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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
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.
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"
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.
oh wait what?
The power plant produces 70MW.
Assume that the equivalent of this energy is dissipated as heat.
Sunlight on the Earth surface is on average 164W/m^2, though at polar circle this drops to 80-100W/m^2. Snow at best reflects 90%, absorbing 10%.
70,000,000/(80*0.1)=8,750,000m^2=8.75km^2
So one power plant is an equivalent of sunlight collected over 8.76km^2 area. Arctic ocean is 14,056,000km^2. Power plant increases the amount of heat absorbed in the area by .00006%
Alternatively the same amount of power would have to be produced by the same Gazprom using -- guess what? -- things that Gazprom happens to produce, namely fuel.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Well duh... they need the oil to mine the uranium for the nuclear reactors.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
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.
Oh really?
Yes, really.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Karachay
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novaya_Zemlya
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Peninsula
HTH,
HAND
More interesting is the fact that Gazprom, firm that has all the fossil fuel at its disposal has opted for this kind of power.
Oh really? Who told you that?
The only serious nuclear incident in USSR history, Chernobyl
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyshtym_Disaster
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
Sounds like our ZPM is out of power
As you suggest, there are now a number meltdown-proof reactor designs. These are not merely engineered with "infallible" safety mechanisms, but are fundamentally meltdown-proof by their very design. As long as the laws of physics hold, which is a reasonably safe assumption, there is no risk of meltdown.
While the Pebble bed reactor is safe though, the nature of the pebbles make for very difficult reprocessing, and otherwise still pose a long term waste management problem.
Nuclear is the clear winner for clean, environmentally friendly energy production, but I would recommend pointing people to the Integral Fast Reactor instead. An added benefit would be that such a design could also solve our current nuclear waste problems, by recycling it for use in such reactors. The true waste after recycling is both very minimal and very short lived by comparison.
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.