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."

Comments

Nuclear isn't necessarily scary

[selil]

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.

Re:Nuclear isn't necessarily scary

[OrangeTide]

"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.

It could be worse

[solevita]

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

Hardly the first floating Nuclear Power Plant

[balsy2001]

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.

No, I didn't appreciate the Chernobyl reference.

[Anonymous Coward]

Will it ever be possible to have a rational discussion about energy production?

Scary?

[robpoe]

Why is it scary?

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 .. not worry about whether the kids are going to burn themselves (or throw a baseball through) the solar array..

I say .. 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..

Re:USS Enterprise, Nimitz, etc

[Libertarian001]

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).

Re:Safety

[MindStalker]

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.

Re:No accidents?!?

[balsy2001]

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!

Umm....

[kf6auf]

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.

Re:Umm....

[some_hoser]

When comparing reactor powers, you really need to make sure you know what convention they are using when they say power - thermal power, or electric power? The thermal power of a plant is usually about 3x the electric. A 1000 MW (electric) plant runs at about 3000 MW (thermal). In the field they'll say MWe or MWt. A 60MWe reactor will be about the same as a 180MWt reactor. Another point is that on the nuclear powered ships, so cut down on space they have to use small (in terms of volume) reactors, and they use fairly highly enriched uranium (up to 90%), so the pressure inside gets much higher, and so they are more dangerous that conventional reactors. On a large barge, however, they have less space constraints so could go for a less energy dense and safer reactor.

Re:Safety

[kextyn]

I just want to point out a few facts here. Nimitz class carrier has 2 A4W reactors outputting 94 MW each. These carriers also have a crew of 3,200 ship's company and 2,480 in the air wing. This new facility will be powered by 2 KLT-40S reactors outputting 60 MW each. So yes, this may be a different scale of power generation. But it's a smaller scale then what the US Navy has floating already.

Re:Safety

[Pseudonym]

But from my understanding after the last San Franciso major earthquake that some nuclear vesseles [...]

I think you misspelled "wessels". Hope this helps!

Small reactors

[AJWM]

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.

Crash Testing

[thunderland]

OrangeTide said:

...And transporting radioactive waste to an from a processing facility is extremely risky...

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 first floating reactor - USS Sturgis

[SoLoman33333]

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.