Slashdot Mirror
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."
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"
To be fair the Russians do not have a spotless record in nuclear health and safety. Or for that matter health and safety in any form.
No, I don't agree that cheap gas is good. Cheap gas = larger cars = more emissions. Also, cheaper gas = lower price point green alternatives have to compete with. You say "until alternative cars become affordable", but the cheaper gas is, the longer that takes.
More interesting is the fact that Gazprom, firm that has all the fossil fuel at its disposal has opted for this kind of power.
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.