Underwater Nuclear Power Plant Proposed In France

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Underwater Nuclear Power Plant Proposed In France

Posted by timothy on Thursday January 20, 2011 @01:23PM 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."

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heat generated would dissipate into the ocean by jsepeta · 2011-01-20 13:28 · Score: 3, Interesting

i'm not sure that this is the best location for a nuclear plant, but it may lead to a cool james bond flick.

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Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
1. Re:heat generated would dissipate into the ocean by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-20 13:36 · 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....
2. Re:heat generated would dissipate into the ocean by Relic+of+the+Future · 2011-01-20 13:42 · 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.
  
  --
  Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
3. Re:heat generated would dissipate into the ocean by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-20 14:09 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  The cooling towers just make the whole thing cooler. Like the way Saruman's tower made him cooler.
4. Re:heat generated would dissipate into the ocean by GiveBenADollar · 2011-01-20 14:15 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Not every location that needs power has a body of water that can be used as a heat sink. Some power plants have cooling lakes built just for them. Some have cooling towers for the same reason. The most efficient is to be able to use the water of a running river or ocean, but they aren't always availible. Note that this is not just nuclear power plants but fossil fuel as well.
5. Re:heat generated would dissipate into the ocean by olsmeister · 2011-01-20 15:09 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  And here I thought it was just for the manatees....
6. Re:heat generated would dissipate into the ocean by Firethorn · 2011-01-20 16:26 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  No water is cycled through those reactors and back out - they are self contained.
  Uh, that's true for every halfway sane nuclear reactor out there.
  Most nuclear plants actually consist of two to three separate water loops - reactor core, which would be the heavy water that CANDU reactors(as well as others) use. The heat from this is transferred to the second which is used for the steam cycle that actually turns the turbines - this is generally treated distilled water. The last would be the water that's generally taken from a lake or river, and used to cool the steam water, then returned.
  Some plants combine the first two, directly using the water from the reactor to power the turbines.
  
  --
  I don't read AC A human right
7. Re:heat generated would dissipate into the ocean by magarity · 2011-01-20 17:04 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Then why do they have cooling towers?
  If the water were not cooled prior to putting it back in the local river or lake, the heat would kill all the fish and the algae would flourish like mad. The lake or river would be a nasty mess in short order.
8. Re:heat generated would dissipate into the ocean by RsG · 2011-01-20 18:49 · 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.
  
  --
  Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
9. Re:heat generated would dissipate into the ocean by phoenix321 · 2011-01-21 00:40 · Score: 2
  
  Using the city as a heatsink has been tried in many European countries, especially the Eastern parts.
  Benefits are clear, but you have to have a rather large network of rather large pipes around the city, transporting hot water or in some places steam.
  For examples, see
  http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:District_heating_pipelines_in_Wuppertal
  Lovely, eh?
  Disadvantages are
  - maintenance costs for an additional network of public utilities. High maintenance if steam is distributed instead of water
  - waste heat and water often leaking somewhere, if cities save on the above maintenance. Worse with steam pipes.
  - cannot be transported far, so it's impossible to built into a somewhat redundant grid (unlike electricity or gas) - if the power plant feeding the local hot water distribution fails, all homes are cold.
  - cannot be transported far, reaching outlying suburbs is impossible, homes need to be quite close to the power plant, rendering this option very undesirable for nuclear power plants. (Pipes transporting a physical medium from the nuclear reactor to the living room? Of course they have several levels of "impenetrable" heat exchangers as barriers between different circuits, but do you trust anyone else's Geiger counter?)
  and the main reason:
  The entire thing works only in winter. Waste heat must be dissipated through other means in summer, adding another set of equipment - cooling towers - that require capital expenditure and constant maintenance. Above a certain increased standard of living, electricity usage always has its absolute peak in summer, not coincidentally at the same time when demand for central heating is at its lowest.
  So it's a fine technology that works best in scenarios that have a) long, cold, dark winters, b) a low to medium standard of living, c) a high population density and d) low labor costs. For maximum efficiency, add e), the political power to centralize people around power plants or other large industrial heat source (forges, smelters etc.).
  In other words, perfect for the past Soviet Union, probably OK for dense northern cities in current Russia or China, less suitable for less-dens, less northern cities. Roughly half of Russia's land mass lies north of Canada's northern border, so it clearly can make more sense for them.
Man up! by gtirloni · 2011-01-20 13:30 · Score: 4, Insightful

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

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none
1. Re:Man up! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-20 13:31 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Because those are mutually exclusive, huh?
2. Re:Man up! by MrEricSir · 2011-01-20 13:36 · Score: 2
  
  Wind and solar are renewable and don't generate toxic waste, so there's that.
  
  --
  There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
3. Re:Man up! by RsG · 2011-01-20 13:43 · 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.
  
  --
  Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
4. Re:Man up! by dgatwood · 2011-01-20 13:52 · Score: 2
  
  Until you dispose of the panels after they fail.
  
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  Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
5. Re:Man up! by iroll · 2011-01-20 13:54 · 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.
  
  --
  Repetition does not transform a lie into the truth. - FDR
6. Re:Man up! by jack2000 · 2011-01-20 14:08 · Score: 2
  
  Have you read on the work some people are doing into reducing radioactive elements to less dangerous ones with high strength lasers? It's great stuff. If we expand on that technology we could further minimize the toxic footprint of the nuclear power plants.
7. Re:Man up! by marcello_dl · 2011-01-20 14:24 · Score: 2
  
  I wonder why I must be searched at the airport for some explosive in shoes while somebody else plans to produce radioactive waste that will still be dangerous when the grand-grandson of osama bin laden will need to check his prostate.
  If anybody has some unbiased cost projection for atomic energy that comprises the cost of storing and keeping an eye on waste till it's not dangerous anymore with the same attention that we have in the increasing surveillance towards average citizens, I'll be willing to reconsider my opinion.
  And if you're Italian recall that here the mafia is already trafficking with radioactive stuff, that Caorso nuclear reactor closed in the 80s has finished disposing of the waste only a year ago and that the reactor itself isn't decommissioned yet. Not that your opinion or mine will matter, since our Great Leader is pushing for nuclear without popular vote (after a popular vote had banned nuclear in the late 80s) so He won't listen anyway.
  
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  ---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
8. Re:Man up! by mug+funky · 2011-01-20 14:58 · Score: 2
  
  something to do with one superpower currently controlling almost the entire supply of the metals needed to make the special magnets that allow efficient wind turbines?
9. Re:Man up! by bmo · 2011-01-20 14:58 · Score: 2
  
  We *can* bury waste like this for 10,000 years. It's called dumping in an abyssal plain (by sinking it into the mud kinetically the same way sediment cores are done) or into an oceanic trench to be recycled sooner by MomNature as it's subducted.
  The reasons why we don't already do this is 1, treaties, and 2, the "waste" is actually pretty valuable since it can be reprocessed and reused.
  Go ahead, what terrorist has the balls or the friggin' *finances* to go after something under a couple of miles of sea water *and* literally stuck under 60 feet of mud?
  The Thresher's nuclear fuel is at the bottom of the ocean. Nobody's gone after it after 50 years even though the resting place is easily found by anyone caring to look in a library and it's pretty unlikely anyone ever will.
  --
  BMO
10. Re:Man up! by Cwix · 2011-01-20 15:23 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  You bet that it requires more electricity then it ever produced to recycle it?
  I bet your full of shit.
  Neither of our bets are based on any sort of facts.
  
  --
  You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
11. Re:Man up! by lennier · 2011-01-20 15:23 · Score: 2
  
  I wonder when will people stop wasting time with wind/solar and man up to nuclear energy.
  When we learn to stop worrying and love catastrophic radiation leaks.
  
  --
  You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
12. Re:Man up! by Cwix · 2011-01-20 15:25 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Ecologically it makes more sense to just recycle the damn stuff, so it doesn't turn the world into Fallout 3.
  
  --
  You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
13. Re:Man up! by Intrepid+imaginaut · 2011-01-20 15:29 · Score: 2
  
  This will leave a power deficit
  As I've already posted in this discussion, no it won't. 2% of the uninhabited Sahara covered in photovoltaic cells = the entirety of the world's energy requirements.
14. Re:Man up! by catmistake · 2011-01-20 15:58 · Score: 2
  
  Riiight... because putting a nuclear reactor at the bottom of the ocean couldn't be any more difficult or dangerous than, you know, drilling into underwater oil fields. What could possibly go wrong?
  
  --
  The Admin and the Engineer
15. Re:Man up! by Jeremi · 2011-01-20 17:05 · Score: 2
  
  Cute species of whatever are nice things...
  
  --
  
  I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
16. Re:Man up! by Jeremi · 2011-01-20 17:16 · Score: 2
  
  Not really. It's not like Jerusalem, where there can be only one. If someone doesn't like getting power from Big Sahara Solar Array, it's perfectly straightforward for them to set up their own solar array and use that instead. Even North Korea and Iran can use solar, without getting on the US shit list for doing so.
  And in real life it's unlikely that anyone would build a single array that large anyway. Instead you'd end up with many smaller arrays in various locations, with their combined output (eventually) adding up to however much power humanity feels it needs to produce.
  
  --
  
  I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
17. Re:Man up! by nedlohs · 2011-01-20 18:03 · Score: 2
  
  Maybe you should try looking at those laws again. Or think about what "produced" means in that context.
18. Re:Man up! by iroll · 2011-01-20 19:40 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  What site? The site of a repository or the site of a wrecked truck?
  Nuclear waste is not the only toxic waste that must be held in repositories forever. Your children's children have a lot of places to avoid, and nuclear material inhabits the least of those areas.
  The site of the wrecked truck would NOT be uninhabitable for decades; in fact, it would be inhabitable in a matter of days to weeks, because it could be completely cleaned up. Completely. Cleaned. Up. In ways that other chemical spills could never be cleaned up, with the dangerous material gathered up and removed to its some holding place in a way that many other chemical contaminants never can be.
  And there are holding places, probably closer to you than you think, probably holding more mobile and more immediately threatening things than nuclear waste, that will be around until geology itself takes care of them.
  What does half-life have to do with it?
  There is no half-life for arsenic-laced mine tailings that cover miles and miles of land. There is no half-life for mercury.
  There is no half-life for coal ash.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly_ash_slurry_spill
  There is no half-life for alumina sludge.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajka_alumina_plant_accident
  There is no half-life for heavy metals pollution and the half-life of many chlorinated compounds, like dioxins (e.g. agent orange), reaches well beyond a human lifetime. You claim that nuclear waste pushes the problem to the future. This is in no way unique. Not in terms of half-life. Certainly not in terms of volume.
  Like I said, nuclear power produces toxic waste. That waste is *very* toxic. But you have a fundamental misconception of how much very toxic waste we deal with routinely. Nuclear waste is different, but not in many of the ways that you think it is.
  Nuclear waste is among the most acutely dangerous wastes, but it comes in a much smaller volume than many other *very* toxic wastes that we produce, store, and avoid. It also comes in a package that, chemically and physically, is harder to 'lose' in the environment.
  I'm not downplaying nuclear waste. I don't deny that it's a problem. I'm trying to express to you the gravity of the other wastes we deal with, and help you put them in perspective. The problem is that you never heard people talking in hushed tones about 'alumina bombs,' or that you never saw pictures of chromium VI leveling a city. The problem is that we do a good enough job of dealing with all of the other toxic substances out there that you have no appreciation for how much--and how dangerous--the other stuff is. When put in perspective, nuclear waste is a bad actor among bad actors, but not in all cases the worst. The problem is that without an appreciation for how truly bad the 'normal' toxic waste is, you think comparisons must necessarily be white-washing nuclear waste. The problem is that you will not understand the gravity of these substances, because you don't have to.
  There is no arguing facts about nuclear waste when your first association is bombs, or when you think that 'thousands of years of toxicity' is something unique to radioactive waste, and not the norm, or when you think there are 'true' solutions for any of these things. You don't have to like, accept, or advocate for nuclear energy, but you can't make appeals to reason when you don't even know the real reasons why you should be concerned.
  
  --
  Repetition does not transform a lie into the truth. - FDR
Well, I can see the tradeoffs. by RsG · 2011-01-20 13:35 · Score: 3, Interesting

On the one hand, you're introducing corrosive seawater to the mix. And you're putting it in a cramped, high pressure environment, though if it's heavily automated that won't cause as many problems as if it had a large full time crew aboard.
On the positive side, you've now got a handy, high heat capacity, thermally conductive environment to work with, which nuke plants benefit from. And you're making it such that any contamination from a disaster will be limited to irradiated seawater instead of airborne fallout, which is a good trade off as far as limiting both human and environmental damage goes. Not that contaminating the water is a good thing, but airborne fallout is much, much worse.
Plus, when you want to decommission one of these things, you can tow it to wherever it's going, instead of dismantling it on-site and taking it away in pieces.

--
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
1. Re:Well, I can see the tradeoffs. by thatskinnyguy · 2011-01-20 15:49 · Score: 2
  
  Desalination. That's the first step to nuclear coolant.
  
  --
  The game.
2. Re:Well, I can see the tradeoffs. by plague911 · 2011-01-20 16:46 · Score: 2
  
  Realistic question/statement (I do not know the answer). Could contaminating the ocean bed cause spread the toxic chemical to all the worlds oceans? Things tend to precipitate out of the air quicker than they do water, thus im envisioning the ocean spreading the contamination further?
I wonder why underwater? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2011-01-20 13:37 · Score: 4, Interesting

My impression(not speaking as an expert shipwright or anything) is that if you want to take a land-based system and get it going for reliable marine use, you'll be lucky if the cost doubles(Boat. Noun. A hole in the water into which one pours money). That, though, I I can see the benefits of. The art and science of building large floating objects is pretty well established, and then you pretty much plunk the reactor on top of that. Nice and portable, coolant all around, and sure beats trying to make your nuclear reactor a helicopter or something. Float it where you need it, run a glorified extension cable to shore, and away you go.

Underwater, though, just seems like a recipe for making the whole thing even more expensive than on the water, along with harder to monitor and maintain, and likely to be much more exciting if there is a steam leak or something. Is there some advantage that I am not seeing, or is this a case of "when you are a post-cold-war-nuclear-submarine-designer everything looks like it needs an underwater nuclear reactor"?
1. Re:I wonder why underwater? by RsG · 2011-01-20 13:48 · Score: 2
  
  The biggest advantage I can see, which I posted just before you did, is containment. A surface nuclear power plant gets the same benefit as a submerged one in terms of cooling and remoteness, but in the event of a catastrophic failure, the underwater one will not send tons of fallout into the stratosphere. You'd still get some contamination making it into the air via the hydrological cycle (think Tritium contaminated rainfall), but not on the same order of magnitude as if the same disaster had occurred on the surface.
  
  --
  Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
2. Re:I wonder why underwater? by hairyfish · 2011-01-20 13:49 · Score: 2
  
  There are huge cost savings with not having to buy real estate, deal with local govt, residents, hippies etc. All the uncontrollable costs which add the most to power plant costs. A fully portable unit would have fixed costs every time, and can be built in volume. I wouldn't be surprised if it actually works out cheaper overall once all social/political costs that are normally associated with a regular power plant are factored in
3. Re:I wonder why underwater? by Dog's_Breakfast · 2011-01-20 13:53 · 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.
4. Re:I wonder why underwater? by AchilleTalon · 2011-01-20 13:58 · Score: 2
  
  Security is probably another advantage to add to those already mentioned. At a depth of 100 meters, it is not easily accessible and it is then probably easier to secure from any unauthorized access.
  
  --
  Achille Talon
  Hop!
5. Re:I wonder why underwater? by GiveBenADollar · 2011-01-20 14:25 · Score: 2
  
  Ahem. You are looking at the electrical production of submarines, not the thermal output of the reactor. Electrical production is around 10% and the main engine takes the other 90%, if you remove the main engine and substitute a huge generator set a couple hundred megawatts should be easy.
6. Re:I wonder why underwater? by Sulphur · 2011-01-20 14:36 · Score: 2
  
  Submarine reactors are measured in tens of kilowatts, much too small to be of practical use for power generation.
  Akula class sub: 100,000 hp, or 74.6 Mw at the shaft.
7. Re:I wonder why underwater? by ShakaUVM · 2011-01-20 17:11 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  >>Security is probably another advantage to add to those already mentioned. At a depth of 100 meters, it is not easily accessible and it is then probably easier to secure from any unauthorized access.
  Efficiency is also a nice plus. As we all know from physics, the efficiency of an engine depends on the size of the difference in temperature between the hot and cold reservoirs. The colder the water you pump in, the more work you can extract from a cycle.
  On a related note, France has had to shut down some of its reactors during the heat waves they've been getting in recent years, due to the plants' water supply becoming too warm. For a country that relies on nukes for its power, I can see why they'd find marine plants to be attractive.
  It all comes down to cost, though. TFA had no information on pricing.
Re:Underwater nuclear power plant by Delarth799 · 2011-01-20 13:56 · Score: 3, Funny

Just sharks with lazer beams is out of touch with the times and very misleading. See this is nuclear power plants as as the mass public known that means deformed animals, toxic waste, and death clouds of such massive proportions they could cover half of Russia. There won't be any sharks with lazer beams if this reactor gets launched, no instead it will be two, three, and four headed mutant sharks with lazer beams that shoot mutant miniature sharks with lazer beams and sludge balls of toxic waste.
Re:NIMBY by sakdoctor · 2011-01-20 14:00 · Score: 2

you can't crash a plane into a reactor under the ocean.
Did you ever see that footage of a test jet crashing into a containment building?
There wasn't a scratch on the concrete, but the plane was pulverised into fine dust.
Re:Underwater nuclear power plant by h4rr4r · 2011-01-20 14:04 · 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.
MWe by Doug+Neal · 2011-01-20 14:55 · Score: 2

MWe, is that a French megawatt? Une megawatte?
1. Re:MWe by Brannoncyll · 2011-01-20 15:20 · Score: 2
  
  I was trying to figure that one out myself. I settled on 1MW * 2.718281....
2. Re:MWe by GiveBenADollar · 2011-01-20 15:34 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  MWe = Megawatt electric
Re:Underwater nuclear power plant by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-20 15:15 · Score: 2, Informative

everytime I hear about nuclear and water I recall the wormwood=chernobyl reference
This reference is spurious at best.
In the Bible (that is, in Revelation) the Greek word is apsinthos, referring to the common wormwood plant (artemisia absinthium). Ukrainian chornobyl, on the other hand, does not mean "wormwood", but "mugwort" (artemisia vulgaris), which is a related, but different plant. The Ukrainian for "wormwood" is polyn hirky, the Russian is polyn' gor'kaya. No resemblance to Chernobyl there.
This is exactly the kind of reference constructed by people insistent on reading references to the present into fictional texts of the past. As soon as you look at things in detail, these references tend to break down.
Re:What semiconductors? by Intrepid+imaginaut · 2011-01-20 15:44 · Score: 2

Compare the power generated, per kilogram of mass as constructed, between a nuclear power plant and a wind farm, and then consider the useful lifespan of that mass.
Sure, nuclear comes in at three times the cost of wind.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_new_nuclear_power_plants
Re:Underwater nuclear power plant by Redlazer · 2011-01-20 22:05 · Score: 2

No, they're pretty easy to explain: They're coincidences.

--
Guns don't kill people, "with glowing hearts" kills people.