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."

Comments

Power to the peoiple of Galena, AK

[auric_dude]

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.

Re:whatcouldpossiblygowrong!

[anonymousmeatbag]

No, no no. It certainly is not all like that. I am not an nuclear scientist but years of reading posts on slashdot convinced me that nuclear fission is all clean, safe and reliable, and with breeder reactors it is renewable too.
Yes, ti might be somewhat radioactive, but hey it is only gamma ray here, gamma ray there, nothing really to wary about.