the track record on dry land may be a bit tenuous

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/952573/akademik-lomonosov-launch-russia-floating-nuclear-power-plant

Got a non express link?

Why not Google it?

Seems small scale and it will be far away from us anyway.

Generally if the express is the best link you can find it probably ends badly…

But having got to somewhere I can select the link text to search from

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-28/russian-floating-nuclear-plant-heads-out-to-sea/9707430

It’s a lot of anti nuclear chanting,

“Nuclear reactors bobbing around the Arctic Ocean will pose a shockingly obvious threat to a fragile environment, which is already under enormous pressure from climate change,” Greenpeace nuclear expert Jan Haverkamp said in a statement.

“The floating nuclear power plants will typically be put to use near coastlines and shallow water … contrary to claims regarding safety, the flat-bottomed hull and the floating nuclear power plant’s lack of self-propulsion makes it particularly vulnerable to tsunamis and cyclones.”

What is the Tsunami risk and cyclone occurrences in the Arctic ocean?

Seems a pretty sensible idea, really. If anything, many advantages over building on land.

Rachel

i wonder if you could steal it? Or it could sink!

Isn’t this just a floating nuclear reactor?

Isn’t this just a floating nuclear reactor?

Nope, that’s a sinking one…

Marine reactors are pretty damned cool. We, the US, France and Russia (and to a lesser extent the Germans and Japanese) have been building and running them safely for ages. They’re designed to run with little maintenance and are looked after by a small team with comparatively rudimentary training.

Putting a proven design on a barge and mooring it in a harbour for localised power generation is a great application for a well proven technology. Bet it didn’t cost £20.3bn either.

is that how much a submarine costs £20.3bn  , has to include a better warranty than a Kia for that money

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_station

That 20.3bn would buy you Hinkley C not the sub

That 20.3bn would buy you Hinkley C not the sub

I thought the audit office were reckoning EDF will charging us a tad more than that for C once interest is added and thats in the best case scenario.

A repurposed sub reactor would probably be a tad cheaper although safety may or may not be less. After all there is a good reason EDF/French government put their reactors where they did.

It’s the latest headline estimate. If we were playing banzai I’d be thinking 40 in the end. Maybe more.

i reckon this reactor is a POC device, designed to fly the flag for rosatom, so they can go and flog dozens more around the globe.

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“20.3bn would buy you Hinkley C not the sub”

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I bet you 20.3 billion it doesn’t.

Naval reactors use more enriched uranium then is allowed for civilian use in the west. This does mean that they don’t need refueling for 25 years. They’re also rather smaller than Hinckley C – less than 100 mw versus 1650mw.

The sub reactors are pretty low risk especially when sealed in a big steel can that can sit on the sea bed.

 After all there is a good reason EDF/French government put their reactors where they did.

And a lot of political ones, if you applied the same rule set and logic of coastal locations where new builds have been approved in the UK how would the coastline they plan to use it in differ?

Typical Daily Express. The irony is that a vessel moored off the coast is *less* vulnerable to tsunamis etc, and provided you make sure it’s fastened securely to the sea-bed it’s virtually indestructible. On top of that you have unlimited cooling even without any power to the platform, minimum risk of sabotage, and the ability to unplug it and drag it to the middle of the Pacific if something REALLY goes wrong.

the ability to unplug it and drag it to the middle of the Pacific if something REALLY goes wrong.

Yes of course, only brown people live there, let’s dump several hundred tonnes of radioactive waste in their backyard.

@hols2 missing the point there? The dilution and dispersion effect of a massive ocean as a final fall back measure could be an option – if you want we can illustrate the maths of how that would impact things.

Isn’t this just a floating nuclear reactor?

Rolls Royce have been pushing heavily for a while to build civilian power plants – e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/dec/03/mini-nuclear-power-stations-uk-government-funding. I don’t understand why we’ve backed Hinckley C instead of this.

 I don’t understand why we’ve backed Hinckley C instead of this.

At the time of approval (and still now) there were only 2 reactor designs approved for use, this is based in years of testing and approval procedures. To back a design for construction without approval would be madness.

@hols2 missing the point there? The dilution and dispersion effect of a massive ocean as a final fall back measure could be an option – if you want we can illustrate the maths of how that would impact things.

didnt the japanese try this approach

The dilution and dispersion effect of a massive ocean as a final fall back measure could be an option – if you want we can illustrate the maths of how that would impact things.

Why not just dump nuclear waste in the Atlantic Ocean, it’d be cheaper than hauling it over to the Pacific. Oh, of course, because the people who live around the Atlantic are rich and white and don’t want their fisheries contaminated with radioactive waste.

Seriously, do you think just dumping it in the Pacific is an acceptable way to deal with it?

didnt the japanese try this approach

Yep and the brits and the French, probably the US too.

Seriously, do you think just dumping it in the Pacific is an acceptable way to deal with it?

No but sensibly nobody is really suggesting that, you just picked up on something there, what’s your understanding of the currents and dispersion of materials put there?

Im yet to see a sensible appraisal of the reactor, what it contains  how it’s contained etc. But as usual nuclear = hysterical reactions with very little evidence

build your own thing

they even have a nice diagram with some hexagons on it

https://aris.iaea.org/PDF/KLT-40S.pdf

But as usual nuclear = hysterical reactions with very little evidence

Yup, nuclear and sharks. Two words off the scale when it comes to irrational fear.

But as usual nuclear = hysterical reactions with very little evidence

No, I’m not reflexively anti-nuclear. I get a lot of shit from anti-nuclear people when I tell them they should look objectively at how nasty coal is and they might realize that there is a strong case for nuclear.

However, saying that we should just dump it in the Pacific if it goes wrong is exactly the kind of attitude that does make people reflexively anti-nuclear. In case you haven’t noticed, the people who live there are extremely pissed off about the nuclear waste that has been dumped on them without anyone bothering to ask them. Dumping it in the Pacific is a really stupid idea, it has nothing to do with being anti-nuclear, it’s just about not being arrogant and stupid when it comes to other people’s parts of the world. If dumping it in the ocean is such a great idea, dump it off the coast of Europe or America.

hols2 – while I admire your tenacity, I think you’re spending a lot of effort becoming offended at something that doesn’t even exist. If you care to glance at a map, you’ll see the world is not just Europe, North America, and “brown people” (your words). You seem to be implying that one might take the dodgy reactor, anchor it upwind of a native island and atomise it.

You could quite easily just sink it in a deep bit and never worry about it again.

There are areas of the Pacific ~1000 miles from land.  It’s also stupendously deep with little water circulation, and has a water volume of 700 million cubic kilometers. It’s not an ideal situation to dump anything in the ocean, but the actual risk of this is so stunningly tiny it’s insignificant.

The amount of natural radioactivity in all the world’s oceans is roughly 10,000,000 times greater than that dumped there by man, and even that’s several orders of magnitude lower than I expected when I did the numbers.

You’d be much better off worrying about the volume of plastic going into the seas. So get off your high horse and try not to be quite so sanctimonious about something you know very little about.

I know more about it than you think I do. What I can absolute assure you of is that dumping nuclear waste in the ocean is a total political loser, no democratic government will touch it and Pacific countries will pretty much treat it as a declaration of war (rich white people dumping toxic waste on poor non-white people). It’s off the table for political reasons. Trying to push it as a solution defies common sense, it does nothing but harm the prospects of nuclear power.

You could also dump the material in the Pacific subduction zone trenches, where they’ll be buried and sucked down towards the mantle over millions of years.  I wonder if it might make some of the Ring of Fire eruptions a bit “hotter” but mankind will be long gone by then and it’ll be somebody else’s problem…….

I think the thing about the Pacific is that it’s the exact opposite of dumping it on anyone, because it’s the place with the fewest people in it.

I don’t think the suggestion is that you dump it near brown people.

Yes of course, only brown people live there, let’s dump several hundred tonnes of radioactive waste in their backyard.

Have you looked at a map of the world recently? Specifically the Pacific Ocean and the countries surrounding it? There’s a shitload more of them than there are ‘brown people’ actually living within the Pacific, and guess what? The majority of those are not white Caucasian! I know, astonishing, isn’t it, and some of those countries full of non-white people are also very powerful in their own right, and might possibly be pretty pissed off with such a practice, all without needing you to get all outraged on their behalf. It might not be politically polite to suggest that one or two of those countries may even be inclined to indulge in such behaviour themselves, covertly, of course…