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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."
Will it ever be possible to have a rational discussion about energy production?
I don't know why the author of the article suggests that floating nuclear power plants are a novel idea. Of course the U.S. Navy has had them for decades, and there are Russian nuclear-powered icebreakers that take civilian passengers. If you have US$18,000 to spend, you can travel to the freakin' North Pole on the Yamal
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...
"don't produce waste product like other types of reactor."
yes. they produce different sorts of waste products.
Nuclear power doesn't produce much waste, for the amount of energy you get out of it. But the little bit of waste it does produce is really really nasty. The waste is about 90% recyclable into more fissile material, but you need some sophisticated processing plants to do this. And transporting radioactive waste to an from a processing facility is extremely risky, which is why it is preferable to have an expensive power plant with all the processing facilities on site.
I prefer nuclear power over coal and oil. And the environmental impact of nuclear energy is smaller than that of a hydroelectric dam, discounting nuclear accidents, which you should never have. Hydrodams displace many animals and dramatically change the ecosystem for thousands of acres. Old nuclear reactors had pretty significant impact on the local environment too, such as warming of the river/lake/coast they sit on. this is bad, it can have all sorts of impacts on the reproductive cycles of many animals, as well as result in poisonous algae blooms. It is indeed possible to build reactors that are safe and have low environmental impact, they actually do exist.
There is no power source that you will make everyone happy. Crazy environmentalists don't like wind power (kills birds and rare bats), hydroelectric (disrupts the local ecology), coal and oil (nobody likes these), or nuclear (every power plant is a potential Chernobyl)
If oh-so-wonderful France can run 70% of its energy off nuclear power, then why can't the US? In the US we have a lot of lunatics who would rather have coal plants than nuclear plants. I'm assuming Russia, which has always been much more creative in nuclear technology than the US, that the only obstacle to nuclear power is coming up with the money to fund it.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
OK, I am actually a Naval Officer who designs the reactors (what NUPOC was to demanding). Those are not considered Reactor Accidents. A reactor accident is defined by a failure of the fuel system that releases significant amount of radioactivity into the environment. None of the accidents that you listed are due to a failure of the core and are therfore not REACTOR ACCIDENTS!!! Get your facts straight before you post!
GENERATION 27: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
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.