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Small Nuclear Power Plants To Dot the Arctic Circle
Vincent West writes with news of a Russian project currently underway to populate the Arctic Circle with 70-megawatt, floating nuclear power plants. Russia has been planning these nuclear plants for quite some time, with construction beginning on the prototype in 2007. It's due to be finished next year, and an agreement was reached in February to build four more. According to the Guardian:
"The 70-megawatt plants, each of which would consist of two reactors on board giant steel platforms, would provide power to Gazprom, the oil firm which is also Russia's biggest company. It would allow Gazprom to power drills needed to exploit some of the remotest oil and gas fields in the world in the Barents and Kara seas. The self-propelled vessels would store their own waste and fuel and would need to be serviced only once every 12 to 14 years."
What if killer penguins decided to attack these floating nuke stations and because of that developed mutant powers? :P
in 10... 9... 8... 7... 6... 5... 4... 3... 2... 1... now!
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Isn't that where the seas are the roughest?
lose control of one of those, and Russia owns all of the arctic. Just kidding.
That is not a bad idea. I have thought that the west should be putting up more small reactors to run things like Manufacturing as well as our electric trains. Do some 10-20 MW next to a maglev or just old fashion hi-speed train like Frances, and you have a fairly efficient none polluting train.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
As much as I support the idea of expanding nuclear power something tells me that superheating the water near the ice caps is just going to cause them to melt faster (assuming they are light water reactors which would be the most economical, and that storing their own waste refers to the nuclear kind)... but what do I know I'm a /.'er not a nuclear physicist... oh wait.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these.
This probably sounds like a serious potential problem to some of the nuclearphobes, but the basic description sounds like they're using nuclear submarine power plants with electrical generators attached to the turbines instead of a screw.
In other words, this sort of thing has been operating safely for about 50 years now.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Looks if everything does go worst-case-scenario with global temperatures northern countries would come out with quite an advantage...
Although the chances of total environmental screw-ups in the arctic is high, accessing resources is too much of an incentive for Russia to give up, with most of it's profits coming from selling resources...this is going to happen.
If we're going to use nuclear power, why use small nuclear power plants to drill for oil, instead of using it directly? Isn't this the worst of both worlds?
"The self-propelled vessels would store their own waste and fuel and would need to be serviced only once every 12 to 14 years."
Whew! Every 12 to 14 years for the brothel barge to swing by. And you thought seamen had it rough.
The Russians have been operating nuclear-powered icebreakers in that area for decades. This seems to be a similar design, just with a big generator attached.
Of course, TFA may have got it wrong, but "The self-propelled vessels would store their own waste and fuel and would need to be serviced only once every 12 to 14 years" sounds quite impossible. Perhaps they mean it would need to be refueled once every 12 to 14 years.
Other than spacecraft there aren't many systems that can run 12 years unattended. To make things worse, there's the extreme climate conditions. Right, what can possibly go wrong?
Heard several places that the US had a bunch of small reactors like this (sort of similar?) They were operated by the Army out west and one failed badly, during the Cold War I think. Turned out it was all due to a bad design and several people died.
Home of The Suki Series
...The self-propelled vessels would store their own waste and fuel and would need to be serviced only once every 12 to 14 years...
That's a record in my opinion. For those concerned about hijacking, Russians have the technology and will to keep these monsters safe. They (the Russians), are almost always concerned about the results and not the means to get to the required results.
This is unlike we in the USA who have to be mindful of what the world will think about our actions.
The Arctic Circle is not a good place to dot with floating nuclear power plants. Check the map to see why.
How are these substantailly different than their submerged nuclear power plants such as the Alfa, Oscar and Typhoon classes?
welcome our newclear Russian masters
Several people died? http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5174391/
If you have a problem with a nuclear facility and you kill 10 people, that says you're doing it correctly (Chernobyl is doing it wrong).
well, sort of. you are right that it has been 50 years. the US Army had been successful with portable nuclear power plants. from the 60's to the 70's they have used 2mW and 10mW power plants successfully (about halfway down for info )
the russians are not unfamiliar with the concept it seems.
PBS had a great documentary on how the US Army could set up and safely use portable nuclear power plants in the arctic, however no linkie could be found...
"You can kill the revolutionary, but you can't kill the revolution."-- Fred Hampton
There was SL-1:
http://www.radiationworks.com/sl1reactor.htm
They learned the hard way that you should not build a reactor so small that it requires *manual* withdrawal of control rods. By manual I mean a guy hunkered over the core with his hands on the rod itself. End result: said man impaled by said rod - to the ceiling.
this sig was brought to you by the letter
I don't care what anyone says, this is a great idea. Hopefully, in the near future, a radioactive snowflake will come dive-bombing from the sky and bite me. I always wanted to be ICEMAN!!!
That would be cool.
does it run Vista?
Several people died? http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5174391/
If you have a problem with a nuclear facility and you kill 10 people, that says you're doing it correctly (Chernobyl is doing it wrong).
Not sure what attitude that you read into my attempt to be factual from memory and limited facts. I think this is the one I was thinking about and it killed three people. Saw some other articles that sounded a bit questionable in that knee-jerk antinuclear way.
Home of The Suki Series
Er... when you're asserting that your understanding is the correct one, finding supporting evidence is your research, not the person you're trying to enlighten's.
There was SL-1: http://www.radiationworks.com/sl1reactor.htm
They learned the hard way that you should not build a reactor so small that it requires *manual* withdrawal of control rods. By manual I mean a guy hunkered over the core with his hands on the rod itself. End result: said man impaled by said rod - to the ceiling.
Yep, that is the one I was thinking of, bad design and all. You beat my by a few :)
Home of The Suki Series
The reactor was not operated by "a guy hunkered over the core with his hands on the rod itself." The rod was manually withdrawn to reconnect it to its control mechanism during a maintenance procedure.
It seems to me they learned the hard way that you shouldn't be yanking on a control rod during a maintenance procedure without having some kind of temporary mechanical stop in place to limit travel.
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
IMHO, This is a terrible idea. Russia isn't exactly sitting at the top with regards to success rates with their nuclear power plants - whether they're ship-borne or land based. Russia has a whole shipyard full of nuclear relics from the cold war that are simply rusting away in a harbor. Some of these ships still highly radioactive. Dangerously so! Not very eco-friendly, is it? Dare I even mention Chernobyl?
Aren't we losing the arctic and antarctic ice sheets due to global warming? Now we want to cool nuclear power plants with frigid arctic water? Let me phrase that another way. Now we want to warm the arctic waters with the nuclear power plant cooling towers?
Let's not forget the fragility of the ecosystem there, either. I can practically guaranty when it comes time to dispose of nuclear cores they'll take shortcuts - as Russians always do - and some of these cores are going to wind up at the bottom of the ocean. It's not a questions of 'if', but 'when.'
wouldn't these bobbing nuclear power plants block sarah palin's view of russia from her house?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galena_Nuclear_Power_Plant may well have a Toshiba 45 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_4S producing electric energy for between 5 and 13 cents/kW.
Toshiba has automated truck-transportable nuclear reactors they are planning to offer to small towns in Alaska.
Hey - I also mentioned the Galena Project in Alaska, wasn't just the Russians: http://solyaris.net/2009/05/nuclear_arcti/
Even when you take into account the huge tanks for the diesel or low-quality fuel oil, the nuke plant takes up a collossal amount of space. Theres a good reason that diesels have taken over the shipping industry. Combined cycle plants haven't really made a dent yet, even considering the efficiency is much higher. It just takes up too much room.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
hey used to call them Typhoons ;-)
The US used to have a 45MW shipboard nuclear power plant on the USS Sturgis, a converted Liberty ship. It was used to power the Panama Canal locks during a period of low water at Gatun Dam, the usual power source. The U.S. Army had a whole range of small reactors running in remote locations from 1952 to the early 1970s. The main problem was that they never built enough of them to justify the support and training infrastructure required.
Hmmm.. I think being impaled to the ceiling by a blazing hot radioactive metal rod is the thing that "could possibly go wrong".
"wahts woring iwth my tyoping?"
How about a dedsign requirement that the core cannot go critical with even the most reactive single control rod totally removed from the reactor under any circumstances?
This is what we have now and is a direct result of that 1960 accident.
You said, "a result of combination of idiocy never seen before" thereby making the case that Russians are capable of unprecedented idiocy. Would you care to start over? Perhaps you meant to make some other point?
Granted, we have had our share of idiots in the US. Three Mile Island comes readily to mind. Somehow, our idiots surpassed your idiots in their ability to recover from idiocy.
I guess you have industrial grade idiots over there, huh? Fool proof idiots? We need to explore the subject of idiocy some more, and try to determine qualities, quantities, and relative strengths and weaknesses of the idiots produced by various nations.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
1) The main reason for the Chernobyl disaster was a bad reactor plant design. A SCRAM should never ever bring the reactor to explosion. After the disaster, the control rods were heavily modified. Also, the control team never did anything against the reactor user manual.
2) This problem with the design was known a couple of years before the Chernobyl accident. Both the reactors of Leningrad nuclear power plant and of the Ignalina nuclear power plant, reactors of the same type, had serious accidents of the same type (SCRAM caused a nearly runaway reaction). At this point the problem became known, the designers were informed of it and even got some recommendations how to redesign the control rods to avoid this kind of problems in the future. The designers decided that since they were very important, well-known and highly-decorated scientists, they don't have to listen to "common people". The result is known.
3) There were some other nuclear accidents in the USSR. The most prominent is Mayak.
Nonetheless USSR was one of the nuclear reactor pioneers. The first commercial nuclear power plant was a soviet one. And there were some decent reactors like the current VVER line.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
The original post was a bit more comprehensive: Nuclear Power Plants to Dot the Arctic Circle?
Nuclear Power Plants to Dot the Arctic Circle?
Because no, they are not melting quick enough. Come on, I wanna swim!
Truth, Just Us, And Hatred For All Mankind!
Sounds like our ZPM is out of power
Like when they explode?
SL-1 was a suicide. I don't think you can hold that against the reactor.
1MW=1000 000 000mW. You keep using these units, but I don't think you know what they mean. And yes, I can get it from context, but it is anoying since there are extremely low power nuclear power sources which are used in other applications.
I have determined that my sig is indeterminate.
Aren't we losing the arctic and antarctic ice sheets due to global warming? Now we want to cool nuclear power plants with frigid arctic water? Let me phrase that another way. Now we want to warm the arctic waters with the nuclear power plant cooling towers?
It wouldn't have any real impact since it would be a drop in the bucket compared to the other things heating the Arctic. The sun delivers order 100 hundred watts to each square meter of the earth, and even if most of that is reflected the absorbed power from the sun is orders and orders of magnitude above what these power plants will do (you can crunch the numbers if you want).
Moreover, if they weren't using nuclear power, they'd just use something else. Burning oil raises temperatures too. Nuclear power is probably more efficient anyway because it has a higher temperature heat reservoir.
Whatcouldpossiblygowrong is one of the most overused tags on this site. Things could go wrong with anything, but most of the time -- after a moment's reflection -- it's clear that the answer is "nothing special". As with most things, this isn't really anything new (the russians have been putting larger reactors in submarines for years) and is thus unlikely to have unfamiliar (or particularly grave) consequences. Just because you don't understand what's going on and are unwilling to devote thought to it does not mean something is dangerous.
They use nuclear power to get OIL?
Which in turn is burned to get power?
Insane.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
I read that you hated nuclear plants and thought they were fundamentally unsafe and a bad idea because a design flaw caused one to break. Sorry if I was wrong ;-)
I figured your point was symptomatic of people fearing "x" because of a few anecdotal events despite the actual safety numbers (like people who are scared of flying despite the lower deaths per mile).
Snow, water and ice are really nasty. If you live near significant snow, you will have watched things just "move" around. Year after year, you can watch a fence move, or a big rock slowly move across a yard.
In many ways, water and ice are worse than space. As the water thaws and freezes, it picks up and moves considerable structures. In Southern Canada, you just put your footings down below the frost line. In the Canadian shield, most people don't have basements because it would mean blasting granite. By the time you hit the arctic, there is so much snow and ice, it becomes logistically difficult to put in proper footings.
The Russians are talking about building boats for the nuclear reactor. Sea can be more stable than land in some ways. But what do you do when a great big iceberg is coming your way? These reactors must be connected to something via a cable. They won't be easy to move. Essentially, if one of these reactors ever becomes ice-locked, it would be in danger of getting its hull crushed and sinking.
These reactors have to withstand ice, year after year, without fail. How is that going to work? We haven't built an ice-breaker that can survive rough service without on-going maintenance. How is a stationary boat going to do it without maintenance?
Additionally, if a space probe goes missing, it is largely without significant environmental consequences for planet earth. If one of these reactors fails, it could dump radioactive waste into the arctic ocean. Thanks to the jet stream, all the oceans are interconnected, and that radioactivity will go world wide.
Is it just me who finds it ironic that nuclear power plants are going to be used to power drilling for oil, which will be used to run chemical power plants? I still question why we don't use nuclear power in all our power plants.
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
I wonder if they're planning on speeding up the melting of the ice sheets up there? They are after much of the oil in the area after all.
So, in 20 years, you do not think that things have improved?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Why the hell are they building nuclear power plants to drill for oil. Does this not make sense to anyone else?
Local nuclear power means no shipping refined products to burn in generators (with many resulting accidents as well as CO2 production.
Heck, nuclear power ships could be used in disasters and a host of other opportunities.
tOM
Epitaph: At last! Root access!
Enriched Uranium Reactors or Heavy Water Reactors ? There is a WORLD of difference in operation and potential disaster. The US uses the cheaper alternative the enriched uranium which is inherently UNSTABLE and RADIOACTIVE. Most of the rest of the world is using heavy water reactors which while more expensive to operate are much more stable and clean. I was unable to tell from the article which the Russians are building. As to wiping out the polar bears habitat, does it matter if it all goes boom, or just a portion of it starts glowing at night in time with the aurora australius (southern lights)??
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
You could always vent large quantities of radioactive steam to melt the ice. :D
And all the oceans are interconnected, but I wouldn't exactly blame the jet stream for that.
do you have any morals or ethical values?
No! Bugger off.
Well do I have a plan for you!
Nuclear powered production of oil in pristine landscapes. It's 101 ways to stuff the world for generations to come. And there is masses of cash in it. The perfect investment for someone with no morals, idea for you sir.
You will be able to buy lifestyle. All you have to do it BS the government into promoting the idea as 'good for everyone' can you do that?
No worries a couple of political 'donations' and it's jobs done ready to server.
I was obsessed with the NS Savannah recently because she is such a beautiful ship - I love ships and this cargo ship looks like a yacht. Whilst I am not a fan of the Nuclear Industry in it's current form her reactor appeared to be reasonably well constructed and whilst designed to cruise at 21 knots, she outperformed her design spec by steadily cruising at 24 knots - pretty fast for a cargo ship. Check page 16 of the MARAD documentation (warning - pdf).
There is significant historical information about her operation. Until 9/11 she was part of the National Defense Reserve Fleet (NDRF) but her reactor was permanently disabled due to concerns she could be used as quite a convenient weapon of terror. Sadly, her hybrid design condemned her to a short operational life (10 years) and she is now a ghost ship. There are plans to make her a museum ship whilst waiting for her decommissioned reactor to cool down for eventual disassembly, but no one seems interested in the project. Despite that the seafarers Union have been working to maintain the ship by improving her general appearance.
NS Savannah's crew dispute was because the executive officers traditionally got paid more than the engineering crew on board the ship, this dispute, high running costs, low oil costs all contributed to her eventual demise. An interest group (with mailing list) is looking for photos and artefacts whist she was in operation.
lots more photos, her community organisation, glory days, historical landmark program, service history and specifications, floorplan and schematics, current status, passenger lounge, reactor control room, dry docked , and finally a flickr photo stream and a rather excellent photo essay of the NS Savannah. A little bit of history for you to enjoy.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Are we actually going to be able to use this oil before the effects of climate change become too severe?
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Um, before anyone gets too excited, take note that the nuclear power plants would apparently only be used to power machinery used for drilling for oil.
Sorta like using solar power to charge a battery that is in turn used to start a conventional engine.
which are used in other applications.
Exactly.
A more sensible metric is the number of deaths-per-journey, and is considerably less favourable to aircraft than the oft-cited deaths-per-passenger-kilometre (do you still use miles in your country? How quaint.). This, of course, is why the aircraft industry tries to persuade people to quote the deaths-per-passenger-kilometre figure instead.
Every journey consists of at least one take-off and landing, which is where the large majority of deaths occur ; the number of intervening passenger-kilometres is variable but can be tens of thousands. Therefore, the deaths that occur on take-off or landing on the short journeys (the majority) are diluted by the passenger-kilometres accumulated on the long-haul flights.
Just to put it in context - I've had 3 life-threatening car crashes in my life and 5 serious (i.e. potentially life-threatening) flying incidents. I've covered considerably more kilometres by air than I have by car ; I mostly fly medium haul (several hundred kilometres, over water) and I don't drive much.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
No worries mate, this just another good example of russian(soviet?) propaganda. This isn't going to work, since the russians don't have the technology to back up their words. Even most of their siberian oil and gas pumps run on 20 or more years old technology and this is considered hi-tech back there. To sum up this article: the race for natural resources of Arctic has begun and there isn't plenty for everyone...
uclear power is bad and the pollution lingers for thousands of years did i miss ? Or did i miss the part where they found a way to dispose of the waste through a wormhole or are they planning to shoot it to the moon maybe ? Or wait , no ... that's it ... these are ofcourse nuclear power plants without waste product
(what was i thinking)
Or did i miss the part where Bush is now in charge of the russians ?
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
I am reading the book Atomic America. They describe an incident where a guy was pulling out the control rod and the reactor blew. It impaled him and left him hanging from the ceiling. It took the cleanup crew five days to figure out how to get him down. When they got the body down, they noted that the body had no signs of decay due to the radioactivity.
All nuclear power plants that I've encountered have been next to large bodies of water, built at the shoreline. I guess they need to be able to dump excess waste someplace where it would be diluted.
If true, it strikes me as making these floating plants ideal. They'd just float them to some shore where they'd likely be permanently anchored and become part of some land facilities. So really they're not any different from existing plants except insofar as they're pre-fabricated.
And in the event of political instability they can be shut down and moved elsewhere, unlike a permanent land-based installation. So that probably makes them even less vulnerable to attack, not more so.
And the facilities, labour and expertise to build them is kept in one place, which to my mind makes security easier.
How fast do you think icebergs move? Or do they have propulsion systems other then currents? A free floating(anchored, but free floating to a degree) platform would have no issues, except uncatastrophically pushed by the iceberg in some direction.
Yes, we still do use miles. And my military can beat up your military. I can do country posturing too! So there! (Honestly, I prefer metric, but there are way to many people in this country proud of being dumb to ever hope to switch)
On a more mature topic, do you know the flight distance where unit of mortality per unit of distance is the same for both driving and flying?
That's all right - I'm not in the military, and the only person who I know who is stupid enough to have signed away his morality that way I never had much respect for beforehand. Beat away.
(I do have a tiny amount of sympathy for the several people who got fucked in various ways by the military, but they were "told so" while they still had the chance to back out. "I told you so!" has to be said.)
Yeah, I've seen that picture too. Dubya is pretty limber to bend his spine like that. Amazing that there's no shit in his hair afterwards.
That's a self-fulfilling prophecy. I recall the same self-fulfilling prophecy as a child. These days, we're making progress ; metric is common for most purposes (litres having replaced gallons at the petrol pump around a decade ago, for example ; in my current car-free period, so I didn't notice exactly when). The biggest hold-out is that road signs are still done in statute miles, and that's something that we're (we = metric enthusiasts) are working on. Once we've got the last few of the "metric martyrs" strung up on the gibbet at Tyburn, we'll have dragged the country kicking and screaming into the 18th century. They already go into the pillory on those increasingly rare occasions that they raise their heads into public sight, so we're making progress.
Stupidity carries the punishment it always has : Death. Preferably before reproduction.
No.
And I'm not enough of a statistician to attempt to work it out. It's one of those awkward questions where you could spend a month on just defining the question. For example - driving is (allegedly) a door-to-door type of journey, while no-one seriously considers making flying a "door-to-door" experience [footnote]. So, most air journeys involve a non-trivial amount of car transport too. How do you account for that? A second complication - people have a risk of death at any time, and air journeys are typically of shorter duration than road journeys ; so one's mortality rates should be adjusted to reflect this. Quite how is not plain.
There is an old lie that "you can prove anything with statistics" ; it's not true. However, with a statistically naive audience it is easy to confuse them enough to think that you've proved something. You can even confuse yourself about having proven something.
[Note : the people designing flying cars, for example, seem to assume that you can put take-off and landing strips on every tower-block accommodation, sufficient for all inhabitants, plus the parking, and not have to train all the drivers to a high standard in air-traffic control procedures ; this is not being serious. Perhaps we could encourage the metric martyrs (above) to act as test drivers to establish exactly what the mortality rate is amongst under-trained drivers of flying cars. Can I watch, from the ground, using a telescope pointing near the horizon?]
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
There are stupid people in my country who think it's too much work to switch to metric. Could I dedicate a significant amount of time to switching this country to metric? Sure. Would it be a better use of my political energies than fighting for civil rights, sound economic policy, sound environmental policy, or improved political processes? I kinda doubt it. Metric is nice, but honestly I care way more about health care, climate change, or gay marriage to bother lobbying about units of measurement.
This ...... ^^^^^^
should provide you adequate reason for eliminating these people (or rendering them economically unviable, which amounts to the same thing).
If you don't destroy the stupid (or enable them to destroy themselves), then all the efforts that you put into encouraging gay marriage and restricting civil liberties, or whatever else it is that you want to do, will be washed away in a sea of dribbling idiocy.
Haven't you read "The Handmaid's Tale" and seen the future that awaits you when the morons leave their church-managed shelters and are allowed to take control?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Wow
Are they small enough to fit into my backyard tool shed?
I can line the shed with lead, as an extra precaution.