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A $200-Million Floating Nuclear Plant?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the nothing-can-go-wrong dept.

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."

9 of 453 comments (clear)

  1. Land-based power supply troubles? by chrisb33 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    An even bigger fear is that a nasty storm could cut the plant off from the land-based power supply required to run plant operations. Should emergency generators fail, says David Lochbaum, director of the Nuclear Safety Project at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a Chernobyl-like disaster could ensue. In a worst-case scenario, an overheated core could melt through the bottom of the barge and drop into the water, creating a radioactive steam explosion.
    IANANP (I am not a nuclear physicist) but I was under the impression that fission chain reactions could always be stopped quickly by simply withdrawing the fuel rods. It seems like it shouldn't be impossible to build a fail-safe system that would stop the reaction if land-based power supplies were cut off.
    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?
  2. Re:Safety by MindStalker · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Google isn't helping me here. But from my understanding after the last San Franciso major earthquake that some nuclear vesseles were docked and hooked up to supply something like a fourth of the cities power.

  3. over 60% of those are non-nuclear... by YesIAmAScript · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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
  4. Re:Safety by Apraxhren · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Umm... this is a slightly different scale of power generation. Those ships and submarines which are nuclear powered have really small reactors. The power (and more importantly pressure) generated in a small Navy sub reactor is "small" compared to this beast. We're talking about TWO full scale reactors on a barge.
    Are you sure about that? The Popsci article states that the plant would be run by two 60 megawatt reactors that are currently used in Russian icebreakers so 1/2 wouldn't really be considered small. Also the USS George H. W. Bush recently launched is powered by 2 reactors which are supposed to be triple the power of the 8 reactors on the USS Enterprise.
  5. Why by kahrytan · · Score: 2, Interesting


      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 /.ers.

    --
    \
  6. Re:Environmental Scaremongering by locokamil · · Score: 2, Interesting

    First my gripe: you also failed to note that I said that I'm not willing to judge the state of nuclear engineering in Russia on the basis of one accident and the fact that I'm not an expert in the field.

    Apart from that, I agree with you 100% regarding the seeminlgy miserable state of nuclear energy in the US. I wonder, however, whether on an absolute scale of how many people are affected by energy generation, nuclear energy isn't cleaner than fossil fuels. The extraction process for the raw materials is obviously damaging to the environment-- but so is strip mining for coal, or drilling for oil. Furthermore, unlike fossil fuels, the waste products from NP generation can be stored in a single isolated, localized zone. It isn't renewable, but it seems to use fewer resources on a whole than the current fossil fuel based paradigm. I should have been more precise in my phrasing: it should have been "nuclear power is cleaner". Not clean.

  7. The real news by hcdejong · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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?

  8. Re:Safety by tttonyyy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    To scale this experiment up, this chap dropped a big lump if it into a lake: http://www.theodoregray.com/PeriodicTable/Stories/ 011.2/ TBH, if the liquid sodium coolant was escaping, I think its reaction with the water would be the least of my worries.

    --
    biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
  9. Re:Safety by God'sDuck · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Uhm... the electricity consumption rate in 1929 and 2006 are pretty different, I guess... Back then, I think they only have light bulbs. We now have TVs, PCs, Washing Machines, Microwave owens, Air conditioners...
    All true, but it's also important to note that back then battleships and aircraft carriers largely only had light bulbs, and now have TVs, PCs, Washing Machines, Microwave owens and Air conditioners. I would suspect a single nuclear-powered supership rolling off the line today could power the whole fleet from the 20's. Twice.