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A $200-Million Floating Nuclear Plant?
Roland Piquepaille writes "In 'A Floating Chernobyl?,' Popular Science reports that two Russian companies plan to build the world's first floating nuclear power plant to deliver cheap electricity to northern territories. The construction should start next year for a deployment in 2010. The huge barge will be home for two 60-megawatt nuclear reactors which will work until 2050... if everything works fine. It looks like a frightening idea, don't you think? But read more for additional details and pictures of this floating nuclear power plant."
Where else could you get an unlimited supply of coolant?
Hell, if this goes pear shaped, you could drop the core miles beneath the sea never to be seen again.
liqbase
Nuclear power isn't necessarily scarier than coal or oil fired furnaces doing the same thing. The critical issues of radioactivity have largely been fixed. Pebble Bed Reactors and other self monitoring technologies also don't produce waste product like other types of reactor.
--- Location Unknown
Maybe pirating can be a reborn and profitable proffesion again? yarr?
Nuclear disasters on ships waiting to happen are nothing new in that area of the world. Russia still maintains a policy of keeping nuclear waste onboard container ships in the Arctic Sea:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5391586.stm
No.
Both the US and Russian Navy have plenty of reactors online - and many of them power ships of some kind which float in water.
And here's the kicker - they're online - right now!
Oh nosies! Call Greenpeace!
The US and Russian Navies have been doing this for 50 years! This is the first commercial venture to do it, but the military has done it safely and effectively. The US Navy has over 5500 reactor years of operations without a nulcear accident. Also, this is not the first time that power from these reactors has been put into the power grid. Any US Navy vessel that is in port and connected to shore power (which they almost always do in port) can and have provided electricity to the grid if needed. This was done in charleston after a huricane.
GENERATION 27: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Millitary ships have had Nuclear powerplants for years this isn't exactly new other then being bigger.
Don't submarines, aircraft carriers, and navy ships in general fit this description already?
Smaller scale I imagine but nonetheless...
Give them the illusion of choice and they will blindly follow for they choose not to make one.
Whether this particular reactor is safe or not is another question, of course.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Don't we already have these? Nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers have been around for a while. The only difference here is they run a cable to the mainland to supply power, again nothing new.
I hope these aren't any northen countries near my country. Normal nuc. power plants are ok. But you don't want anything like that floating really... :/
Were there not enough oil leaks in recent years from transport ships, to show, that at currect tech level YOU SHOULD NOT UNDERESTIMATE WATER!? (or anything that is in it and can hit your ship hard enough...)
With any other thing I would say - go on - kill yourself. But now thay don't kill themselves only
What do you call nuclear aircraft carriers and nuclear subs? This is just another varient with another purpose. I'd be more worried about all their aging and underfunded nuclear naval vessels than a new nuclear power-plant.
two Russian companies plan to build the world's first floating nuclear power plant
Um, far from the first. See Nuclear Navy .
That the US already has several floating nuclear power plants and alot of submerged ones which all seem to function perfectly fine. I am refering to Aircraft Carriers and Nuclear Submarines. There is nothing wrong with a floating nuclear power plant as long as it is well maintained and stationed in a calm area so it is not damaged by bad weather. Obviously the writers of the article prefer to fear monger then look at the facts though.
"To face death, that's nothing much. But to feel really stupid when you die, well, that would be insufferable."
Maybe it the first floating nuclear reactor to power something besides a ship but there are plenty of floating nuclear reactors. Check out http://www.enterprise.navy.mil/ - "The worlds finest nuclear powered aircraft carrier"
Not nearly as freightening as the reactors and fuel they provide for Iran.
an ill wind that blows no good
All US aircraft carriers since the USS Enterprise have had dual nuclear reactors. Granted, they have a great deal of weapons and other ships to keep them safe, but the idea of putting a nuclear reactor on water isn't really new. Sure, there are dangers, but there are dangers with ground-based nuclear reactors as well. It's just a matter of finding acceptable measures for preventing those dangers.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
Will it ever be possible to have a rational discussion about energy production?
I'm also confused as to why a land-based power supply is needed at all - isn't the plant producing more energy than it's taking? Why does it need any other power source?
One arm for a cutlas, one to hold onto the rigging, one for the telescope, and one for me bottle of rum.
It's not as if the navies of the world's superpowers haven't been building sea-worthy nuclear reactors for oh, I don't know, the last 50 years. To prevent nuclear disasters in the event that the ships carrying them are sunk, the reactors are specced so that they are able to withstand high pressures at the bottom of the ocean. I'm guessing that these reactors, apart from their novel location, won't be any more (or less) dangerous than their land based brethren. The only thing I'd be worried about is the standard of Russian nuclear engineering, and frankly, I'm not willing to extrapolate on its qualty from a one datapoint obtained from a single-- admittedly serious-- disaster. (Note: IANANE... I'd love to see some nuclear engineers weigh in).
Environmentalists, if they are objecting to this, should stop and take a good look at how hypocritical their position is. On one hand, they demand that economies cut reliance on fossil fuels, and on the other hand, they malign the only clean alternative that is available now. They can't have it both ways. Choose one or the other. And if you can't choose, shut the fsck up.
We call these 'aircraft carriers' and 'submarines', and guard them with a whole squadron of aircraft :)
Is land really at that big of a premium in Russia?
I'm for a floating Nuclear reactor. It's harder to hit a moving target. Well...as long as the current position isn't posted online.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
Why is it scary?
.. not worry about whether the kids are going to burn themselves (or throw a baseball through) the solar array..
.. lets build some nuclear power plants. Use the efficient safe designs (pebble bed) and .. OHMYGOSH .. recycle the fuel. Heck, even on Slashdot they posted a story about a new tech that might make the waste that much LESS radioactive..
With all the liberal imperialist environmental communists out there screaming because
1. Coal is a non-renewable energy source.
2. Oil is a non-renewable energy source.
3. Natural gas is a non-renewable energy souce.
4. Wave power is too ugly to be built (too lazy to Google for it but Kennedy / Kerry vetoed the idea because it was too close to THEIR vacataion home).
5. Water flow (river) is too unpredictable (and causes environmental damage when you flood blah blah blah).
6. Wind power is too noisy and it kills birdies.
What the hell else do we have?
Solar? Right. Who wants a backyard full of panels? Some people like to BAR-B-QUE in their back yards
I say
= Grow a brain...
... when they see the "Made In North Korea" sticker on these reactors.
A floating Chernobyl is unlikely.
Although these articles don't specify, it's likely the floating NPP (Nuclear Power Plant) will be based on the VVER design (which is inheriantly a lot more stable) as opposed to the RBMK that Chernobyl used. The RBMK design had a nasty design flaw, which the world became aware of in 1986.
That being said, the RBMK design has been made much safer since the Soviet era, with many remaining reactors being decommissioned soon anyway. So yeah, apparently TFA's author didn't do their homework.
Windows has detected an undetectable error.
Maybe I'm overlooking something here, but what good does putting the reactor offshore do?
Quite the contrary (unless by "none" you meant "scores".) Among the accidents that have been made public:
1954
A sodium-cooled reactor utilized aboard the USS Seawolf, the U.S.'s second nuclear submarine, was scuttled in 9,000 feet of water off the Delawre/Maryland coast. The reactor was plagued by persistent leaks in its steam system (caused by the corrosive nature of the sodium) and was later replaced with a more conventional model. The reactor is estimated to have contained 33,000 curies of radioactivity and is likely the largest single radioactive object ever dumped deliberately into the ocean. Subsequent attempts to locate the reactor proved to be futile.
October 1959
One man was killed and another three were seriously burned in the explosion and fire of a prototype reactor for the USS Triton at the Navy's training center in West Milton, New York. The Navy stated, "The explosion...was completely unrelated to the reactor or any of its principal auxiliary systems," but sources familiar with the operation claim that the high-pressure air flask which exploded was utilized to operate a critical back-up system in the event of a reactor emergency.
1961
The USS Theodore Roosvelt was contaminated when radioactive waste from its demineralization system, blew back onton the ship after an attempt to dispose of the material at sea. This happened on other occasions as well with other ships (for example, the USS Guardfish in 1975).
10 April 1963
The nuclear submarine Thresher imploded during a test dive east of Boston, killing all 129 men aboard.
1968
Radioactive coolant water may have been released by the USS Swordfish, which was moored at the time in Sasebo Harbor in Japan. According to one source, the incident was alleged by activists but a nearby Japanese government vessel failed to detect any such radiation leak. The purported incident was protested bitterly by the Japanese, with Premier Eisaku Sate warning that U.S. nuclear ships would no longer be allowed to call at Japanese ports unless their safety could be guaranteed.
21 May 1968
The U.S.S. Scorpion, a nuclear-powered attack submarine carrying two Mark 45 ASTOR torpedoes with nuclear warheads, sank mysteriously on this day. It was eventually photographed lying on the bottom of the ocean, where all ninety-nine of its crew were lost. Details of the accident remained classified until November 1993, when Navy reports revealed that the cause of the sinking was an accidental detonation of the conventional explosives in one of Scorpion's warheads.
14 January 1969
A series of explosions aboard the nuclear aircraft carrier Enterprise left 17 dead and 85 injured.
16 May 1969
The U.S.S. Guitarro, a $50 million nuclear submarine undergoing final fitting in San Francisco Bay, sank to the bottom as water poured into a forward compartment. A House Armed Services subcommittee later found the Navy guilty of "inexcusable carelessness" in connection with the event.
12 December 1971
Five hundred gallons of radioactive coolant water spilled into the Thames River near New London, Connecticut as it was being transferred from the submarine Dace to the sub tender Fulton.
October-November 1975
The USS Proteus, a disabled submarine tender, discharged significant amounts of radioactive coolant water into Guam's Apra Harbor. A geiger counter check of the harbor water near two public beaches measured 100 millirems/hour, fifty times the allowable dose.
22 May 1978
Up to 500 gallons of radioactive water was released when a valve was mistakenly opened aboard the USS Puffer near Puget Sound in Washington.
I'm tired of looking these up. There are actually several accidents per year, a major one every few years, and we are told about few of these. At least do the tiniest amount of research before you post.
- A former NUPOC.
With the natural (or unnatural, doesn't really matter) ebb and flow of the climate, it might get pretty damn easy to get to the north pole without an icebreaker soon.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
As the whole floating nuclear reactor "done before " is well covered above i will raise one concern i have about this...$200 million, maybe it's me but is that not like...very cheap? Having visions of "Safety measures? Bahh those cost to much, if something goes wrong we can just sink it"
Anything nuclear will create waste, you are mistake. Pebble Bed reactors are designed to prevent catastrophic reactions, but these are still possible. A containment leak would allow the atmosphere within the reactor to reach temperatures high enough to melt the graphite moderating cuticle. Pebble bed reactors are not realistic in an age of terrorism, they produce more waste and the mechanised fuel handling is more likely to result in disaster (see Hamm-Uentrop, West Germany). Never mind the logistics of TRACKING each and every pebble from its birth to final resting place in yucca mountain (which is near a fault line). The problem of nuclear energy and its waste has not been solved. As long as waste remains on the planet, it is a threat. I have absolutely NO IDEA how anyone could claim that the problem of nuclear waste is no longer a problem. I think the only explanation is the radiation from too much time spent within the leaky storage facilities at hanford or eating potatoes growing near Chernobyl has gotten to you. Look no further than the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Eastern Washington (US). Our Federal government has done a good job of keeping this disaster under wraps for the most part. This is because the administration would like you to believe nuclear energy is safe, so that they can gain public support for the reintroduction of the technology to our energy production matrix.
I live in California. There are probably more than a dozen nuclear reactors floating in the bays of San Diego and up and down the coast here at any given time. How is this going to be different, other than that it is Russian made instead of US made? I realize, Russians don't put as much care into industrial safety as we do... but there are already Russian nuclear subs and aircraft carriers and whatever floating around. They aren't making Chernobyl-style (positive void coefficient) reactors anymore.
Both the US and Russian Navy have plenty of reactors online
Naval reactors have a different design than civilian power reactors. They are smaller and require less frequent refueling events because they burn enriched Uranium and produce less average power. The safety record of US naval reactors is good primarily due to a high degree of training and discipline, and design uniformity over long periods. The Soviet navy experienced a number of serious failures.
A floating civilian reactor will probably not burn enriched Uranium, resulting is a much larger core that must be refueled frequently. That it's mounted on a barge will probably mean it has less containment than a traditional civilian power reactor. It will probably not enjoy the same level of discipline of operation.
I don't think one can extrapolate naval reactor safety to these large floating civilian reactors. Apples and oranges.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
This is from Popular Science, a magazine that treats anything new and not seen on The Jetsons as sinister (a scan of the other articles in the same issue reveals their foil hat view of science and technology).
What's frightening is that anyone on /. reads Pop Sci. Somebody get him a subscription to 2600.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
And bring down oil profits some more? I thought that the cuurent administration were all "big oil" types that wanted us paying $3.00+ per gallon to line their own pockets.
Be careful of your rhetoric. It could bite you in the ass.
The wave power project you refer to was a wind power project, and Kennedy killed it, not Kennedy and Kerry.
Solar doesn't require your entire backyard. Well, if you have a house. If you have a house, it'll take a portion of your roof. If you are in an apartment, stacked up 30 floors high, well, it won't cut it.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Not as long as we have Roland Piquepaille trolling for clicks, apparently.
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
60% of these are non-nuclear, and some didn't even occur on ships.
You might save yourself some trouble if you only looked up relevant info.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Your response is short sighted. The oil industry recognizes that with the rise of China and India, it must diversify. Our administration does favor the development of new nuclear facilities. My region of the country does not burn oil to generate electricity. Your understanding of the supply chain is...rhetoric.
You'd be a lot more convincing if you actually stopped and took a breath every now and then.
From a military perspective, having centralized electrical utilities makes absolutely no sense. Reactors have a big bullseye painted on them. The future is modular, easily deployed generation that can power a single home or a neighborhood. These support a manufacturing base (that translates directly to more jobs) and cap consumer expenditures. When the device has been paid for, they continue to benefit at little or no cost.
... in contrast to preaching to the choir. How does the submitter think that the el-cheapo scare tactics are going to work with Slashdot readers, some of which are no doubt nuclear engineers?
But, to the point. In commercial reactors, water is used as a radiation shield. Floating a plant in radiation shield would be a sensible idea. In fact, if a meltdown was imminent, they could dump the reactor to the ocean, saving countless lives and preventing the widespread contamination like in a reactor on land. Furthermore, placing the plant far into the arctic territory, away from large population centers is also a good idea. Particularly with nuclear security inherited from the Soviets.
The US abandoned a simlar plan for a nuclear plant off the coast of New Jersey called the "Atlantic Generating Station."
r es/140e_atlantic_generating_station.pdf
http://s159443129.onlinehome.us/pdf/ocean_structu
It wouldn't float but it would be offshore.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
The USS Enterprise has 8 A2W reactors (210 MW) and Nimitz class aircraft carriers have 2 A4W reactors (194MW). So yeah, 2x60W reactors can power much less than a nuclear aircraft carrier.
Unless there's a hot spot, I am not aware that the US contains any fault other than San Andreas.
You can track each and every pebble; count them at the start, count them at the end, and if there's any missing, front page headlines. What can you do with one pebble? Throw it at someone and hope they have a higher incidence of cancer? Crush it and spray it over New York, hoping that 10 more people die of cancer, and maybe some immune-suppressed peopple become uncomfortable?
Ninjas and pirates. How piquant.
Why is it the first image I saw was a nuclear reactor floating in the air? that would be far cooler but I guess a boat makes more sense :(
The US Nimitz class Aircraft carriers each carry a single 194MWatt nuclear reactor. The USS Enterprise has a total of eight nuclear reactors onboard. All but two US carriers - and absolutely all US military submarines are nuclear powered. Even ships as small as cruisers have been nuclear powered in the past.
French Rubis class submarines each have a 48 MW reactor.
Russian Typhoon class submarines carry two 190MWatt reactors.
Russian Arktika class ice breakers carry two reactors of 171MWatts each. The Taimyr class have 135MWatt reactors. There are a total of ten Russian civilian nuclear ice breakers in active service.
So a couple of measley 60MWatt reactors on a barge somewhere isn't really the huge news you might think.
Having reactors on a barge that's moored someplace has gotta be safer than having them than crashing off through icebergs or sitting off the coast of countries full of terrorists who would love nothing better than to drive a boatload of explosives into them - or yet putting them on submarines whose safety record doesn't really look so great.
It's been suggested that the two reactors they are using on this barge came from decomissioned Russian submarines anyway...so we're probably better off having them used for peaceful purposes and being moored someplace where we know exactly where they are!
www.sjbaker.org
Except for Chernobyl there has been few nuclear accidents that impacted much of civilian/non-technicians lifes. And Chernobyl was basically the same Americans did to Hiroshima and Nagasaki in WWII, a test in a place where lives were expendable without knowing the results. The rest of the accidents was usually contained to the site and sometimes a few technicians working at the plant. I think coal- or gas-explosions for the sake of generating power have requested multitudes of life not to mention the long-time results of exposure of the exhausts of coalplants to people living nearby and people working at the facilities.
Most nuclear accidents can be led to negligence or mistake by the operator and are usually contained to a meltdown and a complete controlled shutdown of the site follows which could lead to major power outages but I don't think we will have to go through another Chernobyl especially with all the fail-safes and controls.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Are you aware that spent fuel rods have gone missing and this hasn't made front page headlines? It's not about losing one pebble, it's about an entire reactor (or in the vision of our administration; a work site reactor) being stolen or sabotaged. The United states has thousands of fault lines. I live directly on top of one. San Andreas just happens to be very active.
Uh, that's ...nukular facilities.
Don't be fooled by imitations.
Building and maintaining a reactor (or anything else) on a barge has got to cost far more than doing it on land. Assuming this project is viable, that extra cost must be balanced out by some advantages.
So this project provides an interesting perspective on what NIMBY costs our society. And as we get more environmentally aware, the cost of NIMBY is only going to increase - will we end up with our coastlines studded with power stations, sewerage works, factories, prisons, and mental hospitals?
Do as you would be done to.
I for one welcome...
It was a production facility for weapons grade plutonium. Power plants do not generate anything like what was made at Hanford.
Plus, you would imagine that a few things have been learned in the 60 years since Hanford was built.
Why can't the russians just build a 20.25 square foot solar site? It will still generate 200 Megawatts of power. That can power alot of households in Russia.
Google Solar Mission
\
The difference here is that the existing ship/sub reactors are self contained units that are manufactured at a site, sealed and deployed, then used for a fixed period before removal and decommissioning at a site again. Note that the majority and most common contamination scenarios happen not while deployed but at the manufacturing/decommissioning sites.
Having a fully functional nuclear power plant is a very different thing to having a sealed deployed reactor. The other factor is duration of use, the deployment is for a limited time, which is shorter than when most of the maintenance issues start to arise.
The majority of contamination occurs not from the main running process of the reactor (think Three Mile Island, Chernobyl), but rather all the other related process required for ongoing support of the reactor.
Another reason why this is a bad idea is the difficulty of contamination containment, however maybe this is the actual desired effect. No cleanup costs since it all gets washed away...
GPLv2: I want my rights, I want my phone call! DRM: What use is a phone call, if you are unable to speak?
No, it is not possible to have a rational discussion about energy production. Only wackos fail to believe in the first law of thermodynamics. 'Electricity Production,' maybe?
We're talking about TWO full scale reactors on a barge.
No, we're talking two relatively small reactors on a barge. Typical nuclear power reactors for feeding the electrical grid are in the 600 to 1000 megawatt range, not 60 MW, and most facilities have more than one (the Pickering and Darlington facilities near Toronto have 8 650 MW and 4 850 MW reactors respectively).
The reactors aboard an aircraft carrier do more than just run the lights, they can push the whole thing at speeds in excess of 40 knots (how much in excess isn't exactly talked about -- but even that is more than fast enough to water ski behind!). Ditto for nuclear subs -- plus they provide air and water for the crew (hydrolysis and reverse osmosis).
Modern nuclear submarines typically use reactors up to 200 MW, the French Rubis-class subs use a 48 MW reactor, Russia's Oskar-II class uses 2 190 MW reactors. Surface ships like aircraft carriers or the Kirov-class battle cruiser use two reactors each up to 300 MW each.
-- Alastair
It's not as if there haven't been quite a lot of nuclear disasters for oh, I don't know, the last 50 years. As a result of accidents, both the American and Russian navies have left ship-based nuclear reactor cores AND nuclear bombs at the bottom of the ocean, all of which will take millions of years to half-life out, some of which are still emitting enough to be detectable near the surface, one of which was recently documented to be producing mutated life forms.
The list of military nuclear accidents is long and a bit frightening, not to mention these related lists of nuclear accidents.
Nuclear power is a boffo idea, on paper, and is not without the well-known risks. Nuclear proponents would be hypocritical to state otherwise.
O lord, bless this thy holy hand grenade, that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.
I do think that your sig is ironic considering the topic. In spite of that, overall I do think that this is a good idea. But the problem that I have with it is that it could become an easy target. Perhaps concrete walls, etc to protect.
It strikes me that it would have to have special conditions for it. But in particular, Alaska, Canada, and even within the great lakes would be great places for this.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Nuclear plants provide a large chunk of the worlds power (especially in Europe), and even accounting for the Chernobyl disaster have accounted for less environmental damage than convetional coal fired plants. Throwing the word "Chernobyl" into the title is nothing more than a beat-up.
Umm, the CARRIERS have 2 reactors, each of which can supply enough megawatts to cities of around 20,000 people, even back in the 70's. Maybe they can provide juice to more nowadays. (CVAN-65/CVN-65 Enterprise has **8**, but probaly only 4 to 6 at any time are up and running with maybe 2 on hot-standby and the other to in some other unpublished state of readiness due to the sheere expense of recoring the -65.)
1,000 people in the crew? Try some 3,800 crew and 2,200-2,800 in the air wing, plus the Marines detachment and any "riders" (CIA types, spooks, foreign observers, etc...) and you're talking about 6,000 people.
Even the SSN (fast attack and boomers/nuke missile) boats could provide power to tens of thousands if the right shore hookups are provided for on the pier.
However, this probably isn't an ideal situation as shipboard power reactors are meant to deliver power QUIETLY in a small space, and this imposes limitations on power output and other things land-based reactor operators might not be burdened with. There are very real limitations, other than their being military-grade reactors with any number of issues such as security, secrecy, and more. Otherwise, the dozens from the Thresher/Scorpion class, Tullibe, Skipjack, LA and some of the Ohio boats could have been floated and used for power. However, the oil industry would have balked and probably would have funded the eco-guardians.
Then, the eco-guardians would whip out all the studies indicating that disrupted and elevated thermal gradients have been and would continue to ruin fish spawning sites, kill off plankton, algae, seaweed and other aquatic life along the coastlines (if the plants are submerged and tethered). And on and on and on....
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Do symptoms include an ashen white face with black marks around the eyes as shown in this photograph?
---- "XML is like violence. If it doesn't fix the problem, you aren't using enough."
popsci.com's article's headline makes a reference to Chernobyl. Other than that, I don't get it. Where's the scary part? Is it because we're reading in Oktober? wooooooh! Helloween!
I'm not really a solar advocate but I'll point out where it looks like you've been mislead here. Photovoltaics have a lot of good uses, but they are also the cheap, lazy way for a power company to put one small panel on a stick and tell everyone that they are green. If you put in two panels you get double to output - increase the area by a hundred times and you only get on hundred times the output. If you take that same area and have some sort of solar thermal arrangement you can get a lot more than one hundred times the output - thermal power plants scale up and they don't care where the heat comes from. It's hard to get high temperatures and pressures from solar but you can still do things with the low pressure steam. Capital costs are high and running costs are low - but it's still an immature technology and a risk (like nuclear - but bad nuclear designs were built anyway for self reliance in case of blockade, weapons production and the peaceful side of the bomb even though the technology is immature).
Also - anyone pushing "one true energy" is selling something or has been deluded by salesfolk. Each form of energy has advantages and disadvantages but with modern control systems a mixture of energy sources can be balanced over the day - loads vary widely as it is and systems are in place to cope with units unexpectedly going offline as it is - so for example getting tidal power at a known time and burning less fuel is a problem that was solved in France fifty years ago.
Unfortunately that is still not very easy - perhaps some more effort into R&D instead of paying for junk science pretending coal ash is nuclear waste too would help. There are already impressive results along those lines from a research group in India. As for other designs - want some plutonium produced for your countries weapon program? CANDU! Very popular in developing nations.
I dont understand why so many are still afraid of nuclear power. Even with nuclear waste thrown into the equation its still much cleaner than most other forms of energy production with the exception of hydro. Solar and Wind power just arent economically or physically feasable on scales as large as nuclear and it can be done in places were hydroelectric cant work. Safety is pretty rock solid now and you cant beat the reliability or cost.
I have a friend who is the poster child for Hippie Stoners, he is vegan and is against logging, offshore drilling, anti industry. If you so much as mention nuclear he goes into his own meltdown. You would think nuclear power would be the perfect answer to envioromentalists but more often then not I get the impression that many wont be happy until everyone is back living in caves and painting on rocks.
This IS tyhe first floating nuclear power plant. existing ship-board plants don't count, because they are intended to power only the vessel they are mounted on. The purpose of this barge is not to power itself, but to power a large area. it is a regional power plant, as compared to a small-scale reactor for a single ship.
> After 40 years, the normal life span for a nuclear plant, the decommissioned plant would be towed away and replaced with a new one.
Err yeah. I'm sure the power company will be fine with paying millions to dispose of the highly radioactive shell properly, instead of, say, polluting the oceans by going for a little trip somewhere quiet and sinking it when no-one is looking.
First, radioactive waste has been on the planet far longer than man.
Second, the exclusion zone around Chernobyl is actually flourishing; the radioactivity there is actually about a third of what it is in Denver. Besides, the type of reactor used in Chernobyl was designed by a fool. No sane person would use a graphite moderated reactor today. The danger is far too great.
My main point is that risk is an essential part of civilization. In order to continue our way of life, which I believe is better than any that has existed previously, we must take some risks. Nuclear power generation is one of the lesser risks that we face in that ordeal. So safe are nuclear power plants today that I would volunteer to live next to one.
How many steam boilers exploded in coal plants in the 19th century? How many people died in train accidents during the early days of railroads? Safety improves with time, and it's really not fair to condemn the entire concept of nuclear power generation based on a few mistakes made in its very early years.
Of course the administration wants to encourage support for nuclear power. Any person who rationally looks at the alternatives (not to say this administration is rational) will do the same. It's the best way to wean us off of fossil fuels in general, and from dependence on unstable middle eastern countries in particular.
We are led to think that we can safely and cleanly handle NUCLEAR waste but we are not smart enough to cleanly handle COAL.
It is far easier to properly process the waste from coal than it is nuclear waste. We have plenty of coal. Coal does not have massive setup, overhead costs, security concerns, etc.
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I disagree that nuclear power is a necessary risk or evil.
o nable+in+Britain/2100-11392_3-6124730.html
We have alternative energy technologies that in the long run cost less to construct and maintain while offering a higher ROI or return on investment. Putting all of our eggs in one basket probably isn't the best idea, so I feel strongly that diversification of energy technologies is necessary. Does that make me irrational? I don't think this debate needs to involve calling one side rational and the other something less than. What I will say is that nuclear energy is short sighted. Until we are capable of managing and securing the waste present globally and domestically, we should not be producing more. If we take the cost of waste and mismanagement into account, nuclear energy has been incredibly costly, in some respects the ability to measure its economic impact isn't even possible.
Mistakes haven't just occured in the technology's early years. From a purely economic perspective, I don't see this tech as a sound or green investment. The risks are far too great and history has shown us that it is not profitable. In addition the question remains: who is going to profit from the coming wave of non-nuclear sustainable energy infrastructure. The US has not lost its opportunity to reignite its industrial base providing these services and equipment globally, but Europe will soon outpace us.
If we want to ween ourselves from fossil fuels, we can do it with sources that are proving themselves in Europe today.
http://news.com.com/Home+wind+turbines+turn+fashi
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/3719868.stm
http://www.nrel.gov/
Go to the moon ASAP:
Done.
Go to mars:
Working on it and spending plenty of money.
Find clean cheap power:
We'll do that tomorrow... for now lets subsidize existing stuff.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I think it's an awesome Idea, using the plentiful water as coolant. But I hope they thought about clogged, and buildup, such as barnacle.. (VERY small eggs) LOL... BOOM..... because of such *little* critters.
Chernobyl was a test? There were four reactors in operation (#4 was the one that exploded), and two more were being built. What kind of "test" involves six high-powered reactors? SL-1 was a test, but Chernobyl was not.
If you want something that you can be irrationally afraid of try this frightening idea on for size: A single nuclear submarine carries over 150 nuclear warheads. Each one a possible nuclear dissaster! Run for the hills! They even have nuclear reactors to power them! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!
If you are going to run around like an idiot yelling about how scary nuclear power is you should pick your targets more carefully. This is downright mundane by comparison. The US has kept a fleet of nuclear powered vessels in service for decades!
Jeeze. Even the author of the submission isn't beyond his own nuke FUD.
It looks like a frightening idea.....
Congratulations! You have passed your "Nuclear means bad" indoctrination!
Yes, badly managed, a nuclear plant is dangerous as hell.
A properly running modern nuclear plant is orders of magnitude safer and has less impact on the environment (including radiologically) than a coal burning plant.
But hey, don't let the voice of reason stop you from running around screaming "NUKES! OH NOES!"
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Didn't see a post commenting about this (maybe i'm just mistaken perhaps).
... except many anti-nuclear groups fight tooth-and-nail against anything to do with nuclear *anything*. Even recycling ... since it potentially creates more nuclear fuel. If everyone would carefully examine their nuke-fear ... they'd realise how silly they are. More people die in a year (hell, probably a month) due to cancer or aids or several other reasons than have died in the history of mankind to nuclear power/weapons/waste/radioactivity.
Civilian/commercial reactors are designed not only to avoid meltdowns but to make it impossible to achieve critical mass. They use low % enriched fuel and, usually, aren't breeders. They swap out fuel regularly and are actually fairly inefficient with regards to their power density.
MILATARY reactors however use a much higher % of enriched fuel. They have a MUCH higher power density. (look at the size of a nuclear plant vs an entire sub). Not sure if mil reactors are breeders, but they're clearly not meant to have partial fuel swaps on a regular basis. As a result of this, milatary reactors DO have the ability to reach critical mass in worst-case situations. While you're not likely to actually get a nuclear explosion you DO have a much greater ability for a horrible melt-down, worst-case, etc. etc. etc.
Civilian/commercial reactors are incredibly safe overall. IMHO we should be building them as fast as we can. Even greenpeace has switched it's opinion! Nuclear waste is recyclable
No. As you can see in these crash test videos, the containers used to transport nuclear waste can be broadsided by a 120-ton locomotive traveling at 80 miles per hour and come out of it with only cosmetic damage. Unfortumately, all the fud about accidents & terrorism on trucks or trains carrying nuclear waste tends to appeal more to peoples fearful hearts than the facts do to peoples rational minds. That makes me a sad pro-nuclear panda.
The USS Sturgis, stationed at the Panama Canal. The Department of Energy describes the Sturgis as follows: STURGIS Floating Nuclear Power Plant; Designation MH-1A, Location: Gatun Lake, Canal Zone; Principal nuclear contractor: Martin; Pressurized water reactor, Capacity: 10,000 net kW(e), Authorized 45,000 kW(t), Initial criticality, 1967; Shutdown (permanently), 1976. The vessel provided power to the Canal Zone. It was the first floating nuclear power plant and, for nearly three decades, appeared to be the last. In 2008, the Russians plan to bring on line the next floating nuclear power plant.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
But you're looking at 200 million for the nuclear reactors on a barge. The estimated cost on a Nimitz class ACC is 4.5 billion. So for the cost of one of the listed aircraft carriers, you're getting 2,700 MW of power, rather than 200.
Of course, an aircraft carrier does a heck of a lot more than just generate power. But for the job of just generating power, I'd take a few of these.
The ______ Agenda
Yes, I'd worry more about North Korea. Iran seems to be taking steps towards modernising and improving for their citizens. While many reasons might exist to dispute their claims that their nuclear facilities are energy-only, we can hardly say that N. Korea has much likelyhood of wanting nuclear facilities for humanitarian or power-producing reasons.
One (or perhaps two of these) locomotives were moved into a large Quebec town (I forget which town) not long after the great ice storm of 1998, and helped light up the town for 2 or 3 weeks, until Hydro-Quebec managed to restore power.
.
- aqk
F U
It may well be possible to safely contain the wastes from coal-fired power, but to claim that it will necessarily be easier than nuclear is more than slightly presumptuous.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
We can't convert all our power production to solar and wind, we're using far too much power for that. I'd say nuclear is a decent interim solution until fusion arrives, I'd rather have to deal with a cave full of radioactive crap than a worldwide changed climate so I'd prefer if they shut down the fossil fuel based plants before the nuke plants, unfortunately there's only the nuclear scare and protests, no big protests about shutting down fossil fuel plants to reduce the climate change.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
They call themselves the "Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea" not North Korea. This would be like finding a coin dated 377 B.C.
Hear recorded Slashdot headlines on your phone! New service beta testing. Just call (248) 434-5508
I AM AN ENVIRONMENTALIST. I just don't go in with the crazy ones. I believe strongly that investments in our forests and wetlands is extremely important, and that we should preserve the environment as best we can for future generations. But I have no problem culling out of control deer populations. (I guess that makes me wacko, for an environmentalist)
. I'm also a conservative, but I don't like the crazy fanatic ones either. I agree that polarized politics is an obstacle, so point taken I will be more careful.
Likely the answer is use both nukes and alternate energy, as well as reducing energy demands with energy saving products. More ambitious recycling can reduce our energy demands enough to matter. (You should always recycle aluminum)
If I were in charge we'd have a gas tax that goes straight into the following: developing fossil fuel free energy sources, providing support for businesses and low income families to transfer over to alternative fuel vehicles, etc.
I hate taxes, but they make sense if you can spend them in a way that would result in a general increase in wealth. I believe an alternative energy industry would be extremely profitable for any country.
Tax cuts for nuke plants do exist, it would be nice if there if you could get approval for building a nuke plant in under 5 years. The regulations are hyper paranoid, and often misguided.
Yea. Even Ted Kennedy made a big stink about having windmills in his backyard. Let's just agree that the powerful and wealthy are not really with us on anything. Personally I would think it would be cool to have a bunch of slick futuristic looking windmills viewable out my back window.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
::diatonic::
and here i was thinking floating in the sky, monolith type structure
I see Windows, I see Mac. I see Linux on the rack.
100000% since September last year http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/1 0/1640212
is the price tag. AFAIK $200M is an order of magnitude cheaper than current nuclear power plants. How did they get the price down that far?
Why is this modded informative? For all being as it is this should be modded funny..
I am not against nuclear power, but when it goes wrong it can go very badly wrong. Dropping the core miles deep into the ocean sound just about like the stupidest things to do, unless maybe if it is going to explode. The radioactivity last for orders of 100 years or more, and in those years it may well go leaky. In that case it could poison the ocean, leading to health problems like cancer, especially higher up the foodchain.. Things like this could very much damage our lifespan and quality..
btw He's right about the unlimited coolant thing, and also security may be easier to attain at sea.
Feel free to mod this troll but I just find it funny that it is "better" to be able to power troop deployments for an invasion of a foreign country then to have it about in the event of a natural disaster at home. Perhaps we leave "enemy" (depends on your politics doesn't it?) countries alone for a little while eh? Enough of the war mongering...
"every power plant is a potential Chernobyl"
That is false. Chernobyl was a graphite core reactor, and that is what made it dangerous and caused that failure mode. Nuclear reactors that have an inherent tendency to explode and burn in a manner that cannot be controlled have only been deployed on a large scale in formerly Soviet states. Other forms of liquid cooled reactor found in other countries such as in North America and Europe could potentially exhibit the China Syndrome, but experience has proven that harder than commonly believed to actually bring about. Modern reactors being proposed have been engineered to avoid all of the known major failure modes. It is important to keep in mind that nuclear power is science, not magic, and as such has at least the potential to be fully understood and tamed.
This is not new. In the 1970's, Offshore Power Systems (OPS) of Jacksonville, FL began building several nuclear power plants for off-shore use. Circa 1975, I dated a girl whose father worked for OPS. They were very excited and thought they had an excellent product (plenty of coolant, well removed from centers of population unlike most nukes, like Turkey Point, FL, etc.).
However, after Three Mile Island, it all fell apart.
See: Operation of Offshore Power Systems floating nuclear plants (1-8) docket number STN 50-437
I can't wait for the first accident/leak/bad engineering/explosion/terrorist attack to flood the oceans with toxic waste and radiation. Sweet. Imagine an oil tanker spill times a million. Could that be a bigger temptation for any radical nutjobs? Why not paint a bulls-eye on it too?
Oh, but the fools in the town next to mine are fighting against wind turbines because a few birds might fly into them and it'll wreck their nice water front view. How about a floating reactor instead?
Idiots.
Sarcasm=dripping;
What a pity this piece of nonsense gets modded as "insightful". Somebody mod it down, please.
Please check some figures next time before you sound off. These proposed plants *do* have small reactors, no more than what a dozen large trailer diesel generators might produce. This is as might be expected for emergency power in a remote area. For comparison, a railway loco will be about 5 MW. A full size power station would be about 1500 MW - that's the electrical output from one reactor, but a power station site may have several such reactors. In fact the power is similar to what might be expected in a small-ish nuclear powered aircraft carrier.
So yes build them at sea (pleanty of coolant) and run cables under the sea. The UK has loads of coastline, we could massively reduce our carbon emmision, have a waste barge to store the waste in old north sea gas deposite caves. Sorted.
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
640MW ought to be enough for anyone...
Yeah. Ted Kennedy is a Republican. That's right. He's also a qualified Water Safety Instructor and certified in First Aid. Oh...and don't forget a highly skilled driver and a spokesman for some hugely successful weight loss scheme.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
from their reactors. 'The motors' push a really really big ship through the water, which actually requires quite a bit of power.
http://www.naval-technology.com/projects/nimitz/
When the country falls into chaos, politicians talk about 'patriotism'. Lao-Tzu
Will it ever be possible to have a rational discussion about energy production?
Um no. I'm still waiting for hydrogen blimps to make a comeback. Hydrogen blimps actually had an entire industry going, which one PR negative shut down. It would be like the Titanic sinking ending all cruiselines. It's a stupid concept, but apparently we'll do it over a few select topics. Chernobly and Three Mile Island have poped up in every single discussion of nuclear tech that I've ever read/been invovled with.
Think of how many thousands die in auto accidents a year. Well, if we carried this anology over, the first early auto manufactures should have had a huge anti-auto lobby and killed the industry. Today we have safety standards and drives can survive through accidents. We should have taken that mental framset to the problems of hydrogen blimps and nuclear energy, but it's not going to happen.
what if "the terrorists" raid one and steal the fuel and build a bomb. Or what if they hijack one and dock it in New York and pull and few plugs and make the reactor explode?
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
Considering that floating nuclear plant will be used in Northern Territories, the worst case scenario would be is that it would be towed to a Novaya Zemlya -- a nuclear testing site, where a 50MT "tzar bomb" has been exploded.
I don't see it, whats so frightening? It's only another atomic plant. Right, you guessed it. I'm very pro nuke. Your comments are silly and meaningless.
New Madrid.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
Plutonium is typically an alpha emitter, radiation that is sufficiently blocked by human skin, so managing that radiation outside our bodies without extra protection is safe enough (read '**NOTE' below). The act of ingestion bypasses the skin protection and inhalation is worse since the material settles into the lungs and continuously irradiates the individual in the same place.
**NOTE: Our skin may protect us from alpha radiation but an alpha decay of Plutonium is Uranium which is VERY toxic, toxic in many ways. Plutonium itself may be relatively harmless, but the stuff it becomes is typically very harmful.
This is not my sig.
My wife's uncle used to be power engineer on a Shuka-B nuclear submarine and now since retirement lives in Severodvinsk on the White Sea in a flat overlooking the harbour. (He also has two healthy children and says he was actually pleasantly surprised that all they have is poor eyesight.) He said these plans are quite old, and the Russians used ship-mounted reactors in the North for power generation since the late 1980s. This is just a civilian rehash of an older idea.
Incidentally, since there are large submarine shipyards in Severodvinsk, the overall radiation level there is higher than in Chernobyl region (not in the immediate vicinity of the reactor, of course). I would be worried about safety with these things; at least the navy has a rather poor track record with both nuclear accidents and nuclear waste disposal.
Philipp
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
"It looks like a frightening idea, don't you think? "
Frightening? No, a world that substitutes irrational fear for clean, plentiful, CHEAP, electric power Frightens me. We could have a world that has very little dependance on oil, with a cleaner environment and lower power costs if not for ignorant peoples fear of a miraculous technology.
I love it when Greens want to cover multiple square miles of land with hugely expensive, incredibly inefficient solar arrays or windmills in the name of clean, cheap, plentiful power while protesting nuclear in the next breath. idiotic is the word...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_powered_iceb
- A third fuel vessel, Lepse, is filled with spent nuclear fuel elements, many of them damaged and thus difficult to handle. In addition to the materials on board, the ship itself is heavily contaminated. It forms one of the world's most difficult and potentially dangerous nuclear waste disposal problems; an accident there could release more radiation then the Chernobyl catastrophe into the immediate vicinity of Murmansk. A small crew monitors the ship on a constant basis while Russia tries to raise the money and perform the research needed for safe disposal.
I can't understand why anyone would be worried by more slapdash Russian reactors floating around in the Arctic when current efforts have such a stellar record.Fundamentalism is a crime against humanity
from the Thresher/Scorpion class
You mean Thresher/Permit. After the Thresher sank, the class was renamed after the second boat, the U.S.S. Permit.
The Scorpion was the *other* American nuclear submarine lost in an accident.
If you had bothered to read the fine article you would have noted that they are placing two reactors of the designed used in their icebreakers, that is a tested naval reactor design, so the comparison is very apt.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I think this is a bad idea. It has been tried before but all of the test candidates sank: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine#Modern_subm arines
What perhaps the parent poster was referring to was that at the time of the accident, the Russians were testing their ability to use the reactor's steam turbines to provide power to the feedwater pumps during startup/shutdown of the reactor core. This involved running the reactor at normal operating conditions to get the turbines spinning, then throttling the power down to very low levels to simulate a core shutdown, while the inertia present in the turbines provided enough rotational energy to provide electrical power to the pumps. What they knew (but perhaps didn't fully appreciate) is that at low power levels, that particular reactor design becomes meta-stable. A slight bump either way could shut it down completely, or cause it to run out of control. Guess which happened.
This sig is a test. If this had been an actual sig, you would be reading something quite a bit wittier than this now.
I'm surprised someone hasn't shouted out claiming this will only increase global warming. A nuclear reactor on land is one thing, but pumping steaming hot water into the arctic is another. I'm sure somebody will claim it'll only be a couple months after the reactor is put into use that California will sink away into the ocean.
>the eactor used in Chernobyl was designed by a fool. No sane person would use
>a graphite moderated reactor today.
There is a bit of a misconception here: most reactors on the planet are graphite moderated
and that WASN'T the salient feature that made Chernobyl pop. The Chernobyl design
was over-moderated (which is sometimes referred to as positive-void-coefficient),
so that a minor fault in the moderator would result in increased neutron flux.
The operation rules were well designed to prevent the initial event, and the operators
ignored those rules for a test (and were duly prosecuted). When, after the test, shutdown
was initiated, there was an isotope mix (due to the odd test conditions) that caused
a minor bit of damage to the core. Which caused the explosion, because the
minor damage got amplified due to the positive void coefficient into a major
burst of neutrons and explosion/fire/radioactive dust was the result.
The major lesson of Chernobyl is that the operation rules are less immune to
tampering that some kinds of built-in features.
The only reason graphite-core reactors aren't considered 'modern designs' is
that they're all variations on the classic time-tested designs.
And the only reason 'nuclear is quite scary' is scaremongering. The safety of
wood-fires through the years may be lots worse, but doesn't get the same
hysterical press.
Uh Huh. Ahmedinejad is as crazy as a March hare.
an ill wind that blows no good
OOPS! I sit corrected, sir! I guess I had both on my mind in different contexts.
BTW, if you want to see some subs I designed as a teenager (back in 1981-ish) and which freaked out my prospective recruiters (especially a 7-bladed prop I drew or hinted at), then see my site at:
http://www.otanashide.com/17.html
See picture 41.
The skew, rake, pitch and other aspects are not quite even right. But, the mere idea of a then-16 year old doing this stuff (building and taking apart the USS Geo Wash SSBN and studying nuclear propulsion info in libraries), examining the propellers and building them from beer cans to see which turns the fastest and quietest and lifts off my pen tips the quickest...., designing ships and progressively improving with each design (within reason... these weren't going to be built, but they were more detailed than concept drawings...), was intriguing to a retired admiral I met, annoying to a nugget ensign (who graduated from my high school about 2 years before I did), and interesting to my second ship's CHENG and MPA, and interested people overseas and here in the states during the past few years. I guess all this started because I want to write fiction in a highly ordered/structured setting, loved Star Trek, liked but then came to DESPISE Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, loved things naval (except battleships for the overglorification of them, and while I like LHA/LHD vessels, I'm turned off by the CVNs). I only served on an AE and an FFG for permanent duty and augmented did TDA on tenders, other FFGs and so on.
Anyway....
hehe... slash image word: paranoia
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Nonsense, the graphite in a PBMR will never melt. Some say, a leak could allow air into the reactor vessel and the graphite would burn, but even that is contested. Silicon-coated graphite definitely wouldn't.
The only thing that happened at Hamm-Uetrop was that some pebbles broke. Fuel and fission waste were still contained within the fuel particles, some clumsy handling then lead to the release of some coolant gas. I've never seen an estimate on how much activity was released with it (the helium itself is not radioactive). Nobody got hurt, but green wackos took the opportunity to kill a promising technology.
Hanford by the way isn't about nuclear power. They never produced a single kilowatt-hour, so that's a red herring anyway.
You're incorrect. Hanford still holds Washington's only operating nuclear reactor. It's producing electricity as we speak.