Russia Launches Floating Nuclear Power Plant That's Headed To the Arctic (npr.org) 163
Russia's state nuclear corporation Rosatom launched a massive floating nuclear power plant over the weekend. It's the first nuclear power plant of its kind and it's headed to an Arctic port, reports NPR. From the report: Called the Akademik Lomonosov, the floating power plant is being towed at a creeping pace out of St. Petersburg, where it was built over the last nine years. It will eventually be brought northward, to Murmansk -- where its two nuclear reactors will be loaded with nuclear fuel and started up this fall. From there, the power plant will be pulled to a mooring berth in the Arctic port of Pevek, in far northeast Russia. There, it will be wired into the infrastructure so it can replace an existing nuclear power installment on land. Russian officials say the mandate of the Akademik Lomonoso is to supply energy to remote industrial plants and port cities, and to offshore gas and oil platforms.
It will take more than a year for the power plant to reach its new home port. The original plan had called for fueling the floating plant before it began that journey, at the shipyard in central St. Petersburg -- but that was scuttled last summer, after concerns were raised both in Russia and in countries along the power plant's route through the Baltic Sea and north to the Arctic. "The nuclear power plant has two KLT-40S reactor units that can generate up to 70 MW of electric energy and 50 Gcal/hr of heat energy during its normal operation," Rosatom said. "This is enough to keep the activity of the town populated with 100,000 people."
It will take more than a year for the power plant to reach its new home port. The original plan had called for fueling the floating plant before it began that journey, at the shipyard in central St. Petersburg -- but that was scuttled last summer, after concerns were raised both in Russia and in countries along the power plant's route through the Baltic Sea and north to the Arctic. "The nuclear power plant has two KLT-40S reactor units that can generate up to 70 MW of electric energy and 50 Gcal/hr of heat energy during its normal operation," Rosatom said. "This is enough to keep the activity of the town populated with 100,000 people."
That's head to the Arctic (Score:2)
It's head to the Arctic
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Russians are doing nuclear things to the floating parts of the Arctic.
Russia replaces an existing nuclear power installment would just not read as well.
Arctic, that gets attention.
Re:That's head to the Arctic (Score:4, Interesting)
Russian nuclear icebreakers such as "Fifty Years of Victory" have been taking tourists to the North Pole during the Northern summer for over a decade now. They're only really needed for serious icebreaking during the winter around the northern coasts. They use the same KLT-35 reactors as the floating power barge mentioned in the article.
A major reason for this project is to supply electricity and heat to communities on the northern coasts supporting oil and gas exploration efforts in the Arctic. The Chinese are looking at similar floating nuclear power plants to provide electricity for the artificial islands they're constructing in the South China Sea as well as developing their own nuclear naval capabilities. They're not actually building anything yet though.
Re: (Score:2)
More than 12. There are 53 US nuclear attack submarines and 18 ballistic missile subs.
Re: That's head to the Arctic (Score:3)
I guess Russia is using barges so if something goes wrong they can just sink the barge and pretend it never existed.
Do you have any more stupid guesses that you'd like shot down or is that it?
Re: (Score:2)
The US already has 12 floating nuclear power plants. They are called aircraft carriers. Not to mention the sub-surface nuclear powered vessels.
^^This was a great point. You should have stopped there.
Re: (Score:2)
The two reactors on the barge are pressurised-water designs which are typically 30% efficient in converting heat into electrical power so they produce about 200MW of heat in total. Only part of the 140MW excess will be extracted as process heat for use ashore, the rest will be dumped into the dock water using skin heat exchangers in the submerged hull.
Regular fossil-fuel powered ships use similar heat exchangers to provide a cooling solution for their engines as do nuclear-powered subs and ships -- the Ford
Re: (Score:2)
It'll then foot to the Atlantic.
Re: (Score:2)
"this fall"
This autumn. Furthermore, it's already autumn here in the southern hemisphere.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Except for conifers, as found at higher latitudes, like where the ship is head.
FIFY
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:That's head to the Arctic (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, it is amazing how poor some of the Slashdot headlines are now. They are full of grammatical mistakes, unnecessary contractions, inconsistent uppercasing, and often just misleading. This is probably what was meant:
"Russia Launches a Floating Nuclear Power Plant Headed for the Arctic"
This one from several hours ago:
"Comcast Won't Give New Speed Boost To Internet Users Who Don't Buy TV Service"
Uses two negative constructs. Would be far better as:
"Comcast gives new speed boost only to Internet users who also buy TV service"
Re: (Score:2)
"Comcast gives new speed boost only to Internet users who also buy TV service"
Or "Comcast boosts Internet speed for TV service customers"
The thing about these versions, though is that they sound more reasonable. The double-negative version focuses on how Comcast is screwing Internet-only subscribers, while the positive versions focus on how Comcast is giving a benefit to TV subscribers. Gotta rouse the rabble, y'know.
Re: (Score:2)
"Comcast gives new speed boost only to Internet users who also buy TV service"
Or "Comcast boosts Internet speed for TV service customers"
The thing about these versions, though is that they sound more reasonable. The double-negative version focuses on how Comcast is screwing Internet-only subscribers, while the positive versions focus on how Comcast is giving a benefit to TV subscribers. Gotta rouse the rabble, y'know.
Comcast Denies Internet Speed Boost for Internet Only Customers
See, you can still make the headline easily readable but also express the problem/outrage.....
Re: (Score:2)
If it would be a new benefit and boost, that version would be ok.
But changing existing offers for internet service only and removing the speed boosts that one might have if he also purchases TV, is a different kind of thing.
Re: (Score:2)
That last example you show is straight from Ars. Copying is faster than thinking so we see a sort of shadow of Arstechnica here.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It is replacing an existing plant. ... it is 2 times 70MW. That is enough for a 50,000 people village, if at all. Probably less. ... in the arctics.
And
So much to "boosting economy"
Re: (Score:2)
Per capita power consumption is considerably less in most of the world than it is in the US.
The Russian average is about 850 W / person, and a remote northern village is probably going to have lower electricity consumption and higher heating demand than the Russian average. 140 MW of electricity + extra heat for 100,000 people isn't unreasonable.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That is not the past tense of head in either case.
Form feet and legs! Form arms and body! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
US has them beat... (Score:5, Informative)
The US had a nuclear power plant on a barge in the Panama Canal Zone in the 60s and 70s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
US also had a few "portable" land-based reactors powering military bases and a station in Antarctica.
Or any aircraft carrier (Score:3)
any nuclear powered navy ship is by definition a floating nuclear power plant. The Orion project was a flying nuclear power plant.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:US has them beat... (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, I can go one further than that: the Convair X-6 (1955-57) was a fully-functioning nuclear-powered bomber *airplane* that was flight-tested but never operationalized:
"The NTA completed 47 test flights and 215 hours of flight time (during 89 of which the reactor was operated) between September 17, 1955, and March 1957[2] over New Mexico and Texas. This was the only known airborne reactor experiment by the U.S. with an operational nuclear reactor on board."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
What could possibly go wrong?
Re: (Score:2)
I would guess that permanent nuclear flight leave you with issues related to internal part heat. And a large enough airplane to have a large enough crew to support a 24 hours of operation, in at the least 3-6 shifts a day. On top of maintenance in the air, for what is possible.
On top of either building megaplane to make the reactor crash proven, or risking a spill each time you land.
I assume canceled for pragmatic reasons: Simply no need for megairplane, yet
Re:US has them beat... (Score:5, Interesting)
I would guess that permanent nuclear flight leave you with issues related to internal part heat.
The Atomic airplane is a fascinating bit of early cold war history. They came fairly close to making it work. It was eventually scuttled because the open cycle design irradiated everything in it's path, the radiation inside the plane, while being attenuated by shadow shielding, caused them to consider using older crew who would be expected to die of other causes before radiation caused leukemia took them out, and of course what would happen in the event of a crash. Even landing presented problems, as landing weight would be the same as takeoff weight.
Fortunately saner minds and ICBM's made the A-Plane unnecessary.
Then if you really want to freak out, research SLAM. A reactor powered cruise missile running open cycle at treetop level. You can guess the side effects of that.
The technogeek in me finds this stuff fascinating. The practical me asks "What the fuck were they thinking?"
Re: (Score:2)
The technogeek in me finds this stuff fascinating. The practical me asks "What the fuck were they thinking?"
Before Silicon Valley existed, the one place where you could try out all the wild-hair ideas was the military. Apollo itself, despite its civilian window dressing, was an example of this.
Re: (Score:2)
"Saner minds" and "ICBMs" should never be juxtaposed in a sentence.
But you know what I mean - the combination of people who thought that constant irradiation waas a bad thing, and the ICBM made the full time scrambled nuc bomb plane concept less attractive.
Re: (Score:2)
The practical me asks "What the fuck were they thinking?"
May be they figured that considering what cruise missile was carrying and circumstances under which it would be used, propulsion system was least of everyones problems.
But cruising around the world long enough would have a bit of the results of nuc bombs - at least on living things. Buildings would be intact. Don't need an explodey thing when you have 24/7/365 firehose delivery of radiation out the exhaust.
Re: (Score:2)
The US had a nuclear power plant on a barge in the Panama Canal Zone in the 60s and 70s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
US also had a few "portable" land-based reactors powering military bases and a station in Antarctica.
Every nuclear powered submarine is a floating nuke plant, for that matter.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No.. That's the Russians fleet.
(Yes, I'm kidding, sort of)
Re: (Score:2)
You mean a "sinking" nuke plant...
We tried to make sure that our surface to dive ratio always equaled one.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, I remember the Sturgis well. I was assigned to the 8th SFG in Panama then, and remember it parked up by the Chagres River Spillway where it was plugged into the power grid. Our SCUBA team also pulled a training "raid" on the ship, easily swimming past the almost nonexistent "defenses" and planting fake explosive charges on her hull.
Great site here with lots of pictures of her disassembly. Pity she's gone: the Army Engineers did a good job with her, no question.
https://arstechnica.com/scienc... [arstechnica.com]
Bad facts in article (Score:2, Troll)
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Bad facts in article (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, it's meaningful, because it means it'll be hooked up to the remote heating system for the small community, so serving a double utility role, and saves them from building a separate gas, coal or oil fired plant for that role.
Re: (Score:2)
Parent is using cartoon physics, the kind they teach in journalism school. Radiation always glows green.
Re: (Score:2)
Reactors typically glow blue, not green.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation
I can attest that it's bright blue... I've actually seen it....
How you ask? The university I went to had a research reactor and I got to visit once. We got to look down into the reactor pool.... And no, I didn't glow green after the visit.
Yes Comrade (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yes Comrade (Score:5, Funny)
I noticed this about 6 hours ago, but ... (Score:2)
I just saw this [google.com] on the Google news feed: Russia just launched a floating nuclear power plant, headed to the Arctic.
I can't help but comment on this headline: Russia's 'Nuclear Titanic' Heads West, Raising Fears of 'Chernobyl on Ice' [newsweek.com] to say the "Chernobyl on Ice" sounds like the worst Ice Capades [wikipedia.org] theme ever.
(Apologies to those that take the potential destruction of the environment and Earth seriously.)
I'll add that "Nuclear Titanic" sounds like a good name for a James Cameron movie or documentary.
Re: (Score:2)
good point, they should absolutely stick to shipping barrels of diesel fuel to these northern towns.
All those Nuke aircraft carriers and subs (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Did any of them that's head to the Arctic?
Yes, nuke subs regularly go to Arctic [google.com].
Re: (Score:2)
Heat and power for 100,000 people.
Re: (Score:2)
Right now, the town the reactor is going to is only about 4000 people. It's a bit oversized, but maybe needed if they start mining again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Because the Russian bark has two reactors and yield in total 140MW, and it will be connected to the heating grid and provide steam/hot water to heat the town.
It is actually all in the summary.
Then again it is traveling 5000km from St. Petersburg to its final deployment
Then again they first wanted to fuel it in St. Petersburg, but decided to fuel it on the way, and now have to tow it as it can't move under its own power.
Towing a megastructure like this ... is nerdy. You obviously are not a nerd and neither a
news to me - or - more beet-eater mockery (Score:2)
Russia has air craft carriers? (plural?)
Hard hitting topics these days (Score:2)
Other than "kinda cool" blerb.
- They've already got nuke power up there.
- They have TONS of nuke subs
- They've got tons of military ships / weaponry up there so there's no chance this is some smuggling run.
Is it solely a story because "muh russia controls everything"?
With quality articles like this, how will we have time to discuss incredibly important topics like whetehr Hollywood and tech are "too pale"?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Other than "kinda cool" blerb.
- They've already got nuke power up there.
Some of it quite old and not exactly working. Let's hope when this nuclear plant reaches it's EOL, they're a bit more responsible about decommissioning it.
http://englishrussia.com/2009/... [englishrussia.com]
Re: (Score:2)
In my country people make a big deal out of something like nuclear waste transports with protests, roads and rail blockages and nonsense like that. Besides of the clickbaity headline, I think it's an interesting story when someone moves stuff around that's as massive as this and apparently does it well.
Actually this is a pretty old idea. (Score:5, Informative)
In 1961 US Army converted an old Liberty ship called the SS Charles H Cugle into a floating power plant back in 1961, pretty much with exactly the purpose: to provide a mobile electricity generation station for remote areas. The newly renamed MH-1A Sturgis [wikipedia.org] was towed to the Panama Canal Zone from 1968 to 1975, then mothballed.
The Russian project is much more powerful, employing a pair of nuclear icebreaker reactors to generate a total of 140 MW, 14x the power of the old Sturgis. to obtain this kind of power in a compact ship-borne package, the KLT-40 [wikipedia.org] reactors use nearly more highly enriched uranium than is typical in land based reactors: 40% to 90% rather than 3%-5%.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Quote from above link however says:
The KLT-40S variant is used in the Russian floating nuclear power station Akademik Lomonosov. It was developed by OKBM Afrikantov and produced by NMZ. The KLT-40S produces 150 MW thermal (about 52 MWe at 35% efficiency). The KLT-40S also uses low-enriched uranium at 14.1% enrichment to meet international proliferation standards.
Re: (Score:2)
The Russian project is much more powerful, employing a pair of nuclear icebreaker reactors to generate a total of 140 MW,
Can you link me to any source about this data?
Re:Actually this is a pretty old idea. (Score:5, Interesting)
The other key difference here is the use of waste heat for remote central heating. I'm not sure how they do it in North America but in Europe and Russia many places have dedicated district area central heating plants, either fueled by waste reprocessing, cogeneration on the back of power plants, or in some horrid cases, standalone. By combining it with the power plant you get massive increases in efficiency from the fuel source as you can repurpose waste heat that is too cool to generate power, and put it to use for heating systems.
Also information is all over the place. That Wikipedia article says the KLT-40S used in this installation needs 14% enriched uranium.
An article from Power Technology says it uses KLT-40C which combined generate 300MW of heat. https://www.power-technology.c... [power-technology.com]
Re: (Score:2)
There are plenty of floating reactors in warships.
True, though most of them don't generate much electricity, nor are they set up to pump waste heat off to use to heat buildings. They primarily generate steam which is used to turn turbines directly connected to screws.
Re: (Score:2)
How many of them provided power to a town, as well as co-generated central heating?
I'll help you out. The number is zero.
Re:Actually this is a pretty old idea. (Score:5, Insightful)
In 1961 US Army converted an old Liberty ship called the SS Charles H Cugle into a floating power plant back in 1961, pretty much with exactly the purpose: to provide a mobile electricity generation station for remote areas.
Too bad we don't have a few of these in operation. It would be really helpful to have them to park off of Puerto Rico.
Re: (Score:2)
I want a smaller one on wheels... (Score:2)
I want a smaller one on wheels please!
1 MW or even 0.5 MW will be plenty for my use case. Since I live in Alaska, the steam output will come handy too.
Any ideas for this kind of market? What is the smallest nuclear electricity generator even built?
It would be cool to have one for camping trips.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Cool mate but this is concept car. I was asking for "the smallest nuclear electricity generator even built" info.
Thanks anyway mate!
Re: (Score:2)
Fuck mate I meant "'ever built" and I cut and pasted from the OP :(
Sorry about this
Re: (Score:2)
Well, "even built" and "ever built" kind of mean the same anyway friend.
Re: (Score:3)
here you go small enough to put in your pacemaker
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Hey! Thanks for that dude!
"Nuclear battery technology began in 1913"
+5!
On wheels? How about 1.21 gigawatts (Score:2)
I know where you can get 1.21 gigawatts in wheels. It goes 88 MPH.
Re: (Score:2)
I know where you can get 1.21 gigawatts in wheels. It goes 88 MPH.
Only when you can get it started... Think McFly, Think!
calories per hour (Score:2)
Brilliant. (Score:4, Funny)
So when something unexpected happend, like a few years back in Japan, you don't have the waste slowly seeping through the ground possibliy a little bit leaking into the ocean, but when something bad happens, the all the radioactive stuff is immediately in the water and you have a global problem. Nothing to worry about. We've thought about everything.... Right!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Genius! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Fukushima ... chernobyl ... 3 mile island. (Score:3)
Time to poison an unknown distance of ocean capable of spreading radiated water through the out a large area.
Oh well, the survival of the species is overrated anyhow.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
In fairness, not all of nuclear ships & subs have melted down.
But there have been a few [wikipedia.org]...
I don't recall any surface ships being lost, but that doesn't mean much...
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Sea (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Which will be so diluted by the time they touch anything, you wouldn't be able to tell above background radiation.
Average depth of the ocean:
3,700m
Therefore 1 tonne of radioactive material, in 1 square kilometre of ocean gives you:
1000 kg in 3,700,000,000 m^3
= 1kg in 3,700,000 m^3
= 2.7 x 10^-7 kg/m^3
Which is much less than the amount of gold in the ocean (on the order of one gram of gold for every 100 million metric tons = 1 x 10^-8 kg/m^3). Or, indeed, uranium. In fact, we've looked seriously into extrac
Re: (Score:3)
Which, pretty much, is an incredibly safe way to deal with it.
No, it is super dumb.
The waste is not going away but directly into the food chain ... no more fish for you. No more cattle fed with fish remains.
Re: (Score:2)
ACTUALLY....
Not so stupid, compared to the damage done by having a radiological mess on land.
Where I'd prefer we NOT have the mess and not willy-nilly dump nuclear waste into the ocean, if the choice is having a partially melted down reactor blow apart and burring on land near a major city, or having the option of towing the mess away and scuttling it in the middle of the ocean, I know what I'd choose.
Re: (Score:2)
Everyone would chose that.
But it does not change the fact that it poisons the fish and ends up in the food chain.
So: you actually stop fishing there, and later determine where else to stop because of migration.
E.g. you would not want to eat salmon in paris that grew up in a nuclear trash pit north of Norway (yeah, bad example).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Nope, just Israel. Iran is not a real threat to anyone.
Who are you trying to kid? Iran IS a threat with both nukes (in progress), chemical weapons and missiles... Maybe not a direct threat to the USA... Yet... but certainly a threat to our allies. They are also a threat to the straights where most of the world's crude oil gets hauled though and they could shut down shipping though there.
Israel doesn't scare me, though I'm pretty sure they have nukes given to them by the USA... I suppose of you are intent on attacking Israel their nukes might be a threat to yo