certain limit. In commercial reactors fuel rods are left in the reactor for a longer time to get a high burn-up rate, so they generally don't produce weapon-grade plutonium.

Of course one could produce weapon-grade plutonium with this reactor by prematurely removing the fuel rods, as in nearly every nuclear reactor.

btw, China has had the capability to produce weapon-grade plutonium and nuclear weapons since more than 40 years.

Re:I would think that the USA...

[pimpimpim]

Ok so you didn't read the article, but you could have at least read this comment:
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=161804 &cid=13528371
They are going to lease it out, seems like a smart idea to me. Furthermore someone else already found out that the price is a misprint (duh!), and it is $100-120 million. I am not in the reactor business and wouldn't know if this is a nice deal or not ;)

France's Nuclear Plants are on the German border

[Simonetta]

Most of France's Nuclear Plants are on the German border so that they can sell excess power to Germany and other North Central European countries.
    Plus if the Germans ever invade again, they can just pop out the drain plugs and hop on the TGV to San Tropez.

Hooray!

[crhylove]

This is the shit we need more of. This and electric cars. Then we can stop bombing the third world for our oil.

rhY

Re:Hooray!

[siggy_lxvi]

Ummmm. Hate to be trollish, but could you explain to me why, if we've been bombing the third world for oil, gas is so fucking expanesive?

Re:Hooray!

[Anonymous Coward]

Bombs aren't cheap, you know....

Oh, and since you call it "gas", I'll assume you're in the US or Canada - where the prices are some of the cheapest in the world...

Re:Hooray!

[Anonymous Coward]

but could you explain to me why ..gas is so.. expanesive?

A gas is expansive when its pressure is dropping. Boyle's Law at work :)

Re:Hooray!

[deimtee]

Where do you think the fucking money for that gas is going? Nobody said they were getting YOU cheap oil.

Don't be stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear power is not and will never be safe.

By your logic, you must have burned to death this morning when the highly-flamable gasoline in your car spontaneously (1) leaked onto you and your children, and (2) caught fire, killing you almost instantly - because, as we all know - "gasoline power is not and never will be safe."

Also, you can burn to death if you climb into the oven - so we'd better ban them all. Same for power drills, so you won't accidentally give yourself another lobotomy.

My point is that there are a great number of very well designed machines and equipment in our lives that have nasty reactions or principals in their operation. Those devices are, however, designed to contain or negate the hazards.

Coal power plants burn coal and release carbon dioxide, sulphur, soot and - yes, radiation - directly into the air that you breathe. (FYI, coal plants release more radiation from the coal they burn than nuclear plants, which are designed to internalise all radioactive materials). They pollute and contribute to cancer rates by design.

Strangely nobody (ie: you) seems to really care about coal pollution since burning coal on the fire is an understandable technology that someone can do in their own back yard and never killed nobody (except thousands of coal miners over the centuries, but who cares since we can't see them). Unlike nuclear technology which contains the world "nuclear" in the title and will therefore definitely turn large swathes of the country into a post-Little Boy Hiroshima within 15 seconds of being turned on.

But in reality, nuclear power plants are designed to contain radiation (duh). The old designs were still safe by most measures, but modern pebble-bed nuclear reactor designs take it to extremes. (1) they're far simpler than old pile designs and (2) they're *physically unable* to melt down and go critical - even if the cooling fluid is pumped out completely. The electrical output will drop off and will just.. sit there. Happily doing nothing. Aww, lookkit it. It's happy. Wave back.

If you jump naked into the nuclear reactor core, yes, you'd have some fatal health problems - but the same would happen if you jumped into a conventional furnace.

Please get over your irrational fears.

Re:Don't be stupid.

[reddawnman]

I'm sorry, you seem to be confused about the difference between an anpple and an orange. People's gas tanks DO blow up, and cars DO crash. Tires do fail, and engines breakdown. The difference is that when something like that happens to a car, you'll get a localized trail of damage, ranging from a burned out car to maybe the death of 2-3 people. The damage goes away in short order. Yeah, cars are safer now than they used to bo, and failures for mechanical defects are almost nonexistent. The trouble with YOUR logic is that when a nuke plant fails, the damage is NOT localized, and NEVER goes away for all intensive purposes. Even if the plant blows and nobody is immediately killed, radiation will affect people for generations. Greenhouse gases, evil things though they are, are at least uptaken by the bioshpere at some rate. Radioactive wastes, however, are not. What do we do, find a path to the mantle of the earth and inject waste back into the core of the earth so that they decay in there? With a small sacel car, occasional failures are OK. With a nuke plant, occasional failures are not an option, and I think that we all can agree that mankind has yet to build a foolproof system 100% of the time. Apples and oranges, my friend.

Re:Don't be stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey brainiac... show me the hand drill or car that has the potential to kill thousands, possibly millions in one fell swoop and maybe I'll buy your argument. Until then. Shut the hell up. Nuclear power is dangerous on a large scale because it could kill entire cities. Now... if the nukes are in the basements of homes that belong to idiots who think nuclear is safe and it only takes out a house or two in a gated community, then I'm all for it.

Re:Don't be stupid.

[orasio]

Please get over your irrational fears.

In Soviet Russia, Floating Nuclear Plants irrationally fear YOU!

Re:Don't be stupid.

[eno2001]

My point exactly. To the poster below who asks me if I'm a vampire, I have to say no. But I also have to say that the Sun is far safer than any nuke that a human will come up with. The point is that it may not matter much (with the exception of close relatives) is a car blows up and a family is killed. But it matters a WHOLE lot if a nuke blows up and an entire city is killed (meaning that even if people don't die, they and the land they came from are permanently damaged). You idiots who think nukes are safe... why don't you have someone build one in your neighborhood and we'll really see how safe you think nukes are.

Re:Don't be stupid.

[Migraineman]

[peeve]
"... all intents and purposes ..."
[/peeve]

Unfortunately, you've performed the apples/oranges comparison yourself. For your argument to be valid, you need to scale-up the power generation capabilities of your car's tank of gas to be comparable to that of a nuclear power station. Lesse ... time for some napkin math - let's say your typical nuclear power station churns out 1000MW. A typical energy density of gasoline is about 130MJ/gallon. Your 10-gallon tank contains about 1300MJ. Estimating that you'll burn that whole tank at highway speeds in about 4 hours, the car's energy consumption rate is about (1300MJ/(4h*3600s/h)) = 90.2kW. Now we're taling a kW-to-kW comparison here. The 1000MW nuclear plant is about equivalent to 11086 cars ... running 24/7 at highway speeds. From this point, you should be able to mathematically compare deaths/kW for both automobiles and nuclear power stations. (I don't feel like hunting down the statistics.)

As for the car analogy being safer because the problem is localized ... that's crap. In 2000 we managed to kill 41000 people with our cars in the US, and injure another 3.2 million. We have lots of cars, and that's a big multiplier. Just because you spread the issue out into a really large volume, doesn't make it inherently safer.

Re:Don't be stupid.

[ender06]

Unlike nuclear technology which contains the world "nuclear" in the title and will therefore definitely turn large swathes of the country into a post-Little Boy Hiroshima within 15 seconds of being turned on.

Do you know how weak the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were compared to today's nuke's? They pale in comparison.

Re:Don't be stupid.

[Tsunayoshi]

Since I live in Norfolk, VA, the Naby's largest east coast naval base...there are usually 10-15 different reactors in port depending on how many carriers and subs are at the docks...this does not bother me. We also have a relatively small nuclear reactor in Surry county about 30-45 miles from my house. This does not bother me either.

What bothers me is everyday right next to one of the main freeways you see PILES AND PILES of coal getting loaded into train cars every single day to be burned at the power plant. I know for a FACT that every day the coal plant is polluting my lungs and the lungs of everyone in the area...I have never heard of one incident with nuclear plant in the 6 years I have lived here.

So yes, I am one of those idiots who thinks nuclear power is safe.

Jesus Christ, fucking PERU runs a nuclear plant outside the capitol city and they don't have any problems. And having lived there and seen their infrastructre, that really surprises me.

Re: Don't be stupid.

[CrimsonScythe]

Please get over your irrational fears.

Hey, this is America. I'm entiteled to have whatever fear I want, irrational or not! If you don't like that, you can GET OUT!

Re:Don't be stupid.

[Morky]

Neighborhood? I would have a pebble-bed reactor in my house if it were availble.

Re:Don't be stupid.

[eno2001]

Yeah... well I've got a friend who has done large amounts of marijuana, LSD, cocaine, and actually had a crack and herion addiction problem. He's also an alcoholic. How did he stop his addiction problem? He just decided to quit crack and heroin one day. He hasn't touched them since. He's still a drunk though. He's even survived two suicide attempts while he was a junky. So by your logic I guess that means that cocain, crack and heroin are safe? Just because there are instances where something dangerous can be utilized without any negative consequences doesn't mean something is safe. It just means that people have either been extremely cautious with out that something is utilized, or they've just been lucky.

Re:Don't be stupid.

[theLOUDroom]

I'm sorry, you seem to be confused about the difference between an anpple and an orange. People's gas tanks DO blow up, and cars DO crash. Tires do fail, and engines breakdown.

Right, so obviously the right thing to do is to multiply the number of people killed in a failure times the failure rate.

Of course you're not doing that because it would show how paranoid and ridiculous you're being.

Right now the claim that you're making an apples to apples comparison is laughable.

Re:Don't be stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, you had a "friend" on crack. 'K.

Re:Don't be stupid.

[Big_Al_B]

Here's a whopping problem with your analogy: it sucks.

Your "friend" was immersing himself in self-medication without medical training or valid medical purpose. Thus he compounded the inherent danger of the substances by using them with a junky's touch. On the other hand, doctors administer medication that is just as dangerously addictive and potentially lethal every single day in hospitals worldwide. And wise folks appreciate them for it.

Likewise, modern nuclear reactors are designed, built, operated and maintained by people of considerable skill. As opposed to some strung-out junky you shared a few bongs with back in school.

Re:Don't be stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your analogy is only good up to a point as well. When doctors use controlled substances to great effect, that is a good thing. However, there are many instances where doctors don't know what they are doing (even though they think they do) and they wind up killing or damaging the patient. That's not good, but the damage is limited to one individual. When you're talking about nukes, you're talking about the potential to damage or kill millions of people depending on the size of the nearby city. Or in this case, polluting the water for generations in the case of a problem. Very different scales like this require very different rules.

"safety"? Bah.

[commodoresloat]

That's for wimps. Floating nuclear power is not for pansy-asses. You wanna know what we do when there's a meltdown? We hop on our jet-ski and ride around the disaster area with our geiger counter buzzing, posting photos to the internet, just like this biker babe. Who cares if we all die? At least we'll have floating nuclear power! Face it, if you don't build floating nuclear plants now, then Ralph Nader has already won.

sink it

[Barbarian]

Sink it in Challenger deep.

$200k ???

[Anonymous Coward]

You couldn't even buy the barge for $200k that the reactor complex would sit on.

The only important thing about this whole story is the cost, and it is rediculous.

Iris identification?

[rbarreira]

Among other things, fingerprint and iris identification technologies will be used.

Haven't those guys seen this movie?

Leakage

[fsterman]

While meltdowns are a rather remote danger given todays nuclear power plant designs I worry about waste contamination. There are already plenty of Russian nuclear subs sitting in the ocean. They have cracks, which water gets into, which freezes, which increases the size of the crack. How do they plan to make sure the waste transfers are 300% safe and what happens to this thing if the economy dies again? It's a lot easier to pull a sub on land than a large scale power plant. Think removing oil from the water is tough?

Re:Leakage

[Anonymous Coward]

You actually think water freezes on the bottom of the ocean ? Are you looking to buy any bridges or bottomland perhaps you could email at sucker_born_everday@caveatemptor.org maybe we can talk...

It's not $200,000

[Anonymous Coward]

The cost is probably $200,000,000 dollars or not in american currency.

If it was only $200,000 some rich /. hoser would fund it!

Hot Water

[Doc Ruby]

Russia spent the last few decades of its Soviet era dumping spent navy nuclear cores into the arctic sea. I've never heard of any accountability for that egregious poisoning of the most productive biome on the planet. So it's clear that they're learning from their successes.

And any reporter who doesn't realize that a "kilowatt" is a rate of energy over time has zero credibility - they're a PR agent. They're selling nuclear power that's "too cheap to measure", which we all know is the kind of like that sells nukes to people who spend the rest of our lives paying for the construction, security and cleanups.

Re:Hot Water

[ki4iib]

...which we all know is the kind of like that sells nukes to people who spend the rest of our lives paying for the construction, security and cleanups.

I know, I know. Why, just the other day, the Nuke Power Inc. salesman was at my door again. My girlfriend almost bought a few. It's a good thing I was there to talk some sense into them.

She almost bought the extended warranty, too. Jeez.

Re:Hot Water

[Doc Ruby]

It's a good thing your girlfriend wasn't alone when the Nuke Power salesman showed up. Those guys are worse than Fuller Brush men. You're sure your secondborn child doesn't glow in the dark?

Re:Hot Water

[NoMaster]

And any reporter who doesn't realize that a "kilowatt" is a rate of energy over time has zero credibility

1) A kilowatt is an amount of potential energy, or power. A kilowatt-hour is a rate of energy over time.

2) On your criteria, most of /. has zero credibility.

Re:Hot Water

[dukeblue219]

1) A kilowatt is an amount of potential energy, or power. A kilowatt-hour is a rate of energy over time.
Sorry chief - a kilowatt is a measure of power. Power = Work / Time 2) On your criteria, most of /. has zero credibility.
Probably true by any criteria.

Re:Hot Water

[Anonymous Coward]

1) A kilowatt is an amount of potential energy, or power. A kilowatt-hour is a rate of energy over time.

No and no. Potentially energy is energy, not power. A kilowatt is a measure of power, not energy. A kilowatt-hour is a measure of energy, not a "rate of energy over time."

Re:Hot Water

[Doc Ruby]

BZZZT. Watts are "joules per second". Joules are energy. Kilowatt-hour is an energy amount.

You are part of the negative credibility of Slashdot.

Re:Hot Water

[pipingguy]

Hey, maybe they figured out how to direct hurricanes towards Louisiana also!

Re:Hot Water

[Doc Ruby]

No, that's SATAN, right? Russia is our partner in the Global War Against Terrorism.

Thats because

[CiXeL]

if you live with a constantly higher radiation level your body adjusts within a certain range and switches into a mode where it can repair a greater level of constant damage. The real injury occurs when radiation levels suddenly spike without your body having a chance to gradually adapt to it.

Re:Thats because

[LiquidCoooled]

Being born with 2 heads and 3 arms helps your body to continue operating in a high radioactivity environment.

Re:Thats because

[caluml]

That's quite an interesting theory. Are there any links about it? Because I'd have thought that it would take a lot longer for that effect - evolutionary timescales.

Ha!

[Anonymous Coward]

In the Soviet Union the floating Nuclear power plant has you!

Take out a Loan!

[RobertF]

Hmm... buy a house or a floating nuclear power station? At $200,000 I could finally have a nuclear-powered toaster!

Nuclear Power

[CiXeL]

is the new fire, we've only recently understood how to avoid being burned.

The earlier technologies were like playing with matches, the newer stuff like pebble bed reactors are like a small campfire.

We're getting there, gradually.

Re:My first post?

[Anonymous Coward]

First ever post? Perhaps you should look at your own profile....and the fact that you missed first post.

Breeder reactors are the key

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of the current American policy (enacted by Jimmy Carter, who to his credit is a nuclear engineer) of using and disposing of reactor cores, we need to build breeder reactors to get the most use out of all the uranium and plutonium.

Jimmy banned them for fear of nuclear proliferation. We need to address the proliferation issue directly, instead of just passing it off to Russia like we did in the 70's.

too good to be true

[eean]

Yea, it is awfully amazing that a nuclear power plant is $200,000. You can't even get a shack in Mountain View, CA for $200,000. This has to be to good to be true. Or its not $200,000 USD, but some other measure (there's 28 rubles to the USD, so thats not the case).

Re:too good to be true

[Lally Singh]

Remember this is with Russian labor and parts costs. Vastly different from the US.

Re:too good to be true

[eean]

Not /that/ vast. I mean, if it actually costed $200,000 USD to build a plant to power 200,000 people... (or even 5x that for the "vastly different" labor and part costs) just think how cheap our power would be.

Two comments

[golodh]

1) Having floating nuclear powerplants is just an extension and continuation of the Russian practice of using the powerplants of moored nuclear submarines to feed the grid. In this case they left out the sub and kept the powerplant ... instant savings.

2) I feel that there are serious safety and environmental issues with this approach. Unfortunately the typical way of doing things seems to be to blithely ignore risks until they actually materialise (read: until things go wrong).

2.a) First issue: containment in case of leaks or accidents. Land-based reactors (in the West) are built with a concrete safety dome. This is to ensure that even if someone were to drop a big fuelled-up Boeing 747 on them (nah ... who would do anything like that eh? Come on ... too far-fetched ...), the radioactive material would (probably) stay _inside_ the safety dome. These reactors don't seem to be fitted with such safety domes, especially if they have to float. And if they do ... is that sufficient to ensure structural integrity in case they sink on impact? And what about repairs / clearance if they do eh?

And remember the fuel processing plants in France (Cap La Haye) and the UK (Sellafield)? The Irish sea issue (one of the most contaminated seas anywhere) should be well known by now (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield).

2.b) Many land sites (not those that use rivers for coolant, but there you go ...) are chosen so that leaks won't lead to polluted groundwater ... and ultimately our drinking water. The white sea is already uninhabitable in places because of sloppy practices with nuclear fuel dumping and scuttling nuclear powered vessels. This will just add to it.

2.c) Security. I submit that land-sites are easier to guard than those that are not only accessible from the sea, but which could actually be towed away in a terrorist attack. If that happens what do you do? Sink it before it gets to waters you _really_ want to protect? Mount an attack by marines and risk having it blown up? Overpower the tugs that pull it, and risk having it blown up? Happy choosing admiral ...

Once again the "pragmatic" quick-fix, buy-now-pay-tomorrow artists seem to have pushed ahead with a scheme that jeopardises resources far beyond what they are be answerable and responsible for.

2.d) I can agree with the much reduced operational hazards of pebble bed reactors, but unless I'm much mistaken (correct me if I'm wrong please) these reactors are just slightly modified shipboard reactors of an aging Sovjet design. After all ... changing _anything_ in a nuclear reactor design is something you don't do lightly.

How about towing a bunch of them up to Boston, New Orleans, LA, and San Francisco? Would solve your energy generation problems a treat! And real cheap too. Any takers?

Re:Two comments

[Anonymous Coward]

I was giving you the benefit of the doubt until I got to the "security" part. Terrorists towing away a nuclear power plant? I mean I could think of about a half dozen ways of preventing that, and I don't know jack shit about security or boats. It's about as plausible to me as having them overpower a nuclear missile silo and towing one of those away.

the things you get for free...

[myowntrueself]

Wow who would have thought it:

"If necessary, the plant will also be able to supply heat and desalinate seawater."

Presumably supplying heat by, er, going critical and blowing up, desalinating seawater by, er, vaporising it and turning it into an enormous cloud of steam?

Re:the things you get for free...

[__aaxtnf2500]

The above poster is of course referring to a prompt criticality event, this was obscured by their gross ignorance of the subject. Rest assured their opinion is founded on nothing more than hysteria and perhaps the final scenes of HALO. Watch out for that wildcat explosion Master Chief!

Re:the things you get for free...

[Jim_Callahan]

Eh, all you need is five dots in forces and four dots in tech. Instant reactor->explosive device conversion.

Misprint

[r2tincan]

According to this site the reactor will cost between $100 to $120 million.

So I guess it is a misprint.

Re:Misprint

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, 120,000,000 drop the pesky 1 and 0 on the opposite end, you have their 200,000! :)

Re:Misprint

[ddeboer]

I would tend to agree. If you estimate a small nuclear reactor at 8 tons, and even if the reactor weight only made up 1/4 of the weight of the plant/ship, and even if the entire reactors and the entire ship were fashioned from just plain old steel, you still have 64 tons (2 reactors * 8 tons * 4) of steel worth $500 a ton at the going price which is $32,000 just for the raw materials. Not to mention all of the work you'd have to do to turn that steel into working nuclear reactors and a floating power plant.

Re:I Guess...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh come on, just because nobody died or was hurt, and people are hurt and killed all the time in the conventional power industry. Chernobyl was more of an accident than Hiroshima, but about up there with putting a brick on the car gas pedal then saying cars are unsafe.

Oh and pollution... Um, isn't the stuff radioactive when it goes in? And the uranium is all natural? So basically unless you're running a breeder reactor, there's really less radioactive material than what was pulled out of the ground to go in it, right?

And how could I forget the arguement of last resort.. If everyone uses nuclear, we'll run out of uranium.

I dunno about the barge idea though. I think I prefer something that can sink and hide when a storm is coming.

Not as bad as other stuff

[Quadraginta]

Are you sure you want to worry specifically about radioactive waste? Radioactive waste does, at least, decay and become harmless, more rapidly early on than later (i.e. it becomes half as dangerous every half-life). Moreover it's very easy to detect from a distance (with a Geiger counter, for example). Furthermore it's dangerous only in fairly large amounts (milligrams to grams).

Now compare that to, say, chemical waste such as mercury or lead from disposed batteries, or polycyclic aromatics from the smokestacks of coal plants. Mercury and lead are dangerous in exceedingly small quantities (which is why leaded gasoline was banned -- even the tiny amount in the vapor of gasoline is dangerous). Polycyclic aromatics can cause cancer forever -- they never get less dangerous. And so on.

Put it simply: of all the waste control and disposal issues presented to us by technology, radioactive waste probably does not actually rank near the top. It may be prominent in public discussion primarily because of its unfamiliarity, and because we are fully committed already to the technology (e.g. electronics) that generates chemical waste, whereas we thought in the era of cheap oil that we could do without nuclear power.

Re:Not as bad as other stuff

[stapedium]

This is such a bogus argument that comes out everytime we talk about nuclear waste. Nuclear waste is THE biggest problem with nuclear power. The cost of permanent disposal is usually not put into the calulations of how much it costs to generate electricity with Nuc plants. Why? Well its because there are not many places that permanent disposal is possible, so pretty much all the waste ends up being stored "temporarily" at the actual power plant. These temporary storage site have much lower hurdles to jump as far as radiation levels and containment standards because they are "temporary".

It is true that Hg and Pb are toxic pretty mcuh forever, but their use in industry is also higly regulated. And PCAs do in fact degrade. Just shine lots of light on them and watch them change...

Re:Not as bad as other stuff

[Firethorn]

It is true that Hg and Pb are toxic pretty mcuh forever, but their use in industry is also higly regulated.

And yet I can still buy thermometers and solder at the local hardware store.

Nuclear waste is THE biggest problem with nuclear power.

Nope, it's the political interference in waste management. Much of the waste, in another ~20 years, will be cool enough to reprocess into more fuel without taking more in the way of precautions than from fresh material. But that's currently forbidden by law. Even now, with some extra precautions, the waste can be reprocessed into more fuel.

The rest is tiny in comparison, and can be buried in a subduction zone or back into the mines it comes from.

Re:Not as bad as other stuff

[stapedium]

You mind mentioning the location of some subduction zones that might be commercially viable? And until a mine is entirely cleared of viable ore, you are not going to be putting waste back in there.
Even with some reprocessing, the problem still remains where to store the waste while it cools and the byproducts of reprocessing.

Re:Not as bad as other stuff

[Firethorn]

Even with some reprocessing, the problem still remains where to store the waste while it cools and the byproducts of reprocessing.

It's not that big of a problem. I mean, it's only after forty years that plants are running out of room in their 'temporary' storage pools. The interim solution that's been found is above ground crypts. After spending twenty years in a pool, they're cool enough to transfer to an above ground crypt. At this point the heat produced has lowered to the point that active cooling isn't required. The thing to remember is the small size of this stuff. You can keep 20 years of waste in a pool the size of an olympic swimming pool.

If we were to take all the spent fuel produced to date in the United States and stack it side-by-side, end-to-end, the fuel assemblies would cover an area about the size of a football field to a depth of about five yards.

As for permanent disposal, you have to remember that, depending on how you recycle it, you can reclaim something like 80% of the materials as additional fuel. I've heard that our reactors only use like 5% of the fuel. So we could run the USA on the current waste for the next 60 years. Mines go dead all the time. Properly managed, you'd be able to keep a mineshaft open for when you do it. Doesn't even have to be the same mine, just a suitable one. Placing the stuff in a subduction zone would be difficult, but I encountered another potential solution which involved dropping into deep sea clay beds which are long term stable. Offtopic: In my research, I encountered materials calling nuclear waste: 'World's most deadly toxin'. I'll say that's false. In neither quantity or quality it's nowhere near. Think Botox. Heck, industrial Chlorine is nasty.

Re:Not as bad as other stuff

[Big_Breaker]

I'm a pretty big nuclear power advocate but I do think you are simplifying things here.

1. Uranium and Plutonium are toxic heavy metals even when they aren't spitting out neutrons. Perhaps they are less toxc than mercury and lead but still you need to factor that in.

2. High level waste from fuel rods isn't the waste problem. The waste problem is all the irradiated parts of the reactor that need to be stored after decommissioning. Pipes, reactor walls, sealing agents, pumps, sensors, etc... all heat up. Solving the waste problem is designing reactors that last a really long time and have as little material as possible getting irradiated. The low level stuff still freaks people out and is reasonably dangerous.

Re:Not as bad as other stuff

[Firethorn]

Sure I'm simplifying things. I not writing an essay.

1. Sure they're poisonous as well. But we're well used to handling poisons safely. We've got generations of nuclear safety now as well.

Uranium and plutonium have two advantages over lead and mercury: They're solid and not very water soluble. Thus, it's actually very hard to poison a waterway with it.

2. Oh, I agree. Modern techniques have a good handle on it. Materials that don't absorb the radiation, or at least not as much. At least you're correct that people fear it more than really necessary.

Re:Not as bad as other stuff

[stapedium]

My point is that permanent storage is the big problem of nuclear energy. If it is in fact true that 80% of current nuclear waste can be recucled into fuel without significant waste in the mining and refinement process then the prooblem may be closer to solved than I thought. I am however skeptical that 80% of the total waste produced in creating nuclear energy can actually be recycled into fuel and that that waste from that fuel will achieve 80% recyclability.

Any refrences on these claims?

As for underwater casks, I think that is how the Indian gvt is disposing of most of their waste. While some of the problem is political...heck we cant even drill for oil off the Pacific coast..The other problem is practical. Our standards for minimizing environmental impact and even potential impacts are much higher. Proving that leaked waste will not get into ground water in Nevada has stalled one permanent dump site for more than 10 years. I hate to think how long it would take to prove that water was not being contaminated from an underwater dumpsite, much les how expensive it would be to build one which is up to these standards.

Re:Not as bad as other stuff

[stapedium]

Oh and as to toxicity, a lot of it depends on route of administration. I'm pretty sure that mcg for mcg vaporized plutonium will kill a lot more people in 10 years than Botox or equal amounts of chlorine gas.

Re:Not as bad as other stuff

[Firethorn]

As the other poster noted, I wrote the original entry from memory, so some of my figures are a bit off. It's interesting to see however, just how close I am.

As for the waste of the recycled waste, what you're really doing is just re-seperating the fuel. What you end up with is functionally identical to new fuel.

ANL-W History - Reactors
Points: New fuel achieves 10-20% fission rate before replacement. Current rate: 3-6%. Reprocessing spent fuel with these reactors: Reduce waste stream by a factor of 2 to 10. 80% reuse would result in a factor of 5, which is midstream.

Re:Not as bad as other stuff

[Big_Breaker]

Absolutely. The fear aspect is really silly, especially when juxtaposed with the very real dangers of fossil fuels.

People need to remember that we dig this stuff out of the ground already. Granted it needs to be concentrated and processed but theoretically the ground has been stuffing this stuff for millenia already.

Wind, gas and nuclear could do a really great job of powering our country. Solar still has a ways to go. Gas for peaking, nuclear for base and wind because it's cheap and clean.

Energy storage for load balancing and enhanced transmission technology and infrastructure would also help a great deal. It would help a great deal with siting (avoiding NIMBY) and would reduce the need to size capacity to peaks. Finally we could build some truely massive reactors with great scaling efficiencies and get the power to more distant communittees.

Incidently, a "hydrogen economy" and electric vehicles in general are only viable if we SUBSTANTIALLY increase our generating capacity. Gasoline + the IEC is just really useful stuff in terms of energy and power density by volume and weight. We aren't going to replace it without incurring substantial switching costs.

Re:Not as bad as other stuff

[stapedium]

What they don't mention is how much waste will be produced in creating the metal-alloy fuel necessary to run the plant. They also fail to mention what waste is necessary to create and maintain the liquid sodium sodium coolant.
The fact that none of these reactors are actually in existance today make be tend to believe that while many of the problems (especially safety issues) have been solved in a research environment, they are not yet economically feasible in commercial plants.

I still submit that the waste produced in making one of these plant comercially viable is the primary problem with nuclear power which hasno been solved.

Re:Not as bad as other stuff

[Firethorn]

Sorry for the delay, was in transit for ~3 days.

I have one exception/addition for your statement.

It's about using gas for peak energy needs. From what I've seen, gas is one of the more expensive fossil fuels, and they're projecting us on running out of it faster than oil.

Thus, I think that hydroelectric will be a good option now. If we stop using it for baseline power, it's as simple as opening a gate to turn up the power.

No funding yet

[wikinerd]

"Construction could begin in 2006 if the project finds financing" - this means they haven't found money for this project yet.

An evil scheme!

[BlackMesaLabs]

I can just see the evil movie villain attaching his evil super-tow-rope to the station and towing it away with his evil cruise ship!

Why? So he can hold the world to ransom with his stolen evil floating nuclear power plant!!

In Russia, everything is "world's first"

[melted]

I've lived in Russia for quite a while, and it's funny how Russians perceive themselves, especially when it comes to the military. Everything is "world's first", everything is said to "have no equal in the world", and everyone believes it, whether or not it's true. So I'd take this "world's first" thing with a three-pound grain of salt if it comes from Russians.

Re:In Russia, everything is "world's first"

[Anonymous Coward]

So I'd take this "world's first" thing with a three-pound grain of salt if it comes from Russians.

Oh, you mean like the Mig 1.42 "Raptor Killer" and the GPS scrambler? Yeah, the Russkies are seriously full of shit. It's a bit sad really.

Re:I Guess...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear power is not and will never be safe.

Do you stay out of the sun? Are you a vampire?

I'll take six!

[SEWilco]

I think New Orleans could use a half-dozen of those...

Thank you

[bobalu]

I knew there was something grossly wrong with that, $200M would be more like it.

Damn Cyrillic...

Water, water, everywhere

[SEWilco]

"...and desalinate seawater."

Sevmash Spring Water! Only $20 a bottle!

Applause.

[siggy_lxvi]

Thank you, Sir, Madam, or Other. You have officially made my day. If I had mod points, you'd get all of them.

Re:Applause.

[Alystair]

I second the motion, huzzah good Anonymous Sir! :)

Hang on...

[mrs dogbreath]

Like some of the others here:
My house cost more than that...

Hm

[t_allardyce]

Why would this be any cheaper (per KWh) than land based power stations? I really don't see the point in putting a nuclear power station on a ship other than for powering remote places, which probably don't need that much power anyway. Im sure its as safe, if not safer than any other nuclear powered submarine or ship, because all of its space will be dedicated to safety measures, where is most of the space in nuclear powered submarines is dedicated to explosives and nuclear weapons... but still it doesn't sound much safer, at the end of the day if it sinks it sinks and getting it back to the surfice is going to be an absolute bitch just like with anything else nuclear.

Re:Hm

[Jim_Callahan]

They intend to move it around, I think. A lot of power is dissipated by wire transmission, just moving the reactor to the city that doesn't have its own plants online yet is a lot more efficient than stringing a thousand miles of energy-dissipating wire from the nearest station, probably over three mountains and around twenty or thirty lakes and rivers.

I'm an asshole

[amliebsch]

John Wayne's not dead, he's frozen.

Re:I'm an asshole

[jrockway]

These were the exact 6 words that came to mind when I read that :) I don't know who John Wayne is, but I do know that he's frozen.

And as soon as we find a cure for cancer, I'm going to thaw him out and have a big democracy cakewalk right through the middle of Tienman square.

Re:I Guess...

[zurab]

I guess it's people like you that are the reason no new plants (in the U.S.) have been built in decades.

I don't think it's /. trolls that control those decisions. I'm not an energy expert by any means, but there is too much politics and money surrounding the issue. Energy companies say the cost of building and operating nuclear power plants is so high, they need even more government subsidies to operate them. "Gov't" disagrees. So, it's basically a matter of bribing enough politicians to permit and subsidize the power plants so that energy companies get large profits from taxpayers' money. Happens all the time in the energy business. So, IMO one major issue is whether this whole thing is ripe politically.

China?

[digit]

http://www.uic.com.au/wns0729.htm>

To be made in China.? Why not in Russa?

Per Kilowatt-what?

[GeorgeTheGiraffe]

Maybe it's $200k per hour, kinda like they are generating electricity for 5 or 6 cents per kilowatt (instead of kilowatt hour).

We really have to work on our units here, people!

CA is safe now

[32771]

They could just rent a few of those vessels and get through those nasty brownouts they didn't have this year.

This is also not a big political issue as those barges could be pulled away to say Alaska or Mexico when election time comes. One could even put up a long cable and place the ship in international waters - electrical energy out of nowhere.

Oh, barge with something nuclear on it - this reminds me of something:
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Castle.h tml

Castle Romeo is the first barge shot.

Enough rambling.

Re:I Guess...

[flabbergasted]

Oh and pollution... Um, isn't the stuff radioactive when it goes in? And the uranium is all natural? So basically unless you're running a breeder reactor, there's really less radioactive material than what was pulled out of the ground to go in it, right?

That is the most abominably ignorant statement I've ever heard. For every uranimum nucleus that fissions, you end up with about two radioactive nuclei. (I say about two because sometimes fission produces three nuclei not two and there is always the very remote chance that one of them is going to be stable.) What's more, the fission products typically have a much shorter half life than the natural isotopes of Uranium, which makes them more radioactive.

Please, if you don't know what you're talking about, don't try to explain things to people.

Re:I Guess...

[AxelTorvalds]

Chernobyl was more of an accident than Hiroshima

Totally, Hiroshima was bombed intentionally... There was nothing accidental about it.

Water is a great insulator against radiation

[Anonymous Coward]

With the fuel situation we have and the current state of nuclear power, I've wondered why this hasn't been done already. RIght now we're collectively against nuclear power becuase of the fear of disasters, this kind of offers a solution to that problem.

Suppose that the reactor was 10 miles out to sea, somewhere where it's fairly deep. An under sea cable could be used to distribute the electricity. There is plenty of water around for cooling, they will never run out. Ultimately if there was a problem they could scuttle the whole thing and sink it. Water is what they use to store the rods anyways. It's not like the fuel is in liquid form or in some other form that will leak and contaminate water and go in to the soil. The problem would be letting the heat get out of control and venting radioactive material to the atmosphere when it over heats, we sink it before that happens though. Rods are fairly self contained. It would hurt that part of the ocean, you have to mark it off and not dive there for a long while. We're only talking about a couple square miles (being generous, you could probablu get really close to the site before radiation was a hazzard)

Compared to oil, I think it would be tons cleaner, relatively speaking. We could dump spent rods somewhere super deep too. Now some of the other chemicals we've produced to make bombs and stuff cannot and absolutely should not be dumped in to water but I don't really see what the harm is in doing that to metalic radioactive substances. Yes it is potentially harmful to aquatic life in the immediate vacinity but big deal, that seems better than harming all land based life on the planet by pumping cancer causing chemicals and greenhouse gases into the air. Better yet, if it's deep enough, there is no way that any terrorist could ever steal the stuff and make a dirty bomb. I know this all sounds terrible but dumping radioactive metal in the ocean isn't that dangerous.

Depends on your definition...

[Goonie]

The "energy" is always present, it's just that a fast breeder reactor converts U-238 (from which the energy is locked up) into plutonium (from which it can be usefully extracted).

As a very crude but hopefully useful analogy, imagine you had a lot of very heavily waterlogged and thus incombustible wood, a coal-fired heater, and a relatively small amount of coal. You use the heat from the coal to dry out the wood. You haven't violated the laws of thermodynamics, but you've got yourself a whole lot more useful fuel. And you can use the burning dried wood to dry some more wood, and so on.

Now, this isn't some kind of perpetual motion machine. Once you've burned the plutonium (the dried wood), you can't burn it again. But there is so much waterlogged wood (U-238) that we're not going to run out for a very, very, very long time.

Re:Depends on your definition...

[lee1026]

It is not going to run out for a very, very ,very long time, eh? funny, that's exactly what they said for oil.

Re:Depends on your definition...

[Anonymous Coward]

That is a very bad analogy. U-238 is a fine nuclear fuel; its just that the physics are different from thermal neutron reactors. They require a fast spectrum and must be bigger. Many nuclear plants are fast reactors. There are problems with breeder reactors, including the fact that it is more difficult to control the reaction due to the smaller fraction of delayed neutrons.

The USA should buy one

[argoff]

USA investors should get some and use them to create hydrogen from sea water, and sell it back to the mainland. This is the the only way we're gonna get arround the NIMBY additude, and costly irrational regulation, that makes it impossible to benefit from nuclear power on the mainland.

Birth Control included - no extra charge!

[ericzundel]

The $200,000 figure is too good to be true, unless
  these are retired icebreakers (that's what this reactor was designed for.) If they are retired icebreakers, then yeah, these may cost $200,000, but you won't be able to build new ones for that.

The reactor was proposed for a desalinisation project which would generat 1.4m gallons of water per day at a cost of .43 per gallon. How do you reconcile a price of $619,000 per day with $200,000 up front costs? Maybe they learned something from inkjet manufacturers.

Was: Hot Water

[awfar]

since most uses of electricity will be converted to heat, and if we make it cheap enough, won't we ultimately cause as many problems, especially when every human, every household has an electric air-conditioner and many assorted electric bits? I am unsure of Earth's thermal budget, but will we need to then put a space-umbrella to shield us from the sun to balance the Earth's thermal equilibrium?

Re:Was: Hot Water

[The Master Control P]

You're asking about the Hypsithermal Limit - the point where the amount of energy we dump into the atmosphere starts to seriously affect earth's climate. The link is about what it means to the number of nanomachines there can be on earth, but it's still answers your question. Super-short summary: Earth gets ~2X10^17 watts from the sun; The upper safe limit for human power is ~2X10^15 watts; Current human power use is ~1.5X10^13 watts.

Re:Was: Hot Water

[Doc Ruby]

My favorite treatment of that problem is Larry Niven's "Pierson's Puppeteers", in his _Ringworld_ novel(s). They pulled their homeworld, after millennia of tech development, loose from their parent star, which was dying. They still produced so much in excess of their hysithermal limit, even without insolation, that they relied on giant heatsink radiators extending from the surface, into space, as they travelled to their preferred new solar host.

Ultimately, the entropy is the enemy, as we can recycle more ordered energy, but the less coherent energy works against our orderly biochemistry. I expect that, if our species survives, our most valuable resource will become the "entropy dumps" into which we produce the greatest product of our activities.

Re:Was: Hot Water

[Doc Ruby]

I wonder how long it will be before we're charging some matter to incredibly high temperatures and sending it out of the ecosystem. Or some other heat pump to keep the planet liveable. We're probably not capable of that sophistication, so heat-choking is just another of the dead-ends we're paving for our first home here on Earth.

Not that cheap

[Burdell]

Presuming the article means the power will cost 5 or 6 cents per kilowatt hour, that's not all that cheap. I get electricity for about 5.8 cents per kwh plus a monthly "customer charge" of $5.77. That's the "retail" price from the local utility, not the "wholesale" price they buy electricity from the generator for.

Re:Not that cheap

[Senzei]

Yes, but if they manage to pull off desalinated water and heat generation for the same price it would probably be worth it.

That and this is the first, or one of the first, times that this has been done. The cost of producing and running one of these plants may go down as technology adapts to the problem.

Meltdowns happen

[MichaelPenne]

usually b/c the plant runs out of water or the water lines break.

This thing, worst it can do is sink, and that will cool it down just fine.

If you are worried about radiation, well, maybe you should get more concerned about the rads the alternatives to nuclear are spewing into your air every day.

Americans living near coal-fired power plants are exposed to higher radiation doses than those living near nuclear power plants that meet government regulations.

Re:Meltdowns happen

[2short]

In the case of a "Meltdown", sinking may well not cool it down fine. Cooling does not control the rate of fission, it simply keeps your mechanisms for doing so from melting; if they've already done so, cooling it down is unlikely to make them operable again.

You are quite right that a normaly operating coal plant produces more radiation than a properly operating nuclear plant. This red herring is frequently thrown up by nuclear power proponents. No one (with sense) is worried about properly operating nuclear plants; please see your own subject line for what they are worried about. That, and the need to store the waste safely for 100000 years.

govt contractors, hmm $3000 toilets

[cheekyboy]

We know how corrupt govts are and how contractors love to ripoff the govt because they will sign anything because its not like theres a ROI in the govt, or a balance sheet, or sales figures or any possibility of it going into CH11.

90% of DOEs costs are probably wages and red tape (err... MS office documents)

lets add this up...

[switchfutguy]

nuclear powerplant........$200,000
inground swimming pool....$10,000
creating enough power for you and your neighbors, selling it back to the power company, becoming a flithy rich energy producer...priceless

this is great

[Anonymous Coward]

4 things at once! water, heat, power
and in the night u glow alittle :)

launch it to space.

[cheekyboy]

If you can filter and concentrate the waste, so that its tightly packed, ie anything none radio active is 'safe waste' or low level waste, just launch the rest into orbit and to the sun or venus or something.

25000 kilos on a Falcon9 costs $23m

australia has trippled is law book size

[cheekyboy]

Funny how an article recently in the paper sites that australias laws have trippled in size from ~3500 pages to ~11000 pages of common law.

Either we have too many sad sad bloated laws like bad bloated MS CODE, or the lawyers dont have a clue on how to write english.

Common lawyers, get a fricking clue, either write it so its concise, or use bloody flow charts to show logic/flow.

Any one who wrote like a lawyer for a manual or a planning document would be FIRED or given a zero in college, why do lawyers get away with such utter arragance and incompetance.

Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, Nuclear Station Floats You!

wepaons grade fuel

[quenda]

meltdown? The safety and waste disposal questions have been beaten to death on slashdot. But what about the proliferation question? These reactors use weapons grade uranium fuel, "40% U235" according to this greenie site:

http://www.bellona.no/en/international/russia/nuke _industry/co-operation/39015.html

Bad cost estimate

[Anonymous Coward]

The cost estimate from the article is Very Bad. According to http://www10.antenna.nl/wise/index.html?http://www 10.antenna.nl/wise/456/4525.html

and http://www.uic.com.au/wns0729.htm

and as another poster mentioned,
http://eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/nuc_reactors /superla.html

the cost is around $200M (not including estimation errors, mismanagement costs and other overheads).

Editors should check some of the fantastic claims.

-

Would you like a Honda Accord for $1.95?

Hey good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey good idea, for Chris Taylor anyway. Im looking forward to floating nuclear power plants in Supreme Commander at least.

it is obvious, they just wont pay the labor

[andrelix]

It is Russia, as free as it is now, they still can have some pretty cheap labor. Of course it would take significantly more than 200K to be able to buy the materials, but I hear they have some left over sub parts...

Russian engineering

[Von Rex]

And we all know that safety is the primary concern of all Russian engineering projects, right? They've proven that so many times with their nuclear facilities, submarines, and rocket launches.

Re:Russian engineering

[Rolo Tomasi]

Rocket launches? I believe the USA has lost more astronauts than the Soviets/Russians have lost cosmonauts. The Russian rockets currently have a reputation of reliability and low cost.

Come to think of it, the US has had its fair share of nukular fuckups as well - Three Mile Island, or google for lost nuclear weapons ...

Re:Russian engineering

[saigon_from_europe]

or google for lost nuclear weapons ...

It would be very nice if Google could find them. Unfortunately, even with Linux cluster of 100,000+ PCs, several hundred PhDs and all, some of missing USA nukes simply cannot be found.

Re:Cheap Price? Not Credible!

[Anonymous Coward]

C'mon people. Look at the damn picture. You couldn't even build the barge for $200,000! Try moving the decimal point to the right about 3 places and it might be in the bounds of reality.

How big is your Backyard?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the the only way we're gonna get arround the NIMBY additude, and costly irrational regulation

When it comes to nuclear accidents, the 'My Backyard' part of NIMBY becomes almost meaningless. Did you know that many sheep in Wales were condemned as unfit to eat because they had ingested fallout from Chernobyl?

And don't get me started on the unsolved problems of waste disposal...

A beowulf cluster? Runs linux?

[cpotoso]

But I have two important points: 1) Can one build a beowulf cluster of them? 2) Do they run linux?

How's your your mail-order Russian bride?

[Anonymous Coward]

My wife's uncle used to serve as chief engineer on Soviet and later Russian nuclear submarines

yuck-yuck

Offshore Nuke Reactors already nixed

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything old is new again. The Americans thought about this concept 25 years ago. The gulf of mexico and offshore florida was to be the place. Lots of venture capital raised. People sued. Monies lost. Seems logical at first glance. But not really the brightest moment in nuclear design. Think: a lot of really hot water being discharged into the ocean and the environmental damage to result. Not to mention storm/discharge damage. That's why nuke reactors have isolated cooling systems. Really hard to isolate those cooling systems in the open sea. Doh!

Remember these are the morons who thought they were bright by launching nuke bombs into the atmosphere and had bets whether the atmosphere would ignite and burn off at Trinity. Genius indeed- sounds like psychopathic behaviour.

Price? Sanity check?

[danharan]

The plant will save up to 200,000 metric tons of coal and 100,000 tons of fuel oil a year.

Gee, at $200,000 that's quite a bargain. How did they get the 5-6 cents/kwh? And why is it they're having a hard time finding investors that will take a longer-term approach without being so fixed on ROI?

Oh, maybe they're off by at least two F#@$% orders of magnitude?

The reason nuclear isn't viable is cost, and as long as its proponents are this clueless about accounting, I don't expect a revival any time soon.

They mean it this time...

[Goonie]

There's enough U-238 out there to keep breeder reactors going for thousands of years. Because there's so much energy available from it, you can even do silly things like extract uranium from seawater to obtain it.

Nevada?

[Anonymous Coward]

Moreover, if China decided to launch a nuke and it hit in downtown LA - (assuming I don't get lynched for saying so on Slashdot...) I'd still go to work on Monday, and be just as healthy as I am now.

Re:Nevada?

[ogl_codemonkey]

... then thousands of Americans could protest about any films released that show violence or destruction in Los Angeles, or the old skyline...

Incorrect. That was the *second*

[jdoeii]

The first civilian nuclear power plan was Soviet:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power

Re:Incorrect. That was the *second*

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the article, the first was in England. Nothing in the Soviet Union was civilian.

In other news...

[PlacidPundit]

The White Sea will be renamed the 'Glowing Green Sea.'

Re:I Guess...

[__aaxtnf2500]

How can this be modded insightful? In the context of the recent spate of significant circumferential SCC on CRDM stubs and the incredible corrosion found on the davis-besse head, that a nuclear meltdown could not occur is absolutely preposterous. A 1/4" more corrosion through the davis-besse head (down only to the stainless steel liner) and a failure in the high-capacity ECCS and that's exactly what could have occurred. Yes, current nuclear power stations are at the forefront of industrial safety, hygiene, and operational excellence. That an accident cannot happen is foolish, and an attitude that would lead to disaster if accepted in the industry. Constructive Dissatisfaction is a good attitude. And a coal plant, in the event of an accident cannot poison the surrounding envrions and people living nearby. This is the point! A coal plant emits more radioactivity in the form of trans-uranics than even a BWR does in fission products, but in the event of an accident, radioactivity emission CEASES, it does not increase 12 ORDERS OR MAGNITUDE! It's people like you who we do not need being involved with nuclear power, not to be inflammatory, but prudent.

power versus energy

[FrankDrebin]

just 5 or 6 cents per kilowatt

That would be 5 or 6 cents per kilowatt-hour.

It's the difference between power and energy. A light bulb has a power rating, but the time it is used takes energy, and it's energy that you pay for, not power.

Re:power versus energy

[Anonymous Coward]

A watt is one joule per second. It is already a measure of power.

Anyone but russians

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in eastern europe. This is scary stuff. Russians have no understanding of modern safety, they don't usually value human lives or their surroundings. Building the floating reactor is just asking for trouble.
BTW: to anyone, who says modern nuclear technology is safer: it's true. The problem is what the russians will build will be nowhere near the term 'modern'.

They *have* been taken into account

[Goonie]

The IAEA has just released the latest comprehensive assessment of the impact of the Chernobyl disaster.

Firstly, childhood thyroid cancer has, without doubt, increased a lot. However, luckily, it's very treatable. Therefore, very few people die from it. Aside from that, no increase in cancers has been detected. However, statistical projections based on dose rates suggest that about 4000 people will ultimately die from cancer caused by Chernobyl - but it will be impossible to attribute individual cancer deaths to it; it will be quite difficult even to prove that there *was* an increase. Certainly, outside the relatively small group of people exposed to very large amounts of radiation, no increase in cancer has been detected. The report also didn't find any convincing evidence to support a claim of increased birth defects, despite what that crappy propaganda piece Chernobyl Heart claimed.

The parent poster is right. Chernobyl, horrible as it is, was not nearly as bad as Bhopal, and pales in comparison to the number of miners who die from coal dust inhalation annually, let alone the excess deaths caused by air pollution (estimated at about 200,000 worldwide, every single year).

Re:They *have* been taken into account

[hritcu]

You have to consider that the source of these studies is the International Atomic Energy Agency. Wouldn't be in their very best interest to try to hide the consequences of the disaster? Just reading this article about Thyroid Cancer Effects in Children made me lough. They are biased. Just because thyroid cancer is curable (BTW, only if discovered in an early stage of the disease, as with all types pf cancer) doesn't mean that a lot of people are still dying because it is diagnosed to late and it has spread to other organs as well. There is no data in the article, other that they have been treating "hundreds of children". While this is laudable, the institute only existed for the last five years. How many people died before, and how many people are still dying from thyroid cancer? Remember that Ukraine is not US, and the medical services there far from optimal.

Re:They *have* been taken into account

[hritcu]

Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident and Special Health Care Programmes:

The Chernobyl accident caused the deaths of 30 power plant employees and firemen within a few days or weeks (including 28 deaths that were due to radiation exposure). In addition, about 240,000 recovery operation workers (also called "liquidators" or "clean-up workers") were called upon in 1986 and 1987 to take part in major mitigation activities at the reactor and within the 30-km zone surrounding the reactor. Residual mitigation activities continued on a relatively large scale until 1990. All together, about 600,000 persons (civilian and military) have received special certificates confirming their status as liquidators, according to laws promulgated in Belarus, the Russian Federation, and Ukraine (UNSCEAR, 2000).

In addition, massive releases of radioactive materials into the atmosphere brought about the evacuation of about 116,000 people from areas surrounding the reactor during 1986, and the relocation, after 1986, of about 220,000 people from what are at this time three independent republics of the former Soviet Union: Belarus, the Russian Federation, and Ukraine. Vast territories of those three republics were contaminated to a substantial level. The population of those contaminated areas, from which no relocation was required, was about 5 million people.

Very considerable uncertainty remains over the possible long-term health effects of the accident. On the one hand, the nuclear industry acknowledges only very limited and closely defined consequences. On the other, some politicians, researchers and voluntary movement workers claim that the accident has had profound and diverse impacts on the health of many millions of people. This uncertainty is a cause of widespread distress and misallocation of resources and needs to be addressed though rigorous and adequately funded international efforts.

No reliable evidence has emerged of an increase in leukemias, which had been predicted to result from the accident. However, some two thousand cases of thyroid cancer have so far been diagnosed among young people exposed to radioactive iodine in April and May 1986. According to conservative estimates, this figure is likely to rise to 8-10,000 over the coming years. While thyroid cancer can be treated, all of these people will need continuing medical attention for the rest of their lives. A significant number have potentially serious complications. It is likely that the coming decades will see an increase in other solid cancers resulting from exposure to radiation. However, there is no consensus over how many cases will occur.
...........

From the above discussion and recommendations, the following conclusions may be drawn with regard to the impact of the Chernobyl accident on risk of solid cancers other than thyroid cancer on the populations of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine.

With regard to the dosimetry to be applied to liquidators, considerable caution should continue to be employed in the use of the "official" doses contained in the various state registries. This is due to inaccuracies in the doses, large uncertainties affecting many dose estimates and the variability of that precision according to the source of doses. The time and motion method of RADRUE described in Section II seems the best hope at present for constructing individual doses received by liquidators for use in analytical epidemiological studies. However, until more validation studies on the method are completed, caution must be used in applying the RADRUE method, again, because of uncertainty as to its accuracy and precision.

For doses applying to the general population, registries of such doses have been developed in Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine. These can be adapted and applied to analytical and ecological epidemiological studies, though,

Re:They *have* been taken into account

[cow-orker]

So what? Can you provide different numbers? "Everybody knows that radiation always causes cancer" is not only a very weak argument, it's also not supported by measured facts and probably wrong.

Re:They *have* been taken into account

[hritcu]

Just check this out: Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR VII - Phase 2) (Summary, PDF Brief).

Description (from the National Academies of Science site):
BEIR VII develops the most up-to-date and comprehensive risk estimates for cancer and other health effects from exposure to low-level ionizing radiation. It is among the first reports of its kind to include detailed estimates for cancer incidence in addition to cancer mortality. In general, BEIR VII supports previously reported risk estimates for cancer and leukemia, but the availability of new and more extensive data have strengthened confidence in these estimates. A comprehensive review of available biological and biophysical data supports a "linear-no-threshold" (LNT) risk model that the risk of cancer proceeds in a linear fashion at lower doses without a threshold and that the smallest dose has the potential to cause a small increase in risk to humans. The report is from the Board on Radiation Research Effects that is now part of the newly formed Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board.

Half-life

[Goonie]

Some of the isotopes have a half-life of hundreds of thousands of years. That means that they half in radioactivity every couple of hundred thousand years.

If their half life is that long, that makes them not very dangerous because they're not very radioactive. To simplify somewhat, the ones that represent the real risk are the ones that have a half-life of a few hours or days, such as Iodine-131, to a few decades, like Cesium-137.

Re:Half-life

[vandan]

And once again, declaring something 'safe' doesn't make it so. And pointing out that there are more dangerous materials around than radioactive material with a long half-life doesn't detract from the latter's dangers.

Or perhaps you'd like to prove me wrong by tracking down some radioactive material with a long half-life, and putting it in your pocket, or the pocket of your kid if you have one.

You see, there's safe, and there's dangerous ( and yes, then there's damned dangerous ). Radioactive material is not safe.

Re:Half-life

[Goonie]

Sure. You ever heard of radium-dial wristwatches? There's millions of people happily wearing them, as am I.

Everything carries an element of risk. Compared to the risks of driving, drinking alcohol, or eating at McDonald's, the risk from a bit of natural uranium, for instance, is so small as to be lost in the noise.

Re:Half-life

[vandan]

That's a ridiculous argument. The stuff coming out of nuclear power plants is not as harmless as radium-dial wristwatches ... which you 'claim' to have on your wrist.

The current issue of New Scientist describes a much more serious problem than you are willing to admit to:

Twenty year on, UN scientists are at last beginning to understand the aftermath of the world's worst-ever nuclear accident ... Radiation has contaminated more than 200,000 square kilometres of land ... ( and ) has triggered widespread mental health problems ... These are the conclusions of the most authoritative study to date ... compiled by the Chernobyl Forum, which involves more than 100 scientists, eight UN agencies and the governments of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine ... A massive 14 billion billion becquerels of radioactivitiy escaped the reactor over the 10 days it burned ... almost 600,000 people ( were ) contaminated by the accident ... ( but ) there are no plans for disposing of the large amount of radioactive waste dumped in landfull sites around the 'sarcophagus' built over the damaged reactor in 1986, while the structure itself is at risk of collapsing and kicking up radioactive dust into the air

Of course we could just believe your statement that all is well because you have a wristwatch, but frankly the abovementioned study seems slightly more plausable.

The rate of fission isn't the issue

[MichaelPenne]

it's the heat caused by the fission. A meltdown is dangerous because it generates heat, and if the heat comes in contact with stuff that burns, it makes fire, smoke, explosions & spreads radiation.

Water (esp. in oceanic quantities), prevents the heat from building up (we're also talking about a small reactor with a small core in this case). If the core was well above the water, then you might get a steam explosion when it hits. However, in this case, the core is just above the bottom of the ship.

Regarding the waste issue, it seems a real stinky fish to me, if there is human civilization in 10,000 years, even if the rate of technological advance slows down dramatically, it seems to me it will still be less of a problem than the one we're causing by burning all the coal and oil.

I don't think the radioactivity of coal is at all a red herring. Rather it points out that we make choices in our energy policy, and blocking modern nuclear plants from being built leads to other, much more destructive* (if less dramatically so) technologies being used.

Coal is a dirty, stupid, primitive way to generate power, and nuclear power is the only current technology with the energy density to replace it.

* between explosions in coal mines, black lung, radiation, mercury, and nitrogen oxides, coal has certainly killed far more people per megawatt year than nuclear.

Re:The rate of fission isn't the issue

[TheRaven64]

Interesting. The article you linked to states:

Electric energy manufacturing cost, $/kWhr: 5

That's a bit higher than the 5-6 quoted in the summary.

Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

The rest of the world doesn't need to be accountable for their actions, so why not? If it doesn't work out you always know where to find your scapegoat.

harvesting oceans energy

[free2]

Although I would be one of the first in line to adopt solar, hydro or hydrogen energy approaches, none are feasible on a global scale.
What is your basis to say that ? Do you really think our sun don't give us enough energy ? Or that we can't save some ? Most of the sun energy goes into oceans and winds. And there are new technologies to harvest this abundant energy: ocean-based windmills (Danemark), tides and waves power plants, high energy algaes harvesting, etc.

Re:harvesting oceans energy

[91degrees]

The main problem with renewable energy sources is that they aren't always available (Well, tidal is but that's limited). We need some sort of backup for when the wind is too strong, or not strong enough.

Solar is better, but best suited for hotter countries. Go far enough north, and you get hardly any sunlight in the winter.

Re:harvesting oceans energy

[eric_harris_76]

Just because the energy is "there" doesn't mean it can be used. If the cost (including recouping the initial construction costs) are greater than existing methods, it's not feasible.

This is location-specific. Costs vary by location. In some parts of the world unskilled labor is especially cheap, making some types of construction especially affordable. In some places, land is expensive. Grabbing kilowatts from the sun or the wind takes up real estate, and lots of it, so solar power from photovoltaics or whatever is not a good choice there.

No doubt there are innovative ways to harvest energy from sources which are used little or not at all. But not all of those approaches will pan out in practice.

You might considering starting a business -- if you see an opportunity that fits the resources you personally can bring to bear -- or investing in an existing or startup firm that is using one of the approaches you find especially appealing -- if you can't do the whole thing yourself.

In other works, do something to prove the skeptics wrong. (And incidentally make a buck or two.)

"Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself."

To bring this back to the poster you were replying to: so what if it's not feasible on a global scale? Nobody uses energy on a global scale. They use it where they are: Phoenix, Johannesburg, en route to Madrid, wherever they happen to be.

For the armchair quarterback, a global solution is necessary, I guess, but for the real world, an individual solution for the particular situation is all that's needed. And it's only needed by the people who are in that situation. The armchair quarterbacks would do well to stick with managing teams in fantasy football leagues. -Eric

103% efficiency?

[XNormal]

* Electric power - 60 MW
* Heat output - 50 Gcal/h


I find it suspicous that the electric power is 3% higher than heat output.

Google calculator calculation

Re:103% efficiency?

[deimtee]

Probably that's 60 MW electricity as well as 58 MW of waste heat, which would make the efficiency just over 50%.

Re:103% efficiency?

[anno1602]

find it suspicous that the electric power is 3% higher than heat output.

Why? You're presuming that all waste heat could indeed be used as heat output. That may not be the case, in fact, it's rather unlikely. Normally, only a percentage of a plant's heat can actually be put to further use.

Re:103% efficiency?

[Lally Singh]

Don't look at me man, I just copy-pasted the motherfucker.

Re:"safety"? Bah.

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus Christ. The post you're responding to is a joke. Nobody's trying to hoax your ass. Just relax, have a bonghit, drink some fucking cognac, and chill.

Re:harvesting oceans energy, winter

[free2]

Go far enough north, and you get hardly any sunlight in the winter.
During the winter you can still get energy from tides, waves, wind, algaes, geothermal, etc.
Hyrogen can also be a good way to store summer solar energy for use in the winter.

hah..

[AchingHunger]

Hey! That's pretty cheap!

Waste disposal and storage

[quiet_guy]

When you get right down to it, rad waste disposal is not technically hard - we've known how for a bunch of years. It is, however, _politically_ hard.

First: the 10,000 year mandatory storage requirement: not driven by science, fact, etc; driven by law. As I recall, there is nothing man-made (not piles of rocks) on Earth that old, but we wrote law to say we had to build something that would last that long. And prove that it would.

Second: If we really wanted to get rid of waste, we could - the oceanic subduction zones are perfect.
1. Shape all your high-level waste into chunks
2. drop it into a subduction zone
3.???
4. in a few years (profit!!) it goes deep into the Earth where it came from.
But, we (the US) have mandated that you must be able to check on your waste storage, ensure it is still there, happy, and no one else took it. So, lots of the good permanent solutions are out-of-bounds.

C. Yucca Mountain: the site was chosen by Congress, without actually completing a 'competitive' review. There were several sites under consideration; Congress picked Yucca, then told the DOE to perform sufficient studies to deem it safe. There actually is some evidence that surface water penetrates to the storage tunnel levels quickly (100s of years). (No, I don't have the link anymore; is from DOE site reports in the mid-90s.)

D. On-site storage: All the powerplants are currently storing high-level waste on-site; not in any 'secure' location. Why? Because the government declared that a high-level waste storage facility would be available in 1996....and yet we wait.

Lastly, somewhat off-my-own-topic: you can't usefully use a nuclear powered ship for electric power generation - a very small percentage of total power generated goes for electricity. It takes far more energy (in the form of steam, to turbines) to drive a hull through the water. Thus, if a hypothetical shipboard power plant was rated at 50MW thermal, it probably only produces 5MW in electrical power. You'd have to completely re-vamp the steam plant to dedicate the entire thermal output to electrical generation.

Disclaimer: Yes, I actually am a nuclear engineer. I've been running Naval power plants for 15 years, and spent a few years doing research on rad waste disposal. Just don't have any of my references handy (something about being at sea.)

Re:Waste disposal and storage

[tajmorton]

the 10,000 year mandatory storage requirement: not driven by science, fact

Wikipeida says there are some elements that take longer that 10,000 years to break down. E.g., U233, U232, etc.

If we really wanted to get rid of waste, we could - the oceanic subduction zones are perfect.

Is there really anywhere in the ocean where we can just "drop the waste into a hole?" It seems it would have to be very shallow, and very stable (e.g., what happens when an earthquake occurrs and knocks all the crap out of the zone and into the water? How long does it really take for the waste to "dissappear" so it is no longer a threat to anything living in the water?

Really, this isn't a flame--I'm asking these questions because I'm curious.

Re:I Guess...

[cduffy]

which makes them more radioactive ...but for a much shorter period of time.

Indeed!

[Grendel Drago]

I do wonder why we're running power lines across Long Island Sound here in New England, at horrendous cost and against massive opposition from a variety of quarters, while (a) the waterfalls that powered 19th-century industry sit idle, and (b) we decommission nuclear subs, but don't float them offshore to run their reactors with a skeleton crew and ship power to land.

Just seems like we're not using the most elegant solution.

--grendel drago

Re:harvesting oceans energy, winter

[Firethorn]

I live in Minot, ND:

1. I'm several states away from any ocean.
2. Tides/Waves are the same thing.
2b. Tidal power, except in certain rare cases, has been shown to be one of the most expensive 'renewable' power sources. We just don't have the ability to build stuff that lasts long enough in salt water.
3. Wind: Might be a good idea, but you still have the problem of calm days.
4. algaes: WTH? Still requires sunlight
5. Geothermal is only in limited areas. I'd have to dig very, very deep. Try miles.
6. No, Hydrogen wouldn't be. Hydrogen is very hard to store in bulk. You still loose more than 50% of the energy if you try to. Besides, even in the summer, with the longer days, due to the way things work we still get less solar power by area than the equator.

I'll take a nuclear reactor any day.

Still expensive...

[idobi]

The average cost of nuclear power (2004) is 1.68 cents per kilowatt. Coal is $1.90/kilowatt, Oil is $5.39/kilowatt, and Gas is $5.87/kilowatt. This might make sense for Russia though, since it would preserve their oil, which is a major cash export for them.

They've already got one

[DarthVeda]

Last I knew the Russians were using one of their Kirovs of the Pacific fleet to help power the Vladivostok region. So this wouldn't be the *first* floating nuclear power plant in Russia.

The Real Threat

[Kamiza Ikioi]

I agree with some of your points. However, Nuclear Energy is the absolute very least feasible on a global scale. That's all we need to do, is allow every third world country in the world to play around with nuclear material.

The quote fails to mention something. It says how many people the waste could kill. It doesn't mention how many would die if a bomb or meltdown went off, how many generations it would affect, how long the land would remain sterile, etc. It also doesn't mention how many people can be killed if the government of the plants in question use the material to make nuclear warheads. Last I checked, arsenic couldn't kill as many people as a nuclear warhead.

I don't fear nuclear material. I fear nuclear material in the hands of suicide bombers. Maybe chlorine is just as dangerous. That doesn't give any justification to nuclear material, though.

I've heard that argument before on other topics: "Well, sure X can happen to you, but so can Y, so why worry about X?" Either way, you are still left with X.

Besides, nuclear energy is a dead end. It's enough that we destroyed the climate, now we want to irradiate mountains with waste?

I don't have an immediate solution. I wish I did. I think we all wish we did. But, I believe solar energy is the only way to go, whether you are harnessing it from the wind, water, directly, or from fossil fuels, which are a long decended solar power. We have to realize that we have only real reliable power source is the sun. We just have to learn how to harness it better.

We will run out of space to put waste, or run out of raw nuclear material. Sure, it may look like we have plenty. Many thought the same about oil, and now even the oil companies will publically admit that we'll run out fairly soon. If nuclear power provided cheap energy to everyone, then energy usage, like car usage, would skyrocket, and what seemed like so much would become so little.

We have to think at least several hundred years into the future. Short sightedness is the cause of most of our current energy problems. And, we have no choice but to rely on the sun. Should it burn out, I think powering our cities will be the least of our worries.

A smarter man than me had some great ideas about society, economics, energy, etc. http://www.bfi.org/operating_manual.htm I just hope he was also right that man can't sabotage himself faster than he naturally advances.

Re:The Real Threat

[aelbric]

I personally believe that a solar/hydrogen combination is what will save us from ourselves. Clean solar to capture the energy of the sun and some hydrogen based technology to store it for use. Unfortunately, neither technology is there today to be used on a massive scale.

As a counterpoint, I would encourage you to read Chapter 11. A very strong case is made scientifically about the much-exagerrated risks of high-level nuclear waste if handled properly. And yes, there lies the problem.

Still, if France can get 70%+ of their energy from nuclear with no catastrophic incidents, I see no reason why the rest of the West can't. We'll have to take the "psycho factor" one situation at a time.

Re:The Real Threat

[mahmud]

Well, after we build the space elevator, it will become pretty cheap to hurl all hazardous waste including nuclear one into the Sun.

Seriously, is there any flaw in this?

Re:The Real Threat

[Kamiza Ikioi]

Well, besides the fact that we can't build one just yet unless we could perfect carbon columns with infinitely greater precision than our "smart" organizations like NASA... I actually think you are on to something, except that you can reverse that.

I think such elevators will dramatically improve solar energy collection. Imagine building all solar panels on the sides of space elevators, high above any cloud cover or lower atmospheric interference.

We could theoretically even boost that by placing mirrors on the moon, that reflect to collection points at the tops of the elevators. (You wouldn't want to do that with earth based collectors... the mirrors go off by 1 degree, and you incinerate Chicago.)

Re:The Real Threat

[Kamiza Ikioi]

Well, I do see these middle ground solutions as having a place. Middle ground meaning between destroying the environment and absolutely no environmental impact.

IMHO, nuclear power could be a solution if there were a global grid. For instance, there is no reason for Iran to have a nuclear power plant if there is a US controlled (and heavily guarded) nuclear power plant placed far inside the Iraqi border. (I'm thinking very far into the future with a peaceful, US friendly Iraq.)

This power could be sold to Iran just by running lines to them. I'm sure many could argue that Iran would refuse to be dependant on the US for energy. Heh, that would be the epitomy of irony considering the current oil situation. But, it is a viable solution to at the least keep nuclear power plants in remote, secure, peaceful locations, and run the power out to distribution sites who can pass them on to less friendly countries.

I think a hydrogen combination would be great here. For places that are too remote to run lines (say, because of too much energy loss to resistance), we could run hydrogen gas lines, or truck in hydrogen.

Going to this solution, existing oil pipelines could be utilized, thus replacing a dirty fuel line with a clean one.

I think you're completely correct that hydrogen will be the energy storage/transfer medium for the next millenia (until we figure out how to find dilithum crystals). If someone can combine existing nuclear facilities with hydrogen output capabilities, we can increase its usage without increasing the danger.

Perhaps if Russia puts 20 nuclear plants in Siberia, where a meltdown would only thaw out the ground a bit, the Russians economy/government could grow as a global hydrogen supplier, and finally afford to protect their nuclear stockpiles from terrorists. I'm certainly not against any first/second world country developping a legitimate industry. I don't like how waste is handled. But, if you can at least eliminate 1 of the problems, it certainly could revolutionize how the world is powered.

Hydrogen, by the way, could be produced regardless of the actual energy source. If people could at least get to the nuclear/hydrogen solution, then as we develop cleaner technologies like solar, there is already an infrastructure ready to immediately use all advancements.

I would personally love to have a solar panel on my house that did nothing but fill containers of hydrogen for backup power for my house and/or fuel for a modified vehicle. Technology like that might actually allow people to live "off the grid", and thus, less prone to natural disasters that don't directly affect them. *cough*gas,electricity,Katrina*cough*

Re:harvesting oceans energy, winter

[Raumkraut]

> Tides/Waves are the same thing.

Not so. Tides are caused by gravity, waves by the wind.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_power
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_power

Re:harvesting oceans energy, winter

[free2]

1. I'm several states away from any ocean
Ever heard about energy transport through wires or pipelines ?
2. Tides/Waves are the same thing.
No. And wave energy harvesting does exist now.
3. Wind: Might be a good idea, but you still have the problem of calm days.
What about the many forms of energy storage that exist and that can also be improved?
4. algaes: WTH? Still requires sunlight
And so what ? Almost all renewable energy sources come directly or indirectly from the sun !
5. Hydrogen is very hard to store in bulk. You still loose more than 50% of the energy if you try to.
If you don't waste energy during the winter and if you store twice the amount you need during the summer, it works.
I'll take a nuclear reactor any day.
Like uranium will be here forever... and with absolutely no problem like radiaocative waste and accidents.

Water, Energy, and Portable Energy

[LifesABeach]

Fresh water? Electrical Energy? Throw in Fuel Cell fuel production and I think that many of us will say, "this is cool". What has me at odds with my self is that with China's Three River Project, and now this floating power station solution is that the folks on the other side of the planet are "Getting It" when it comes to creating a foundation for growth.

Too Funny

[Anonymous Coward]

You are all worried about a single nuclear reactor that is on water. This is probably news to you, but there are hundreds of sea based nuclear reactors: Nuclear powers Submarines and surface ships (aircraft carriers, etc).

Major dilution before hitting mainland Europe

[billstewart]

While the "Baltic Sea" does translate to "White Sea", this is a different "White Sea" - Here's a Map. It's east of Karelia, which is east of Finland and Norway, and it's south of Murmansk. So by the time any radioactive water gets to any part of Europe other than northern Russia (if that's still Europe) and the Finnmark area of northern Scandinavia, it's going to be far too diluted to make a difference. Not to say that that's a Good Thing, of course, but it's basically the Russians and Siberians who get hit with it.

And while the word "safety" isn't explicitly in the article, it does talk about preventing terrorist threats and airplane crashes, and about causing entirely no pollution when decommissioned (of course, the term "obviously bogus lie" isn't in there either....)

Also, there are designs that are susceptible to meltdowns, and there are designs that simply don't have that failure mode. That doesn't mean that they don't leak plutonium into the water or do other Bad Things, but those Bad Things don't include nuclear explosions or the China Syndrome (er, Argentina or Pitcairn or whatever syndrome in this case...)

Still Lying about Nuclear Waste, though

[billstewart]

They may be airplane-proof, but they're still claiming that the things won't cause any pollution when the reactor is decommissioned. That's bogus, unless they've got a definition of "pollution" that doesn't include either nuclear waste material sticking around, or nuclear waste generated in the preparation of the original fuel material. In either case, that means they're lying, which means there's reason to suspect they're lying about other things as well (perhaps not, but it means they're not trustable.)

Three Orders of Magnitude Wrong on Cost

[billstewart]

TFA said $200,000. The article you're quoting sounds like $200,000,000. The latter sounds *much* more believable, for a couple of reasons:

• $200K to provide electricity for a 200K-resident city is $1/person, capital cost, which is an astounding bargain and makes a figure of 5-6 cents/kwh seem highly unlikely. $200M would be $1000/person, and which would be $3/day to pay off in a year, or $10/month at some reasonable amortization, and even that's a bargain, but besides capital cost, there's fuel cost, operations, 10% for graft&corruption, etc.; it's within the range of reasonableness.
• $200K for an engineering job that takes 3-4 years to deploy is highly unlikely - that's the amount of money you'd spend on a very small software startup where the capital costs include a couple of PCs, a ping-pong table, and an espresso machine.
• $200K *might* be the cost of an engineering study for where you should locate the $200M nuclear reactor, assuming you've got Russian standards for Environmental Impact Reports and not US standards. Or it's the cost for some other up-front study work, or the cost of the electrical lines to link the floating station to the local power grid. It's not the cost of the nuclear reactor itself.
• A decade or so ago, they dropped three 0s off the ruble. Perhaps the article's author just got confused...

A few minor corrections

[dfenstrate]

Between the (relatively) low profit margins on the nuclear industry (it's heavily subsidized to stay afloat), the difficulty in maintaining hot core elements, and the extreme risks from part failures, it's not an easy task.

Mostly good information, but I wanted to clear up a few things, at least from the perspective of my nuke plant (Operates as a baseload unit in a de-regulated state).

1. We make tons of money, and we recieve no subsidies. Everytime we buy fuel, we pay into a fund that goes towards long-term fuel storage, and oftentimes we pay for the presence of the NRC often as well. The term 'baseload' refers to the fact that we make electricity cheaper than anyone else, so as grid demand falls, we're the last to reduce power output(in effect, we always operate at full power.)

2. Extreme risk from equipment failures- hardly. The entire plant is designed with the knowledge that parts fail, and there is plenty of redundancy in the system. Moreover, we monitor the integrity of all the systems, the state of all the pumps and the operability of all the valves on a routine basis. Things typically don't fail spontaneously and disasterously, and we initiate corrective action whenever we see performance declining.

In *perfect operation*, the entire nuclear cycle releases about as much radiation into the atmosphere (depends on the study - one study I saw showed as little as half as much) as coal power plants.

I don't know what happens to the fuel before it gets to the plant, but afterwards, we don't release any radioactive particles into the atmosphere.

Sure, there are places in the plant were there are radiation fields, but workers don't spend a lot of time in such areas, and it certainly doesn't get out to the public.

You probably already know, but think of a radiation source as a lightbulb. Stick your face in it and you'll see spots in your eyes for several minutes.

On the other hand, if you look at it during the night from 100 yards away, you'll hardly get any light in your retina.

Coal plants release radioactive particles into the air. Nuke plants emit radiation, but such radiation is stopped by concrete and water before it ever harms anyone.

Containment structures....While not invulnerable (a buildup of hydrogen gas, a liquid sodium/concrete detonation, etc)

Three mile island had numerous hydrogen explosions inside their containment building, and it held. Since my plant was built after three mile island, we have hydrogen recombiners in containment so that the h2 never reaches flammable levels. We also have a system designed to reduce pressure in containment from a massive steam leak, and to remove radioactive iodine from the building before it ever gets a chance to escape. Moreover, the building itself is insanely well built, and it has another, stronger building outside of it. The containment structure is designed, with a huge margin of safety, to withstand any conceivable accident from within.

The inner containment building is a pressure vessel, the outer containment building is a missile barrier designed to withstand airplane impacts. Knowing the construction of the buildings, I dare say they could withstand any calamity short of a bonafide enemy air force dropping bunker busters onto it.

As for liquid sodium- we don't have any in my plant.

The flaws and vulnerabilities of each power plant generation are corrected in the next, and many of the problems you mentioned have been corrected, or will be corrected in subsequent designs.

Anyway, thank you for the otherwise informative post. The above is just from the perspective of my plant, which is widely regarded as one of the safest, cleanest, well-run facilities in the industry. (WANO rating of 100, INPO 1. Use google)

Re:A few minor corrections

[Rei]

We make plenty of money, and receive no subsidies

Currently, the US provides the nuclear industry with about 7-8B$ in subsidies. Historically, we have subsidized insurance, USEC, reprocessing and/or storage (research and/or implementation; what goes on has changed greatly over time), decontamination of past incidents, general decommissioning (due to the huge fund shortfall, we've given a gigantic break in the taxes on the trust funds, and we still may end up having to pay for many plants), and of course new research. This compares very unfavorably to everyone's favorite punching bag, the ethanol subsidy, at ~600M$.

Extreme risk from equipment failures- hardly. The entire plant is designed with the knowledge that parts fail, and there is plenty of redundancy in the system.

Name the design of your plant, and I'll get you a list of serious incidents for that plant design. From browing around through various modern designs, it seems that about one in five plants in the US and Canada has had some sort of serious incident during its operational history, although I haven't done a statistical analysis and have looked at only a fraction of the potential dataset.

We monitor the integrity of the systems

Well, I would sure hope so!!! :)

Things don't fail spontaneously

Yes, they do. Again, name your plant design, and I'll show you where things failed spontaneously in it, either through human error in maintenance, undetected corrosion, etc.

Coal plants emit radioactive particles into the air

So does the nuclear fuel cycle. Not at the plants (in normal operation), mind you. Mining inherently releases dust from the operations, which blows away. Ore crushers and ball mills do as well, as they're not positive-pressure systems when loaded. Tailings from enrichment contain proportioanlly small, but still quite significant quantities of waste. Etc. Overall, it's a roughly even competitor with coal.

numerous hydrogen explosions inside their containment building

Three Mile Island had a large hydrogen bubble in the pressure vessel, but it did not explode (there was a serious worry that it would). Smaller amounts of hydrogen are considered a possibility for the 28 PSI spike in containment pressure at one point. The larger, later hydrogen buildup was the worry which was never realized. But yes, it all goes to emphasize how important containment structures are (and how safe they can make what would otherwise be a serious accident), and why one should be concerned about a plant model that doesn't have one. I have serious disagreements with the suggestions that PBMRs are disaster proof and thus don't need a containment structure.

And yes, I know how well containment structures are built ;) It's part of what raises the cost of building a new nuclear power plant, and why PBMR proponents want to do away with them.

As for liquid sodium - we don't have any in my plant

Well, you just ruled out the possibility that you're working in a liquid sodium breeder (I assume you're in the US anyways, so it wouldn't be an option present-day). Yet, they do exist in the world, and have come close to serious accident. MONJU in Japan lost 2/3 of a tonne of liquid sodium, which due to an unanticipated chemical reaction (high temperature sodium/sodium hydroxide-accelerated corrosion) ate partway through the steel plate covering the concrete. As you probably know, sodium reacts with the water in concrete to release hot hydrogen gas, which typically explodes immediately. 2/3 of a tonne of molten sodium reacting explosively would likely have ripped up more of the steel plate and created a larger sodium leak, causing a devastating chain reaction. The leak was caused by a tiny temperature sensor suddenly failing in one one of the pipes due to unexpected vibrational stress. I.e., something that "failed spontaneously", to use your phrase. ;)

By th

Re:A few minor corrections

[dfenstrate]

Westinghouse 3411 PWR now undergoing power uprate.

When I say things generally don't fail spontanously- I'm not sure if you're a nuke insider, and I'm not positive how it works at other plants, but I know how incredibly anal we are at preventive maintance and condition monitoring of plant equipment.

INPO also publishes what's known as Operating Experience, whereby the incidents you mention at various plants are learned from and methods of preventing the incident from recurring are reviewed or implemented. Sure, there have been incidents- Davis Besse is probably the best example of a near-catastrophic (in terms of plant operation and ability to recover, not health and safety of the public) oversight in recent history.

Calling Davis Besse an 'oversight' is a bit generous, I admit, but you can bet your ass that won't happen again at any US plant. A number of nuke plants have replaced (or are planning to replace) their vessel heads- while mine is perfectly fine, we have a spare on site anyway :P.

So anyway, my perspective is that of a 2 year power plant operator at a specific site. When I say nuclear power is safe, it's from the knowledge of all the depths we go to at my plant to make sure things work properly, the accidents we prepare for, the scenarios we drill, the threshold for condition reports and reporting equipment deficencies- we're very over designed and very cautious and critical of everything we do.

Anyway, looks like we're more or less on the same page. Thanks for the info.

Re:I Guess...

[dfenstrate]

nuclear power seems not to be justified economically

My nuke plant makes money hand over fist for the parent company, and we're in a deregulated market. You have no idea just how cheap uranium is for it's heat output.

  nuclear power produces some seriously polluting byproducts.

Sure, if we dumped it outside- but we don't. I know where all the waste from my plant is. Can a coal or oil plant say the same thing?

Fear of Nuclear Power

[MarkusQ]

But many people are deathly afraid of the idea with good reason:

True. And that reason is the fact that for years the Oil/Coal Industry funded FUD against nuclear power, till it got to the point that people belive the most outlandish things about it.

when nuke plants fail they fail really, really badly.

No, when they fail they fail democratically. They don't just kill coal miners or the poor, the kill kill everybody equally. But that isn't really a concern because:

And the people who are telling us they're safe now told us the same things when they built the first generation of nuke plants.

Well, not exactly the same people; most of the originals have retired by now. But in any case, they were right to tell us that, because it's true. Per mega-watt-hour, nuclear is much safer that coal and/or oil. I know the hype says otherwise, but that's largely because:

• Coal & Oil kill a large number of people scattered around through time and space, while nuclear (in theory) kills people in dramatic events (cf auto safety vs. comercial air travel).
• Nuclear wastes are visible solids while (most) the waste from carbon-based fuels are invisible gasses
• The waste "issue" has become so political that simple, technically sound answers aren't even considered.
• People just don't think things through; for example, a typical coal fired plant releases far mor radioactivity than a nuclear plant would be allowed to.

So what I'm saying is: I'm willing to be convinced, but it'll take a lot of work.

So get busy. It won't be as much work as you think; the key is to focus on alternatives and not on absolutes. Don't say just "what are we going to do with nuclear waste" but rather "how could we handle the wastes from generating X-megawatt/hours using a) coal, b) oil, c) nuclear, d) solar...?" Don't just worry about where we will burry things when we are done with them, but ask yourself where they would be if we never dug them up in the first place.

Pretty much across the board, nuclear or space-based solar would be cheaper, cleaner, safer (both politically and technically), better for the environment, last longer and be easier to scale as our needs grow.

--MarkusQ

Related Story...

[KnarfO]

In a related story, a start-up middle eastern company ADI-AQLA has contracted to operate several of these power plants to service major US costal cities. Noting the need for logistical proximity, each craft will be docked in ports of the cities where they will be providing power.

Representatives from ADI-AQLA said they hoped to have all the ships in place before Ramadan.

CA Governor Schwarzenegger was quoted as saying: "Let's see those pansy power companies try to screw us over now!"

In a related story...

[jtgd]

...the U.S. has started development of a special underwater remote-controlled submarine for the rescue of sunken nuclear reactors.

Re:harvesting oceans energy, winter

[Retric]

FYI there basicly an unlimited supply of Uranium. (100,000+ years easy)

Current systems use ~1% of the energy it is possible to extract from uranium. Uranium ends up costing about 5% of a power plants operating budget and we don't even use 99% of it's energy. With a little reprocessing you can use well over 90% of the avalible energy to supply all of the worlds energy needs for 100's of years with what is already out of the ground. And by extracting uranium from the worlds oceans we can meet all the worlds energy needs using LESS than the amount of uranium added each year from erosion.

Using reprocessing we will create create less radiation per kilowatt than from coal power plants and the highly condensed nature of the waste significantly increase the ease of storage. While people "fear" nukes it's not significantly easer to build a bomb from a power plant than it is to create a bomb from sea watter. As for a terrorist threat extracting fuel from an operating power plant is extremely difficulty due to the insane levels of radioactivity and highly toxic nature of the reactor. As to using a "dirty" bomb from spent fuel that is possible, but the average pool supply store keeps everything you need for a far more deadly bomb with little to no security.