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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.
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."
Not nearly as freightening as the reactors and fuel they provide for Iran.
an ill wind that blows no good
Will it ever be possible to have a rational discussion about energy production?
These are not even that big. According to wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propu lsion) the military has "Reactor sizes rang[ing] up to 190 MWt in the larger submarines and surface ships." The article is not clear weather the power rating is MWt (thermal) or MWe (electric) but even if it is electric the military reactors mentioned at wiki would still likely have equivalent electric output since the conversion from thermal to electric runs about 25%. Just for comparison the AP1000 is supposed to have 1000MW electric output.
GENERATION 27: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
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?
Actually you are incorrect.
The Enterprise actually has 8 reactors! The Enterprise was so expensive that the next class of carriers where not The Kitty Hawk class had four ships in it. Two of them are still in service.
What everyone is forgetting is the US did build a floating reactor into an old Liberty ship. In the late sixties it was used in Panama.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
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.
The Big-E (my boat) has 8 reactors. That's not because they thought it was a good idea, but because it was a test-bed. Their are several different reactor and steam plants (GE and Westinghouse, different versions of each) on that ship. Those 8 reactors are comparable in output to the 2 used on all the Nimitz class CVNs.
To my knowledge, all US CVNs other than the Enterprise have just 2 reactors. IIRC, subs have just the one (but I wasn't a bubblehead, so don't quote me).
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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 :(
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
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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
Plus, you would imagine that a few things have been learned in the 60 years since Hanford was built.
Yeah, like it is better to have a government agency supervising private industry and keeping them in line than it is to have a government operation under 300 layers of secrecy that nobody is allowed to even look at.
The Hanford mess is a result of nobody bothering to care for decades about management of waste on the site. I heard a talk by somebody who had some involvement with the cleanup efforts. Apparently over the many years of operation all kinds of stuff was pumped into tanks, and records of what that stuff was were not kept accurately. When sludge from the tanks was sent out for analysis it was done in a careless manner - without even rudimentary precautions like sending the same samples to independant labs for duplicate testing.
Basically it was run like a government operation where nobody could get in trouble for making a mess, and unsurprisingly a huge mess resulted. Additionally during the cold war there was the genuine concern that if we had fewer bombs than the Russians it might result in an enemy first strike - so in some sense they might have been right to make safety priority #2 (but there is no excuse for not doing a lot better than they did). After all, an actual nuclear war would have made the leaking tanks at Hanford look like a VERY minor problem.
Bottom line - large-scale nuclear power generation facilities require heavy oversight - by folks who are more interested in exposing problems than covering them up. There is no reason to ban them entirely - any industry has the potential to create disaster (just look at Bhopal) - like anything you just need to make sure that it is cheaper to be safe than to be unsafe.
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"
Interesting viewpoint. What do you have other than national pride to make you think that an inactive US nuclear industry that spends more money on advertising than R&D is less worrying? Recent work from South Africa, India and China is most likely better than both.
However it is not "clean" - it is an industrial process involving mining, extremely toxic chemicals in processing and the end product produces waste that is both toxic and radioactive so cannot just be ignored. Also it takes years to build any sort of thermal plant, paticularly a brand new design, so it is not available now. Using an old design is pointless since capital costs are going to be very high and you want to be able to get the best results you can - plus things like accelerated thorium reactors could solve the fuel shortage problem (and be cheaper to build and run as a consequece) and produce a lot less waste. Pebble beds don't scale up so are expensive but solve a lot of safety issues - perhaps they can have longer lives so may end up cheap enough to use in the long run. Someone will bring up fast breeders so I'll point them to look at the Superphoenix project first - reprocessing sounds like a good idea but was very difficult to implement with highly radioactive material so even photovoltaics (which do not scale up - twice the scale and you get no more than twice the output) ended up cheaper per MW no matter how big you build your Superphoenix style fast breeder. In the end you need a new design instead of hoping for corporate welfare - President Carter (who has a masters degree in nuclear engineering) effectively killed the US nuclear industry by making it clear there wouldn't be more corporate welfare for new plants - the focus has been on trying to get the welfare back for more dinosaur plants instead of building things that can stand on their own merits (and blaming hippies, coal ash as radioactive waste too, everything but their own inaction).
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.
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.
I agree with the *real* officer (NUPOC = NUclear Power Officer *Candidate*) and I also call BS on the story about transferring 500 gallons of reactor coolant to a sub tender in Groton. I was an ELT (Engineering Laboratory Technician) aboard a nuclear submarine, that, part of the time I was on her, was stationed in Groton (New London Submarine Base). ELTs are the enlisted guys who do the steam plant and reactor plant water chemistry analyses. I am certain that there is no reason take reactor coolant out of the primary loop and move it to the tender (and lots of reasons not to!). The only time that sort of thing would be done is during a refueling overhaul, in a shipyard. A boat in Groton would go to Portsmouth (NH) Naval Shipyard for that. The boat I was on had a 78 MW S5W reactor plant. 120MW is not that impressive especially when you don't have the space constraints of a submarine reactor compartment.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
This has been going on for a while. Where do you think Godzilla came from?
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/
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.
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.
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?
"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.
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