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Power

Will Future Nuclear Power Plants Float? (thebulletin.org) 173

Posted by EditorDavid from the cruising-plutonium dept.
Russia isn't the first country to launch a floating nuclear power plant. 50 years ago America's army built a floating nuclear power plant to supply energy to the Panama Canal Zone. Even though it's now being dismantled in Texas -- a four-year job -- China has plans to build as many as 20 floating nuclear power plants.

Gayle BAS quotes the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Proponents say that floating nuclear plants have major advantages over land-based power plants: They have easy access to cooling water and can be quickly installed near coastal cities with rapidly growing energy demands. And unlike other types of energy that produce relatively few climate-altering emissions, nuclear power plants can run 24/7.

But as with onshore nuclear reactors, the closely related issues of safety and economics could be showstoppers.
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Will Future Nuclear Power Plants Float? More

Will Future Nuclear Power Plants Float?

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  • Obviously (Score:4, Informative)

    by balsy2001 ( 941953 ) on Saturday September 01, 2018 @11:37AM (#57237204)
    Yes, the US Navy hasbeen doing it since before commercial reactors existed.
    • I swear they changed the title while I was posting.

    • Commercial plants have historically been much larger. One thing about this... the obvious corollary of using the ocean water for cooling means you're pumping heat into the ocean.

      Ideally, as much heat as possible would be turned into electrical energy and very little would end up back in the water. It's not like we need to intentionally add heat directly to the ocean. It's bad enough that electricity end users and various other inefficiencies turn the electricity back into heat anyway.

      We should really be doi

      • It's a big ocean. Dumping heat into it isn't going to have any wide-scale effect, even a few megawatts. It'll be enough to screw up a local ecosystem, but that's all. Remember most nuclear and coal-burning power stations already have this issue - they either dump the heat into the sea if costal, or into a river, or into the atmosphere using a cooling tower. Heat has to go somewhere.

      • In Europe some power plants take the heat left over from spinning the turbines and send it out into a neighbourhood hot water system that people and business use to heat their buildings and create hot water. In North America we just see it as a waste and dump it into the air or water. That makes the European systems much more efficient. Unfortunately the North American cities aren't built that way.

        As an aside, I know of a couple of cities that have a system to share cold water to cool data centres and then

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ls671 ( 1122017 )

          Common hot water or steam systems for the neighborhood seems like a good idea. I haven't seen in North America.

          In Quebec City, they have that incinerator built decades ago to burn their household garbage, it is located right downtown and at least they thought from the beginning about generating steam for the Daishowa located right across the street. I guess that counts as a start.

          Incinerator:
          http://www.hmiconstruction.ca/... [hmiconstruction.ca]
          https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada... [www.cbc.ca]
          Daishowa:
          https://www.lambertsomec.com/i... [lambertsomec.com]

  • Because the coastal-land-based Fukushima withstood unexpected weather so well. I'm sure a floating plant would withstand rogue waves and tsunamis just as well. And then there's the whole undersea cable thing...

    • Re:This is a great idea (Score:4, Informative)

      by balsy2001 ( 941953 ) on Saturday September 01, 2018 @11:58AM (#57237316)
      You don’t seem to understand what happened at Fukushima. The reactors where fine, it was the emergency generators that were destroyed which are required for decay heat cooling that caused the whole accident. On a ship based reactor, these would be inside and protected or not necessary with a natural circulation design (this is also possible on a land based design like AP1000).

    • A floating plant actually would not be affected by a tsunami, because it floats ...

      • So did all the boats that were tied up against the docks and some of the boats ended up across the Pacific while others ended up well away from the shoreline. These reactors aren't kilometres away from shore. They are built and then towed into port where they are needed. A big tsunami would toss one of these around like a child's toy.

        • Unlike a boat, you can anchor a big ship, or in this case a floating platform, Tsunami safe.

          E.g. a boat in a harbor is either moored, then it has extremely short lines. They would rupture if the boat gets lifted (or they hold and the boat thinks). A bot close to a harbor, anchored, will have a line at the anchor appropriated for the water depths and distance to surrounding boats.

          A floating platform you would simply anchor in a way that it can rise 30 meters without loosing its anchor. E.g. having an outer f

    • If you understood what had happened, you would say that it was a good idea.
      And ideally, we would put these on the Great Lakes as well.
  • Small modular reactors are the future of nuclear energy. These reactors are meltdown proof and factory built. And yes some of them will be on ships. One of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gasses are large shipping frigates. Reactors on ships can also power many coastal cities without fear from natural disaster.

    • Meltdown proof until one actually melts down. :)

      The latest reactors are safer but no reactor is meltdown proof, just less likely to meltdown. And they are not immune from natural disasters.

      • That is not true. Scientists have understood the physics for some time now. See Experimental Breeder Reactor II [wikipedia.org] In 1986 they tried to cause a meltdown and failed. The reactor was designed to have a negative thermal coefficient making it impossible to cause a meltdown. Impossible even if you intentionally tried to cause a meltdown.

        NuScale's [nuscalepower.com] SMR reactor has already been certified by the NRC as being meltdown proof. Their SMR has also passed phase 1 of the NRC review, and their first 12 reactors are g

        • NuScale's [nuscalepower.com] SMR reactor has already been certified by the NRC as being meltdown proof. Their SMR has also passed phase 1 of the NRC review, and their first 12 reactors are going to be built in Idaho.

          Umm... this is just a press release on the NuScale site. I went Googling to check whether these projects existed anywhere else, like on the websites of the purported buyer/owner/operator of these 12 reactors, Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS), and the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) the proposed site to see how real this project is. That is, has funding actually been lined up? Is there a start date for building the first unit? And so forth.

          What I found is that at the beginning of this year INL

          • In particular this the total content on the UAMPS website about the supposed NuScale project for which they are the alleged customer:

            The Carbon Free Power Project is in the first phase of investigating the feasibility of a small modular reactor project using NuScale technology. The CFPP could consist of up to twelve 50 MW reactors located at the Idaho National Laboratory near Idaho Falls. The feasibility analysis includes engineering and regulatory activities to complete a site selection analysis to allow the project participants the necessary information to make a decision whether to proceed with the Construction and Operating License Application.

            Other than some promotional material copied from the NuScale website (and links to same) to provide the background to this blurb, there is nothing else on the site. Their last annual report simply said that decisions would be made in 2018 about this proposal, we are most of the way through 2018 and no decisions have been made. Previously they had said that decisions would be m

      • Meltdown proof until one actually melts down. :)

        The latest reactors are safer but no reactor is meltdown proof, just less likely to meltdown.

        Can you explain to me how a molten salt reactor would melt down?

        A molten salt reactor is still a prototype and so I'll give you that the reactors we use today are not meltdown proof but great care has been taken to prevent a repeat of meltdown like at Fukushima. What happened at Chernobyl will simply never happen again. That was a reactor made from known flawed drawings and built without correcting them. The materials used in construction did not meet even these flawed specs. The reactor was operated in

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by danlip ( 737336 )

          PV collectors aren't that delicate - my house got hit by golf-ball sized hail, which destroyed the shingles, but did not damage the PV system at all.

          • PV collectors aren't that delicate - my house got hit by golf-ball sized hail, which destroyed the shingles, but did not damage the PV system at all.

            Wow. Is that the metric we're going by? We've tested nuclear reactor containment domes to hold up to collisions with jet powered aircraft. If we tested PV panels to the same standard, as in jet airplane collisions, then how would PV collectors hold up?

            I keep hearing on how nuclear power plants are magnets for terror. Well, isn't any source of electricity? It may be possible to distribute solar power across a wide area but if we are talking about terrorists capable of flying jet planes into major infras

            • And how many jets would you need to crash to destroy a large PV plant?

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by danlip ( 737336 )

              A jet crashing into my house would be very bad for both me and my PV panels, but would have almost no effect on the electrical grid nor leak radiation. Comparing it to the standards for a nuclear plant is quite silly. And I'll stand by my statement that anything that survives golf-ball sized hail is not "fragile". My car and my shingles did not.

    • Small reactors have all the same problems as large reactors without any economy of scale. Consequence, they cost more per Wh and therefore will never proliferate. Nuclear power is barely profitable as it is, and like coal it's already only profitable if you get to ignore externalities like the environmental impact of uranium mining, and of waste disposal. And decommissioning has fixed costs as well as scaled costs, and already consistently costs more than estimated (and budgets) at construction time. Now mu

      • Small reactors do not have the same problems large reactors have. Small reactors can be factory built, like a Boeing 78, and shipped anywhere in the world. Small reactors are inherently safer meaning we do not have to build the expensive concrete safety structures. Decommissioning costs are already included in the cost of the plant(that includes waste). Waste has always been a red herring, and the dangers of uranium mining are overblown. And why would you not include economy of scale? It is the entir

        • Small reactors are inherently safer meaning we do not have to build the expensive concrete safety structures.

          GLWT

          Decommissioning costs are already included in the cost of the plant

          Nuclear plants always run way over their planned decommissioning costs.

          (that includes waste). Waste has always been a red herring,

          It's still a problem. There is fuel stored in pools all over the planet.

          and the dangers of uranium mining are overblown.

          That is a deliberate lie. Those dangers are real, and consistently downplayed by the nuclear industry. They never make even a reasonable attempt to restore the land they've strip-mined, and the tailings always wind up contaminating ground water.

          Nuclear power plants, like dams, are large public works projects that produce cheap, clean, and reliable electricity 24/7.

          The environmental impact of dams is huge. And you can't call nuclear power safe until the waste has been cleaned up.

          Nuclear is cheaper and cleaner for the consumer. Natural gas is dirtier and more expensive for the consumer.

          And

          • First how many people have ever been harmed from waste? The answer is 0. Can you spell 0?. Z E R O. Xkcd has a bit on spent fuel pools [xkcd.com]. After it has cooled off in the spent fuel pools it is not that dangerous. It also cannot leak because it is a heavy metal rod. It is not dangerous for 1000's of years (or whatever bs number you want to give) because Cesium(the longest living dangerous isotope in waste) only has a half-life of 30 years.

            Those dangers are real, and consistently downplayed by the nuclear industry

            Do you even know what the dangers are? Not from Uranium, bu

      • Small reactors have all the same problems as large reactors without any economy of scale. Consequence, they cost more per Wh and therefore will never proliferate.

        Then put multiple small modular reactors on a single site. You do that and you spread out the engineering costs that used to be for 1 or 2 reactors and now have it spread over 6 or 8. With multiple reactors on one site you'll then also share overhead like engineering, maintenance, administration, security, and so on. Do that and watch nuclear power "proliferate".

        Nuclear power is barely profitable as it is,

        Do you know why that is? Because EVERYTHING is "barely profitable".

        If nuclear power demanded too much in profit then they'd go out of business,

  • The issue isn’t technical but cultural.
    Nuclear energy needs community support and a plan for maintenance lasting thousands of years.
    With half the population wanting more of them without regulations the other half wants to take them off line. We get a dangerous mixture where such plants are not adequately being supported and maintained.

     

    • Re:We as a culture are not ready for nuclear power (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Saturday September 01, 2018 @12:19PM (#57237406)

      ... the other half wants to take them off line.

      This is a First World problem. There are few anti-nuke protests in India, and none in China. North America and Western Europe have zero to negative growth in energy demand, so they don't need new nukes anyway. Most future demand growth will be in Asia and Africa, and most of that demand will be within 200 km of the coastline.

      These power ships solve much of the NIMBY problem. A big risk with land-based nuke plants is that they take a decade or more to build, and voters may cancel them before they are complete [wikipedia.org], leaving investors with a huge sunk cost. But floating nukes can be towed anywhere, so they can just sell the completed reactor to someone else.

      • There are few anti-nuke protests in India, and none in China.

        Uh...I won't speak on India, but I think there may be other reasons why there are no anti-nuke protests in China.

        • I think there may be other reasons why there are no anti-nuke protests in China.

          Other than what? I didn't mention any "reasons". I just stated facts. The reason is obvious: China does not tolerate organized public protests of CCP policies.

          China is building nukes now, and public opposition is not an issue. It would not be an issue for floating nukes either. So if these power ships make sense, they can be built and/or deployed in China, where power is currently 80% coal.

      • North America and Western Europe have zero to negative growth in energy demand, so they don't need new nukes anyway.

        That's an insane statement to make. The USA gets 20% of its electricity from nuclear power. These nuclear power plants have an average age of about 40 years. That average age is about the same as the intended operational life span of these reactors. Fortunately these reactors were overbuilt with just crazy safety margins. This means that as more was learned the operators were able to figure out how to get more out of what they had. Through improved techniques and upgrades over time the output of nucle

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kqc7011 ( 525426 )
      I'm doing a little trolling here, I like reminding solar advocates that the electricity that the panels make is from nuclear fusion.

      • I'm doing a little trolling here, I like reminding solar advocates that the electricity that the panels make is from nuclear fusion.

        Oh, they know that and they seem to enjoy pointing that out whenever someone claims nuclear fusion is just 10 years away.

        Here's what I like to do, point out to the geothermal people that it's powered by uranium and thorium. We are consuming that energy either way with geothermal or with nuclear. The difference is in how much energy we can draw from that pool of radioactive material in the billions of years it will last. We can consume with considerable losses in the transfer by geothermal or we can mine

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      It is somewhat cultural. As mentioned, Russia and China are state controlled economies so it hardly matter what makes sense to the people or market place. The culture is that the state has to supply power to the people and that responsibility has to be balanced against risk. Also, perhaps the people are not going to protest against utility issues when they are more significantly subjugated.

      But there are also issues of a market economy. The US military uses nuclear options not only because it makes sen

    • oh good lord.
      What do you want to do? COntinue with nat gas and coal? That is destroying nearly all species here.
      And 1000's of years? Give me a break. If we fully utilitize the fuel, then it will have around 200 years and we can simply bury it.

      • What do you want to do? COntinue with nat gas and coal? That is destroying nearly all species here.

        Yawn. Your logical fallacy is false dichotomy. Solar+wind+storage will do the job.

        And 1000's of years? Give me a break. If we fully utilitize the fuel, then it will have around 200 years and we can simply bury it.

        Breeders are expensive and dangerous, which is why we don't use them. Nuclear is already barely profitable.

    • Nuclear energy needs community support and a plan for maintenance lasting thousands of years.

      No, it does not.

      The fission products from uranium is not a dumping out of the periodic table and all it's isotopes. We have observed what kind of isotopes are produced and the number is quite small. There are the short lived products that last seconds, minutes, or perhaps a few months. Those we allow to decay in the spent fuel cooling pools on site. A good "rule of thumb" is that in 10 half lives any given isotope is effectively "gone". So keep the fuel in these pools for perhaps a dozen years, we know

  • None of these nuclear power plants will float. They are just nuclear plants on a structure that has more buoyancy than the plant.
    This is little different than the nuclear power plants in larger, floating vessels, (e.g. large aircraft carriers). The biggest difference is the method of heat rejection.

  • If they are made of wood or weigh as much as a duck then they will float. ;)

  • The major problem I can see with a floating reactor is that it is, by its nature, mobile.

    And things that can be moved can be stolen.

    • The major problem I can see with a floating reactor is that it is, by its nature, mobile.

      And things that can be moved can be stolen.

      Then steal it back!!

  • It would be really hard to keep Submarines away from these things. Fat target and all.

  • The Russian project uses two naval nuclear reactors, the same ones used in their nuclear ice breakers.

    Engineering decisions often result in some things getting harder while other things get easier. Putting a nuclear reactor on a ship certainly simplifies the problem of obtaining cooling water, but you run into the problem of space. To keep naval reactors physically compact, they run on highly enriched uranium. At least American and Russian ones do. France uses low enriched uranium in its submarines, but

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