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The Nuclear Power Plant of the Future May Be Floating Near Russia
- accnumnplus1 8y agoClever way to distribute nuclear weapons capabilities?
- rtkwe 8y agoNo. Reactors don't fail or explode anything like atomic bombs. The only way this could house a nuclear weapon is by having a hidden missile silo somewhere in it and they already have nuclear missile subs for discreetly placing nuclear weapons close to their target.
- favorited 8y agoAn atomic bomb is not the only form a nuclear weapon. Reactor fuel (or related contaminated material) can be used to create a dirty bomb, which in some ways is more destructive. Not in the initial blast, but in rendering the contaminated area uninhabitable for decades or centuries.
- TeMPOraL 8y agoAren't dirty bombs considered a Hollywood trope, and not a weapon of any actual utility (except scaring people with the thought of it)? See e.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_bomb https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_bomb.
- m1573rp34130dy 8y agodirty bombs can function as a denial of access ordinance... when isotopes or persistent toxin are scattered spattered over an area the cleanup is prohibitively expensive , we than have a kiev/chornobl scenario...were this to happen on wall street or silicon valley, it would be a major setback, or we would have to requantify the acceptable titre of radionucliides in a "occupiable" region
- dogma1138 8y agoWhen you have 2000 nukes you don’t need dirty bombs for area denial the only ones who would be interested in dirty bombs would be non-state actors and those can’t build one and the few non-state actors that could are most part not stupid enough to build one because they actually want to keep what ever little regional power they have. Also reactor fuel is a terrible material for a dirty bomb because of its long half life time, you need materials which are much more active than that to be effective like those used in radioactive medicine and sensors those isotopes and are much more controlled than processed nuclear fuel and for a good reason.
- ams6110 8y agoRussia is conducting an experiment with nuclear power, one that backers say is a leading-edge feat of engineering but that critics call reckless. The country is unveiling a floating nuclear power plant. Um, "unveiling" ?? We've have floating nuclear power in submarines, aircraft carriers, maybe other vessels for half a century.
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- throwaway5752 8y agoYes, the article notes that, "The United States used a barge-based reactor to generate electricity for the Panama Canal Zone from 1968 until 1976, and Westinghouse, the American reactor builder, planned — but never built — two floating plants off the New Jersey coast at around that time" 1968! The interesting story is why the NYT's is running this and running with it now [not trying to be tin-hat, maybe it was just a slow news day, but you can find links posted on HN going back almost 5 years about this project]
- notyourwork 8y agoI dream of a time when there is a slow news day so they publish less content. Also dream of a day when you turn on a new station and breaking news is in fact breaking news.
- dgut 8y agoWhen I lived in Norway, this was pretty much the norm. They would publish gossip about celebrities and politicians all day instead.
- icc97 8y agoThis is designed to just generate power rather than to use it to power itself. Companies 'unveil' new cars every year, just because the basis has been done before does mean that you can't unveil it in a different format.
- wrong_variable 8y ago> "Rosatom plans to serially produce such floating nuclear plants, and is exploring various business plans, including retaining ownership of the reactors while selling the electricity they generate." No sane govt will allow a foreign power to literally be able to shutdown one of their cities on a whim. I think what the Russian Govt realized is that instead of building nuclear power plants, its going to be more profitable to hold the electric grid of some country hostage, just like the hard profit they make holding Europe hostage with their gas pipelines. EDIT: There a lot more issues I have with their idea but that was the one most striking to me. - How are going to supply electricity during a hurricane ? Most cites are located on the path to some hurricane / cyclone / tornado. - Coastlines near cities are expensive real estate (not to mention anyone with property there allowing a literal power nuclear plant blocking their view ) - it takes important real estate from ports that are much more useful for docking ships, etc. Its possible to build a separate port far away from the city; but then you have to pay the extra cost of building some extra infrastructure to deal with the ship, at that point its just easier to build your own power plant. - "Rosatom, in a statement, insisted its plant was 'invulnerable to tsunamis.'" Really ?? why are they trying to sell dumb electricity when they have the much more valuable technology of invincible ships. How many tsunamis has one of their ships survived exactly ?
- gaius 8y agoNo sane govt will allow a foreign power to literally be able to shutdown one of their cities on a whim. Western Europe is already critically dependent on Russian gas pipelines, so this would be no biggie. Russia needs the foreign currency desperately so it won’t act lightly.
- wrong_variable 8y agoWestern Europe is well aware of this fact this is why they are desperate to get the pipeline from Qatar built - which is not going anywhere because of destabilization in Syria (The pipeline needs to pass through Syria). Hmm.. I wonder which foreign power is helping prop up the Assad Regime Also Germany is building HVDC lines from solar power plants is Spain. Depending on Russia has already got us in the mess where Europe is unable to hold them accountable for a lot of crimes they have committed on European soil.
- ethbro 8y agoIt's a good idea. Afaik, naval nuclear power has a pretty good track record. Who knows if that will continue for commercial power generation? But at least it solves the stupid "perpetual one-off design" space nuclear power seems to have been stuck in. (Although I believe I read that at least France standardized all their reactor buildings?)
- mikeash 8y agoAmerican naval nuclear power has an excellent record. Russian, not so much. Skimming this list, I’m inclined to use the word “horrendous”: http://spb.org.ru/bellona/ehome/russia/nfl/nfl8.htm#O5 http://spb.org.ru/bellona/ehome/russia/nfl/nfl8.htm#O5
- trhway 8y ago>given the seeming importance of sobriety on such a vessel, have a drink at the bar. if the journalists ever mentioned the "importance of sobriety on such a vessel" in the presence of the crew, i'm pretty sure it immediately became the next, right after "Za mirnyy atom!", popular drinking toast on that ship. "Nu! za osobuyu vazhnost trezvosti na yadernom reaktore." Amen. These floating reactors aren't the future - you just don't want a potential Chernobyl delivered right to your city (just lookup the safety record of Russian nuclear submarines what these peaceful reactors are built after). These ships are a classic Russian solution (cheap, low tech simple/crude, without long-term thinking) to the typical Russian issue of lack of infrastructure at the time when climate change encourages and political situation pushes Russia to increase development in the North-East regions.
- halhod 8y agoI took a broader look at Russia's nuclear power program here - https://www.economist.com/europe/2018/08/02/the-world-relies-on-russia-to-build-its-nuclear-power-plants https://www.economist.com/europe/2018/08/02/the-world-relies...
- dredmorbius 8y agoYou're the Economist author? A point you might well have included is the topic (and perhaps, questions over authorship) of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin's PhD thesis: "Mineral and Raw Materials Resources And the Development Strategy for the Russian Economy". https://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2008/08/putins-thesis-raw-text/212739/ https://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2008/08/putin...
- stochastic_monk 8y agoI particularly enjoyed the Atoms For Peace subtitle, the name of one of Thom Yorke’s side projects.
- thx11389793 8y agoit's a reference to Eisenhower's famous 1953 speech
- jabbernotty 8y agoIt seems unfortunate that there are no author names on the Economist articles. One's work deserves recognition.
- _ph_ 8y agoThe nuclear power plant of the future can be found in a science museum. All dangers of a catastrophic accident aside, nuclear energy has become economically infeasible. Just recently, half-build powerplants have been abandoned in the US for pure financial reasons, and the other projects under constructions face severe cost problems too. And this is not counting for the still unsolved problem of disposing the nuclear waste. Meanwhile, solar and wind have become much cheaper than nuclear, and counting in the construction costs for new clean plants, even coal. The idea of putting a nuclear power plant on a float is faszinating. It solves cooling, allows relocation of the power plant and in the case of disaster, it can be dumped into the ocean, which is somewhat better than contaminating occupied land, but still isn't acceptable. Unless there is some significant breakthrough in operating costs and safety as well as a solution for the nuclear waste, nuclear isn't the future.
- dmos62 8y ago> unsolved problem of disposing the nuclear waste I'm not sure what you mean by unsolved disposal. Nuclear waste from power plants is stored in secure facilities. It takes up a manageable amount of space, is low maintanance and isn't dangerous. Furthermore, future reactors will be able to reuse it; the current reactors only use up a small fraction of the fuel. So actually, you wouldn't even want to throw it away. Also, nuclear fuel is advantageous logistically. A typical plant needs 1 train-load of fuel a year. That's a relatively small freight, you can ship that from anywhere around the world. On the other hand, for carbon-fuel powerplants, you need a train load of fuel per day. I'd love to see the planet off non-renewable-fuels, but a big hurdle is that, unless we figure out storage, the renewable energy sources have to be supplemented with something for when it's night and there's no wind. I don't see a better option for that something than nuclear. Of course, an alternative would be for society to switch to an energy usage scheme that doesn't presume that power is uninterruptable. However, that would require profound changes to our everyday lives, and I don't think we're quite mature enough as a species to go through with something like that at scale.
- fghhfgg 8y agoFuture reactors? Rosatom has 800 MW breeders now!
- ricksanch88 8y agoI am starting to get sick of environmentalists complaining, doing nothing to solve the issues their so "passionate" about, and then harassing / criticising any solution that gets proposed.
- ivanhoe 8y agoWhy not go one step further and make it fully submerged off the coast, to protect it from a bad weather?
- Skunkleton 8y agoI mean, this is pretty much just running an extension cord to a nuclear sub. Why not?
- brmgb 8y agoBecause there is zero market for it especially after Fukushima. It was tried by the recently privatised French military shipyards as a way to diversify (that's the Flexblue project mentioned in the article) and just couldn't be sold.
- Skunkleton 8y agoIts a shame IMO. There are lots of problems with nuclear power, but at least the problems are ones that make sense to humans. It seems like nuclear waste would be easier to handle than a ruined atmosphere.
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- pm90 8y agoIts cheaper to build a ship than a sub. Besides, the reactor would have to be close enough to the shore to run a power line etc. Unlikely to be affected by bad weather.
- icc97 8y agoFrom the article: > A French company has designed a reactor called Flexblue that would not float but rather be submerged on the ocean floor.
- ivanhoe 8y ago
- urchony 8y agoCan't believe somewhere in the world, someone is still harnessing nukes
- dang 8y agoCould you please not post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?
- icc97 8y agoJohn McCarthy has an interesting website over nuclear energy [0]. I can't vouch for how actually true it is, but it seems reasonably well argued. This was his comment over nuclear waste: > Q. What about nuclear waste? > A. The waste consists of the fission products. They are highly radioactive at first, but the most radioactive isotopes decay the fastest. (That's what being most radioactive amounts to). About one cubic meter of waste per year is generated by a power plant. It needs to be kept away from people. After 10 years, the fission products are 1,000 times less radioactive, and after 500 years, the fission products will be less radioactive than the uranium ore they are originally derived from. The cubic meter estimate assumes reprocessing, unfortunately not being done in the U.S. I'd always assumed 25,000 years for it to return to normal levels. [0]: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/nuclear-faq.html http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/nuclear-faq.html
- GW150914 8y agoI’m very pro-nuclear, we almost certainly need it while we improve renewables. However, 25,000 years or 500 years... it’s pretty much the same problem for us as a species. 500 years is significantly longer than the US has been a country, and represents a period of time measured in many many generations. 500 years of storage is a hard problem, and from the perspective of us, our kids, their kids, and their kids and a dozen generations after it might as well be a thousand, ten thousand, or 25,000 years. 500 years is longer than any of us will be alive and far longer than we can hope to predict the course of society and technology.
- icc97 8y ago
- mirimir 8y ago> Inside, the floating reactor is a warren of tight corridors, steep staircases, pipes, wires and warning signs in Cyrillic letters. What? So Russians would have warning signs in English? Indeed, the article overall sounds like anti-Russia propaganda. What's going on with the NY Times about Russia and China? Just grasping for clickbait?
- boomboomsubban 8y agoCyrillic is the writing system Russian uses, English is one of the many using the Latin system. I'm not seeing an anti-Russian slant here. The criticism is tame for an article on nuclear power, and they'd likely have the same concerns if this was a US project.
- mirimir 8y agoOK, I wasn't clear enough. The language is darkly evocative, of sloppiness and danger. I mean, "warren of tight corridors". And "steep staircases", which are very typical for ships, by the way. And "pipes, wires", which again is pretty typical, even for your average trendy restaurant. And "Cyrillic letters"? I'm not sure what to make of that. It rather states the obvious.
- cpncrunch 8y ago>I'm not sure what to make of that They're just trying to paint a picture for the reader.
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- mirimir 8y agoThat, we agree about.
- istjohn 8y agoDid you see the pictures? I'd say the description is accurate. The ship lacks the brightly-lit, clean, polished interior I would expect to see in a European, Asian, or American nuclear facility. It's kind of dingy looking to be blunt. Sure, a claustrophobic architecture is not surprising for a ship, but most readers' experience of large boats--if any--is likely to be with cruise ships. Should the author have omitted a physical description of the ship's features because a reasonable reader could have guessed them? Personally, I appreciate these kinds of small details. The article does flirt with open skepticism of the project, and I'm open to the possibility that this stance is unfair, but I don't think these atmospheric details cross any line when they seem quite apt looking at the accompanying pictures. Also, I agree with the comment above that says the critical tone is unsurprising for an article on nuclear tech, domestic or foreign.
- bayesian_horse 8y agoThings like "nuclear" and "floating near Russia" don't inspire confidence.
- siculars 8y agoThere isn’t a country on earth that would actually allow Russia to park an actual nuclear bomb off their coast. Even the ones aligned with Russia. Oh, how do you build a sarcophagus on a sunk nuclear reactor?
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- hvidgaard 8y agoThere is no need to build a sarcophagus around a sunken nuclear reactor. Water is a great radiation stopper, to the extend that you can actually build and operate an "open" reactor where you can look directly down to the core and see the blue glow from the Cherenkov radiation. It would probably be wise to fence it off somehow.
- spiralx 8y agoPerhaps like this one at Reed College in Portland? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLBcp3nJlFQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLBcp3nJlFQ
- gambiting 8y agoUhm, you don't, because water is absolutely fantastic at blocking radiation - just several meters of it would block literally all radiation from a reactor gone critical. Not to mention that nuclear reactors are not bombs, not any more than coal fired power plant boilers are bombs.
- petre 8y agoIt doesn't prevent radioactive elements leaking into the water though.
- spekulatius2410 8y agohmmmm, after we haven't mastered the technology on land. Now putting it out on the ocean will solve the issue for sure.
- Animats 8y agoThat's a lot of ship, plant, and staff for just 70MW. The Ford class of aircraft carriers generates about 700MW.
- petre 8y agoIt's 2 x 70 MWe or about 300 MWt. A4W reactors on Nimitz class aircraft carriers produce about 2 x 550 MWt which translates to about 100 MWe and 2 x 104 MW shaft power for propulsion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademik_Lomonosov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademik_Lomonosov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A4W_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A4W_reactor
- lisk1 8y agoIts worth mentioning that new turbines for generating electricity are in development with higher output compared to the steam powered turbines. This will basically increase the electrical output of the nuclear plant with the same amount of fuel which will make NPPs even more viable in the future
- ggm 8y agoDuring a power crisis caused by a high tension cable breakdown Auckland depended on ship borne power. I'm pretty sure it was GE gas turbines. There is a well understood model for mobile power, I don't see why this model can't work and guy lots of use cases. Nuclear why not? The loss of competence in nuclear engineering worldwide worries me. Do we need to start sending engineering grads to Brazil? Britain outsourced it's coming plants to China didn't it?