Thanks. That's a key question. Inclement weather is a challenge, but not an unmanageable one. Case in point, behold the Prelude [1], Shell's new 500m long float

Thanks. That's a key question. Inclement weather is a challenge, but not an unmanageable one. Case in point, behold the Prelude [1], Shell's new 500m long floating LNG facility (and the biggest ship in the world). It is designed to handle a category 5 cyclone off the north-western coast of Australia (the crew may be evacuated beforehand though). You can design ships to handle pretty much anything, for a price. Finding the balance is required. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prelude_FLNG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prelude_FLNG Another new concern of offshore nuclear is the physical protection. Can some terrorist in a mini-sub get near it and sink it? With high frequency sonar and whatnot this should be doable. It's probably harder to get to a big ship than to a land-based plant. And again the worst case would be the sink and recover plan.