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Underwater Nuclear Power Plant Proposed In France

Posted by timothy on from the precooked-seafood dept.

nicomede writes "The French state-owned DCNS (French military shipyard) announced today a concept study for an underwater nuclear reactor dedicated to power coastal communities in remote places. It is derived from nuclear submarine power plants, and its generator would be able to produce between 50 MWe and 250MWe. Such a plant would be fabricated and maintained in France, and dispatched for the different customers, thus reducing the risk for proliferation."

10 of 314 comments (clear)

  1. Man up! by gtirloni · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I wonder when will people stop wasting time with wind/solar and man up to nuclear energy.

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    1. Re:Man up! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Because those are mutually exclusive, huh?

    2. Re:Man up! by RsG · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah, that always struck me as the fallacy of the nukes vs. passive power collection debate. Pursuing both options and using them in different applications and climates, as their strengths and weaknesses dictate, seems to be the most logical approach by far.

      My take would be to build wind turbines, geothermal plants, hydroelectric dams and solar collectors (especially solar heat engines as opposed to photoelectric cells) in locations where the respective climate and geography dictates, and supplement those with rooftop photoelectric solar and other distributed systems wherever local homeowners want to use them.

      This will leave a power deficit, as those means of power generation don't provide enough energy to meet our needs, so you solve that deficit with nuclear power for the time being, and fusion power when it becomes available, which realistically might not be for many decades. Add in non fossil fuel options for vehicles (biofuel, battery or hydrogen) and we might actually break our dependency on coal and oil entirely.

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      Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
    3. Re:Man up! by iroll · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Really? You must not have gotten the memo about all of the semiconductor fabs that are Superfund sites. They don't generate toxic waste when they're being operated, but they generate a boat load when they're being manufactured. And they don't last forever, so you're going to keep on generating that waste.

      All sources of power have waste associated with them, and some of that waste is toxic. Nuclear power generates *very* toxic waste, but that waste can also be condensed into a tinier volume (per joule of energy produced) than any other source of power. So, you can--realistically, through reprocessing--have all of the waste for an entire generation from an entire country fit into a very dangerous house, or you can have stadiums and stadiums of 'less' toxic (but still deadly) waste. That's what we deal with every day.

      It's all about optimizing. I'm a huge fan of mixed power generation. Solar and wind should be in the mix, but we shouldn't kid ourselves and pretend they're a panacea.

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      Repetition does not transform a lie into the truth. - FDR
    4. Re:Man up! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      Some greenpeace twit will find a cute specie of whatever, living in that 2% you propose... This is why we cant have nice things.

  2. Re:heat generated would dissipate into the ocean by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    france has a long history of nuclear underwater. Look at all the south pacific atolls that theyve nuked as testing nuclear weapons wasnt considered safe to do in france.... warning warning....

  3. Re:heat generated would dissipate into the ocean by Relic+of+the+Future · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And? The heat for every nuclear plant dissipates into a nearby body of water, and they all flow into the sea. There's no other way to efficiently move that much waste heat.

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    Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
  4. Re:I wonder why underwater? by Dog's_Breakfast · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Putting the powerplant underwater (as opposed to on a floating platform) would have a big advantage in protecting it from storms. Once you submerge about 60 meters, you are pretty much immune to the effects of even the biggest hurricanes or tsunamis.

  5. Re:Underwater nuclear power plant by h4rr4r · · Score: 4, Insightful

    1. A star is a fusion reactor. These reactors are fission powered.
    2. If you are willing to play this name changing game you can find these sorts of things in damn near everything.
    3. Fictional tales no matter how long ago they were written are not good predictors of future occurrences.

  6. Re:heat generated would dissipate into the ocean by RsG · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Uh, no.

    Thermodynamically the Earth is anything but a closed system. We lose heat into space. We gain heat from the sun, from atomic decay, from tidal forces, etc (the sun is the most significant of the lot, obviously). The planet is not a closed system, and it's a damn good thing for us that this is the case.

    I think what you meant to say was that it doesn't matter where exactly the waste heat from a power plant goes, as heat tends to equalize over time. But "closed system" is right out.

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    Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.