Russia's Floating Nuclear Plants Under Fire From Greens 234
slashdotmsiriv writes with a link to an International Business Times article about Russia's plan to build floating nuclear power plants (a subject we discussed some time ago). The project is getting a lot of flack over possible safety problems from green groups. "The first floating power plant will be named 'Academician Lomonosov.' Mikhail Lomonosov was an 18th- century Russian scientist who achieved worldwide acclaim for his work in chemistry and physics and was founder of Moscow's state university. Customers could include Russian state-controlled gas giant Gazprom, the northern region of Chukotka and countries from Namibia to Indonesia, according to industry sources."
Surprising? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Surprising? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you can broaden your question to be "Has ANYTHING Energy related not taken flak from green groups?"
Re:Surprising? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you can broaden your question to be "Has ANYTHING not taken flak from green groups?"
Re:Surprising? (Score:5, Funny)
The Amish
Re:Surprising? (Score:5, Funny)
-Vegan environmentalist
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What makes that funnier... (Score:2)
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Right! And nuclear waste is NOT pollution! </snark>
Waste != Pollution (Score:5, Insightful)
I make a distinction between waste and pollution.
A barrel of waste in a containment facility isn't pollution. Mercury, in a container, is a valuable product for commercial use. Mercury that's escaped the smokestack of a coal power plant is pollution.
Basically, since we contain all the nuclear waste quite successfully(esp compared to coal power), it's not pollution.
Having seen the figures for realworld deaths caused by the pollution of coal power, combined with it's safety record and the figures screamed by the greens for worst-case nuclear disasters*, I'd rather go with the proven safety record of nuclear.
*That aren't even panned out for the worst nuclear power disaster in history, Chernobyl.
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* By the way, it's not good:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_civilian_nucl ear_accidents [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_nucl ear_accidents [wikipedia.org]
Re:Waste != Pollution (Score:5, Insightful)
A breeder reactor can reuse almost all of the high-level nuclear waste. I hate to see them just bury some potentially useful fuel, especially when the future supply of fissionable material is limited.
breeder reactors... (Score:2)
A breeder reactor can reuse almost all of the high-level nuclear waste. I hate to see them just bury some potentially useful fuel, especially when the future supply of fissionable material is limited.
It's limited only by the fact that we built up quite a stockpile during the cold war and that's limited continued exploration.
For that matter I've always figured that if they interred used reactor rods in Yucca Mountain or els
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If Nuclear was perceived as safe by the voting public then they probably would recycle more.
Re:Waste != Pollution (Score:5, Insightful)
Should the last 65 years* be considered statically significant on the performance for the next 100,000?
* By the way, it's not good:
Not good? Compared to what? Coal power?
Particulate emissions from power blamed for 30,000 deaths/year [sierraclub.org]
Coal power blamed for 22,000 premature deaths, in the USA, per year [nrdc.org]
From your links:
2000-2006: 13 workers exposed to 'slight' or 'trace' levels of radiation, one plant had increased radioactive levels about 10% over ambient for "several days" in Hungary. This was considered a critical event. Overall level probably still less than ambient in Colorado Springs. Deaths: None.
1990's: Deaths: 2 Japanese workers at a uranium reprocessing facility who violated procedures. Will likely increase to 3 eventually. Exposed: 2k or so Russian workers exposed to up to 50mSv(half the allowed 5 year dosage). Happened at a plutonium reprocessing facility; most likely nuclear weapons related. Unknown number(but probably under ten) Georgian soldiers; from a military training source, not nuclear power.
1980s: Chernobyl, currently blamed for 93k possible future deaths by Greenpeace(hardly a dispartial source), current death toll by the other side is placed at just over a hundred. The models predicting thousands of deaths use the linear no-threshold model, which is in dispute. Studys on low level radiation exposure actually suggest a negative correlation with cancer(IE more radiation, up to a point, leads to less cancer). Besides Chernobyl, there was 1 other civilian fatality, and 13 Russian navy members died in two submarine accidents. There were four other exposure incidents; half military half civilian, two escaped containment.
I'm skipping earlier than the 1980s. Nuclear power in the '70s was just under development, it'd be like using the model-T to express car safety. The models are just that different.
Even if we take greenpeace's number, pad to to 100k for two decades, that's still 1/6th the death toll as experienced in the USA ALONE for coal power over the same time. And Chernobyl was a worse than worst case scenario; especially when compared to the safety of US plants.
Even Russian power plants are far safer today; Chernobyl was their wakeup, as TMI was ours.
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We still continue to
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TMI was the first US meltdown of an operational power plant. Most of the rest of the accidents and disasters were at experimental plants. Those are to be expected, much like Marie Curie [wikipedia.org]'s death because we didn't have a clue about radiation at the time. Today we have that knowledge.
I'm still going to call it a wakeup call because it spured a fairly massive shift towards safety in nuclear operations. Ch
TNSTAAFL (Score:2)
I'd much rather take all the best engineers in the U.S., and throw them at
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Where did I refer to nuclear power as perfectly safe? I believe I've addressed it in the context of it's alternatives. As for remaining a problem for longer than our known history, the simple use of breeder reactors or Integral Fast Reactor [wikipedia.org] would also allow known reserves to last far longer th
IRF is a possible solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Critical point: The present alternative, coal, is presently blamed for 24k deaths/year in the USA from respitory ailme
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That would indeed work, but most of us nukees also realize that the rods that are currently marked as waste still have quite a bit of potential life in them, and we'd rather the political community allow us to build some new plants to exploit that.
Plus, I don't like air pollution anyways
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So in fact you do not have a 10000 year storage problem. You have "we do not invest enough into the exploration of space" problem. Anything else aside, there is plenty of space to dump stuff or leave it cool off once you leave the confines of the earth atmosphere.
Why shoot it into the sun? (Score:3, Informative)
First of all, you trust their stats? (Score:2)
And who do you think is paying them to say that, eh?
I'll give you a guess -- who's the best friend of the oil industry? (The answer isn't the nuclear industry)
You've probably seen their commercials on TV; they run these saccharine spots with too-cute, ethnically-diverse kids playing in a field, ostensibly in the shadow of their friendly local...coal-burning power plant.
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Never mind, I hadn't realized the scale of these power plants. Still not so sure I believe ...
...otherwise it's really a neat idea, so long as they aren't bullshitting everyone. Wouldn't want to see a tsunami prove these guys liars and all.
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Ok, I'm too stoned (on codeine) and sick to continue this. Co-60 is a red haring.
Of the 100 million curies (4 exabecquerels) of radioactive material, the short lived radioactive isotopes such as I131 Chernobyl released were initially the most dangerous. Due to their short half-lives of 5 and 8 days they have now decayed, leaving the more long-lived Cs 137 (with a half-life of 30.07 years) and Sr 90 (with a half-life of 28.78 years) as main dangers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_poisoning#N uclear_reactor_accidents [wikipedia.org]
The groundwater issue I was talking about seems to have subsided a bit in the years since I've read up on it (more likely it's better understood). It's still an issue though.
Fig. 3 shows a 2D plot of the total elevation level of the Shelter site above Baltic Sea level in m. Furthermore the positions of observations wells for investigation of the groundwater and the aspiration units for air contamination sampling are depicted. Fig. 4 shows Shelter site from the north-west with height profile of the territory and the groundwater table. Fig. 5 shows the groundwater contamination with the radionuclide Sr 90, the contamination for Cs 137 is very similar.
http://gis2.esri.com/library/userconf/proc02/pap06 58/p0658.htm [esri.com] Ctl+F "5.3" - for the appropriate section (nice graph).
I think you just killed my immune system. :)
Re:Surprising? (Score:5, Interesting)
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There's a lot of fissionable material left in most modern nuclear "waste" (fuel rods removed from reactors) which isn't recovered for political reasons (Carter banned reprocessing in the U.S. because he thought it would encourage weapons production elsewhere). That stuff would even be economical to reprocess, according to most analyses that I've read.
Beyond that, once you've fissi
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Or do you think all that Uranium naturally sitting in the ground, or dissolved into the ocean, is harmless?
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And get usefull amounts of other valuable metals while you're at it. The mounds of salt might be a pain in the butt to move though...
What an Americo-centric comment! (Score:4, Funny)
Has ANYTHING Nuclear related not taken flak from green groups?
You've obviously never watched "Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster". Those Japanese hippies partying on the side of Mt. Fuji get damn near wiped out by Hedorah before Godzilla saves their grubby, unwashed, marijuana-reeking asses. By the end of the movie, they're so damn happy they've lived to smoke another joint that they'd probably OK the installation of a Chernobyl-style reactor right next to the free-love commune where they all live.
GMD
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Don't get me wrong, I support nuclear power. I think we should get a good nuclear power design with certain requirements on building locations etc, have it pretty strict, but once approved h
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Or, regardless of what you may think of the source [freerepublic.com], the data is accurate. The last quote is the most OT here.
A few examples:
STALKER sequel? (Score:2)
What about nuclear submarines? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:What about nuclear submarines? (Score:5, Interesting)
Even with the cost of Russian labor, it would be tricky just to move and install this thing, complete with power cables, mooring lines, etc for 200K. It therefore follows that they already have the reactor. Where do Russians get surplus reactors? From subs that aren't seaworthy any more.
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The only difference here is that you put it on a small dedicated ship and not on a monster the size of some smaller supertankers dedicated to going at 16+ knots through the arctic ice.
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Okay then. What about the reactors in some of our Navy's aircraft carriers?
They sure as hell aren't "tiny" by any stretch of the imagination.
Re:What about nuclear submarines? (Score:5, Funny)
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-matthew
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They were up in arms, until the Russian government took the critics on a safety demonstration to the Barents See in one of their subs.
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Yeah, real great argument there. Those union people must be so bad at their jobs how can we trust them with anymore? Especially since it's not like they get specialized training or ce
Wow, are you clueless (Score:2)
Not exactly news (Score:2)
Also I see a some discrepancies between this article and others. Aside from the obvious claim that this is the first floating nuclear power plant in history (I guess if you don't count 11 carriers, a couple dozen cruisers, and well over 100 submarines for the USN alone, none of which have had a nuclear accident, btw), the BBC quotes it as costing $336 milli
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MAD (Score:2)
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If we get bored we can always discuss the latest advancement in Soviet Russian Cell Phone technology. No batteries required - it burns coal. And you don't want to make calls on it, because in Soviet Russia, cell phone listens to YOU! All your calls are belong to KGB.
Speaking of which (obligatory Chernobyl reference), in Soviet Russia, atomic reactor nukes YOU!
Look out for these next russian new product announcements
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With this taken into consideration, I think they are on par if not at a cheaper level because you would separate a portion of the workers pay to qualify for food and shelter that a normal civilian might not get paid.
I think the overall size of the ship would be larger creating the need to more fuel and bigger engines to
20 journalists have died in Russia (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you think Putin cares about the green party.
Re:20 journalists have died in Russia (Score:4, Funny)
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Protest Information (Score:5, Funny)
--VladP
anti-environment terrorism (Score:2)
http://www.westernstatescenter.org/publications/d
Sponsored Links (Score:3, Funny)
Fuel Rods
Whatever you're looking for
you can get it on EBay
www.eBay.com
A bit outside their market..? (Score:4, Funny)
Mafia state (Score:2)
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US (and quite many other countries) are also run by mafia. Just different kind of mafia. So, point is
What are the risks vs. benefits? (Score:5, Interesting)
Benefits:
1) No immediate population centers. This gives any fallout time to disperse in case of a major failure.
2) Portability. Aside from the commercial advantages (shift reactors to high demand areas, no building costs for new locations/shutdown and cleanup costs for areas suddenly with low demand, etc) things like this could be moved off the coasts of disaster regions to provide major power to devastated areas quickly.
3) If they build it to be submersible, they can simply ride out any storm below the wave level. This means a lot of the extreme construction required for fixed-target plant defenses (storm and hostile) becomes less critical.
Risks:
1) Reliability engineering may prove a challenge for large scale plants. This is unknown at present, and I didn't see enough information handy as to studies done on the designs. You need to simulate the heck out of these things, and design failsafe (I wonder if it could be made provably failsafe...)
2) If a large amount of radioactive material gets dumped accidentally into a major ocean current (I should think this an unlikely failure mode with correct designs, but just suppose...), I'm not sure about the effects - better or worse than venting into the atmosphere? Will it simply sink and stay in one area, eventually recoverable?
Using truly modern designs, I am willing to believe the risk of major disaster can be made very small. (It seems like the human element was the least accounted for in older designs, so including that in the designs this time around should help...) This is a very interesting idea, and I think it deserves a detailed study to ascertain its risks, benefits, and whether it is practical with current technology.
Re:What are the risks vs. benefits? (Score:4, Interesting)
1. Reliability. For any nuclear power plant of any design, the key to reliability is ensuring its structures, systems, and components (SSCs) are by themselves reliable (a chain only being as strong as its weakest link), and more importantly, qualified to meet rigorous standards during harsh (i.e., accident) operating conditions. In the U.S., the Maintenance Rule (10CFR 50.65) requires that reliability and unavailability records be always available for NRC audit. This is a big factor in why US plants have astronomical production records compared to even 10 years ago. Simply put, using proven components is a Good Thing(TM).
2. Radiation material release. Dilution is the solution to pollution. The risk of cancers (thyroid, bone) is already conservatively overestimated by using current methods, and conservative standards ensure these risks are further minimized. And let's be clear on this: any operating nuclear power plant periodically performs a controlled release of radioactive material into the environment during the course of its operation. These releases ensure that the activity levels are low, the wind is going in a proper direction, and that once diluted, are inconsequential with regard to risk. I'd like to say nuclear is pollution-free, but it I would be lying. But the nature and level of that pollution's release is tightly controlled so as to be safe.
You are absolutely correct about the effects of human intervention: if the machine was left alone, TMI-1's core collapse would not have occurred (operations belatedly closed off the source of the initial primary coolant loss - a stuck-open valve - but it also closed off the core's cooling path, which was through this valve); Chernobyl's catastrophic reactivity/steam explosion would not have occurred if operators did not conduct an ill-conceived experiment to maximize production.
Modern Western designs incorporate a great deal of lessons learned from the past. They incorporate a great deal of redundancy, or have features that allow an operator a great deal of time to take action, in case of an emergency.
One other thought: I'll call these "barge" nukes - are not a new concept. They were conceived in the 60's, and several US nukes in operation today were originally intended to be on barges, towed to a transmission site, and operated from there. Typically, these units had small containment volumes, which necessitated the invention of ice condenser systems to absorb the energy from a loss of coolant accident. The barge thing didn't fly, but these plants currently operate on land, but retain the ice condenser feature. Nice cold containments.
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There is very little ocean that is a) within the (legal) control of the US that is b) not in somebody's backyard. Just for one example.
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Materials science and QA has progressed a lot in the past 20 years. For project design and management you'd probably want Norskies or Canucks. For construction, South Korea is probably best, but for mega-projects things tend to get distributed around the world. Facilities this size are modular and are quite amazing to see happen.
I'm a convert (Score:5, Insightful)
Really, it is the appropriate mid-range solution. Hydro plants are very good (the one in Quebec is amazingly huge), but you're limited in where you can have them. I don't agree with man-made lakes feeding Dam hydro, and tidal/wind are a ways off yet... nuclear is the way to go to get rid of gas and coal plants, that are doing more to mess up our environment than one glowing bar lost in Homers shirt ever could.
And a floating plant? It's not like it's riding on an inner tube, where one errant bb pellet is going to take the whole thing down. It doesn't exactly fill me with joy to consider it, but at the same time, it does have aspects that make sense, and if it'll get some more strip mines closed, I'm all for it.
You are almost there (Score:2)
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You're right, of course, and everyone keeps overlooking reprocessing. The problem seems to be capitalist in nature, because I doubt the mighty Uranium Mining Conglomerate has enough power to hold back this technology, but somebody sure is. There is, technically, no reason (that I know of) that we should even be digging for more right now... use what we have, reprocess, and use again, until it's nothing left but an inert carbon rod. Then we put it in the back of a car, parade
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Entropy means that any fuel when burned will work towards the lowest (and most stable) energy state.
I understand your sentiment, and yes, some of the transuranic elements are more hazardous than U235/U238, but by law of thermodynamics they are more stable.
-nB
three words (Score:3, Insightful)
no china syndrome there, there's no chance it can melt down
your attitude needs to catch up with the latest technology
i don't blame you, but a lot of people's opinion of nuclear is based on 1960s era technology
and maybe, even with modern technology, with the much smaller risk, the risk still isn't worth it
but then you weigh that against hurricane katrina-making global warming, and petrol dollars that fund wahabbi islam and therefore islamic fundamentalism and terrorism via saudi arabia, suc
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We have had 2 incidents in the past 30 years that lead to widespread contamination: Chernobyl and Three Mile Island.
Actually, this is incorrect. While Three Mile Island did have an accident [wikipedia.org], it didn't lead to wide-spread contamination. The average exposure to the people nearby was only 8 millirem (about a chest x-ray worth) and the maximum exposure to anyone was 100 millirem (about a third of the yearly exposure from background sources). Hardly widespread contamination.
Also the chance of a disaster
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As for the accidents... 3 mile island, no fatalities, no injuries, no serious radiation leakage, and the site is still used today.
Chernobyl... safetys disabled, untrained techs runn
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With today's plants, even terrorists in control of the plant would have trouble releasing a significant amount of radiation from the core before we could drive an armored brigade up to the plant to take it back.
The "Green" Movement has good and bad points (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Wind farms are decried for noise, wiping out birds, and ruining the view.
2) Solar power is objected to in terms of the materials/processes needed to make the cells and the ecological effects of shadowing large portions of the landscape.
Geothermal is probably the only case where I don't know of any major objections, but geothermal cannot power everything we do. The fundamental truth is that extraction of energy from the surrounding environment (or introduction of it from storage by increased thermal/other emissions due to combustion/nuclear processes) MUST have an impact on the system. We cannot live without having an impact on the world around us - it is simply not possible. The concern is to minimize the negative effects of our activities while still doing what we need to do. Solar and wind appear to be much less intrusive compared to most current large scale power generation methods, and as such seem like logical directions to pursue. Reducing power usage is good but in the end our population is likely to expand either in activities or numbers to consume all possible economic power that we can generate.
I'm wondering if the folks objecting to this one are objecting on the grounds of practicality, or simply on the grounds that it is nuclear, period. If the latter, I think they will eventually need to face up to the fact that fossil fuels won't last forever and we are not going to abandon large scale power usage. The problem is thus defined as how do we sustain that usage without undue risk, not how do we live on power levels low enough to be generated without significant impact of any kind. The later is simply unrealistic and not a useful basis for discussion.
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You mean these guys [vhemt.org]?
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Many leaders of the "antis" have a political axe to grind and recruit well-meaning, attention-seeking but reality-challenged youth.
so (Score:2, Funny)
Ahh.. the good old days.. j/k
Nuclear Power is All Natural (Score:3, Funny)
Basic Nuclear Physics. Check.
Water. Check.
What's not to like? Uranium is all-natural.
I can think of a few good reasons? (Score:4, Insightful)
US Warships will degrade into a complete rustbucket if you stop doing maintenance for even a single week. One of the biggest expense accounts on any ship is the paint locker and it's associated gear of chipping hammers, knuckle dusters, needle guns, grinders and deck crawlers. You chip paint and then re-paint every single day, non-stop, 365 days a year. And every three years, you pull into drydock to get scoured from stem to stern in a right proper job, inside and out.
And this is just the painting maintenance.
Add in broken electronics, broken pumps, broken valves, broken flanges, bent hinges, worn gaskets and the flood of everyday things that continuously need fixing, upgrading or maintaining, and you suddenly understand why so much of our ship's budget goes towards maintenance.
The ocean is a VERY harsh environment, and it breaks things. Easily.
Our military is able to keep things running smoothly because they have the following:
1. MONEY.
2. Highly trained people. (Yes, even the deck apes.)
3. Highly trained civilian contractors on shore that can be sent to a ship in less than 48 hours.
4. Rules and regulations carved in steel that must be followed or else officers get fired or sent to Leavenworth.
5. MONEY.
This is why we can have nuclear reactors on aircraft carriers without them going *BOOM*. Also, ours are very small, meant only to supply power for the ship and it's crew.
Now then...
The Russians have:
1. No money.
2. No more highly trained people. (They all left because they weren't getting paid.)
3. No civilian contractors that aren't part of the Russian Mafia in some way.
4. No rules that can't be bent with a few rubles.
5. No money.
So please...explain to me just how having the Russians putting nuclear reactors-meant to supply power to cities on the shore-on THEIR ships would be a good idea?
Idiot (Score:2)
"This is the most dangerous project that has been launched by the atomic sector in the whole world over the past decade," said Ivan Blokov, campaign director of Greenpeace Russia, Thursday. "It is scary as this is basically going to be a floating atomic bomb."
I bet Mr. Blokov has no idea how brain-damaged that statement is. There are reasons to be concerned about floating nuclear power plants, but calling them "floating atomic bombs" just reveals his personal ignorance.
And labeling th
This ungrounded system... (Score:2)
Well, there are Nukes in Space... (Score:2)
(Maybe a city that's lost its power plants to terrorist bombs can Rent-a-Nuke, until they are replaced)
On the other hand, aren't Global Warming scientists predicting ever LARGER STORMS?
If they're right, who wants a floating nuke to spill radioactive bits into the sea?
This is stupid (Score:3, Interesting)
1. As anyone who has ever been aboard a boat or a ship knows, saltwater and the pounding from the sea shifting means an IMMENSE amount of maintainence has to be done, compared to keeping the same machines somewhere in a building on land. The tight passages that a ship has, or a floating vessel containing a power station, don't make things any easier. This means the salt water will rust all sorts of things, reducing the reactors life and making accidents more likely.
2. If in the event of a meltdown, the nuclear waste melts through the metal of the ship and drops into the ocean. While the 'china syndrome' may be FUD, (a melted nuclear pile going through rock til it hits groundwater - unlikely) this is very possible. Once in the ocean, the waste will be constantly polluting the seas through diffusion, and be extremely difficult to recover - how do you grab tons of highly radioactive slag off the seafloor?
Floating nuclear power plants aren't new (Score:2)
They are called aircraft carriers.
Also many (most?) submarines are nuclear powered, and they are designed to float (surface) from time to time.
I think someone needs to lead the green people (Score:2)
Ah the fun loving russians... (Score:3, Insightful)
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Who are these so-called. . . (Score:2)
I've never actually met a person who is concerned with trying to lead a clean and un-destructive life and who is also fundamentally closed off to logic and reason. Perhaps these 'Greens' are out there, but I don't think they are quite as prevalent as would justify the level of hostility being directed at them. It sounds like the same kind of vitriol which angry, blue-collar conservatives (who, sadly, I have met in quantity), direct at all the 'welfare moms' sponging their t