Floating Nuclear Power Station 437
angrysponge writes "
Russia to Build World's First Floating Nuclear Power Station for $200,000. I don't know what impresses me more, the engineering chutzpah or low-ball pricetag." From the article: "The mini-station will be located in the White Sea, off the coast of the town of Severodvinsk (in the Arkhangelsk region in northern Russia). It will be moored near the Sevmash plant, which is the main facility of the State Nuclear Shipbuilding Center. The FNPP will be equipped with two power units using KLT-40S reactors. The plant will meet all of Sevmash's energy requirements for just 5 or 6 cents per kilowatt. If necessary, the plant will also be able to supply heat and desalinate seawater."
First? (Score:5, Informative)
How about the Sturgis [army.mil], a "440-foot-long World War II Liberty ship that the Army converted into a floating 45-megawatt nuclear power plant."
More about Unique Reactors [doe.gov]
Re:Adantage? (Score:2, Informative)
After 12 years, it would be towed back home, leaving no nuclear materials behind. It's like selling fish instead of fishing nets.
Re:First? (Score:5, Informative)
More info on the KLT-40S (Score:5, Informative)
* A floating nuclear power plant design, under development by OKBM in Russia, uses the KLT-40s reactor system, and involves a "special-purpose non-self-propelled ship" (a barge) intended for operation in a protected water area. There are plans to build a nuclear heat and power generating plant with a floating power-generating unit in the area of Pevek, Chukot Peninsula, in northeastern Siberia, and in Severodvinsk (Archangelsk region). The technical and economic characteristics of this power plant are:
* Electric power - 60 MW
* Heat output - 50 Gcal/h
* Number of reactor systems and main turbogenerators - 2
* Overall plant lifetime - 40 years
These power plants are multipurpose in terms of possible applications, since they provide electric power generation while also providing heat supply for various purposes, including seawater desalination.
[Source: Georgy M. Antonovsky (Chief Specialist, OKBM-the Experimental and Design Bureau of Mechanical Engineering, in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia) et al., Table IV - "Technical and economic characteristics of a floating nuclear power station with the KLT-40s", in "PWR-type reactors developed by OKBM", Nuclear News, March 2002, p. 33]
* The KLT-40s is based on the KLT-40, which the US DOE has called a proven, commercially available, small PWR system because its design is based entirely on the nuclear steam supply system used in Russian icebreakers. The KLT-40 is a portable, floating, nuclear power plant intended mainly for electric power generation, but it also possesses the capability for desalination or heat production. The reactor core is cooled by forced circulation of pressurized water during normal operation, but in all emergency modes, the design relies mainly on natural convection in the primary and secondary coolant loops.
The KLT-40 is mounted on a barge, complete with the nuclear reactor, steam turbines, and other support facilities. It is designed to be transported to a remote location and connected to the energy distribution system in a manner similar to the Mobile High Power nuclear power plant operated by the U.S. Army in the 1970s. The designer and supplier of the KLT-40 is the Russian Special Design Bureau for Mechanical Engineering (OKBM).
Fuel for the KLT-40 is a uranium-aluminum metal alloy clad with a zirconium alloy. 200 kg of U-235 gives a core power density of 155 kW per liter on average (that's relatively high for a reactor, according to the DOE report), and the fuel may be high-enriched uranium (U-235 content at or above 20 percent). The fuel assembly structure and manufacturing technology are proven, and its reliability has been verified by the long-term operation of similar cores.
The KLT-40's primary system involves four coolant pumps feeding four steam generators. The secondary system uses two turbogenerators with condensate pumps, main and standby feed pumps, and two steam condensers. As much as 35 MWt energy can be transferred from the condensers to a desalination plant via an intermediate circuit.
The KLT-40 includes a steel containment vessel designed to withstand overpressure conditions. A passive-pressure suppression system condenses steam that might escape into the containment building.
The KLT-40 has a variety of "inherent safety characteristics". One involves the prodigious use of "burnable poison" in the fuel such that cold shutdowns are assured (because any increase in core temperature results in a lowering of core power -- it's what's called having a large negative temperature coefficient for the reactor core).
The KLT-40 is designed using a plug-and-play philosophy. It gets built at the factory and is able to be transported over water to remote locations. Although the KLT-40 requires refueling every two to three years, the transportability of the entire plant to maintenance centers provides enhanced pro
Re:Meltdown ain't the safety issue.. (Score:5, Informative)
Final point, NEVER, EVER use absolute statements to make a point as exceptions will always bite you in the ass.
Misprint (Score:5, Informative)
So I guess it is a misprint.
Not as bad as other stuff (Score:4, Informative)
Now compare that to, say, chemical waste such as mercury or lead from disposed batteries, or polycyclic aromatics from the smokestacks of coal plants. Mercury and lead are dangerous in exceedingly small quantities (which is why leaded gasoline was banned -- even the tiny amount in the vapor of gasoline is dangerous). Polycyclic aromatics can cause cancer forever -- they never get less dangerous. And so on.
Put it simply: of all the waste control and disposal issues presented to us by technology, radioactive waste probably does not actually rank near the top. It may be prominent in public discussion primarily because of its unfamiliarity, and because we are fully committed already to the technology (e.g. electronics) that generates chemical waste, whereas we thought in the era of cheap oil that we could do without nuclear power.
Re:First? (Score:5, Informative)
2008: The Floating Reactor (the Severodvinsk Reactor)
In 2008, if all goes according to plan, the world's first commercial floating nuclear power plant will be ready to begin operation... Pravda, the Russian news publication, reported the project was approved by the head of the Ministry for Nuclear Power, Alexander Rumyantsev. Sevmash Enterprise, which specializes in submarine construction, will build the vessel. Rosenergoatom, the Russian nuclear firm, will supply the reactors. Two such floating power stations are planned, each anticipated to cost $100 to $120 million. The first one will supply power to the city of Severodvinsk, approximately 50 miles west of Archangel.
Looks like TFA was wrong by several orders of magnitude on this one....
Re:European Water (Score:5, Informative)
The University of Pittsburgh put out an excellent free book on the "Nuclear Energy Option". It not only gives an excellent breakdown of the risk and benefits of nuclear power from a scientific standpoint, but it does an excellent comparison against other (heavily-used) technologies. It can be found here here [pitt.edu]
The most interesting chapter does a direct comparison of risk from high-level nuclear waste against other toxins introduced to the environment by manufacturing. Quote:
If nuclear power was used to the fullest practical extent in the United States, we would need about 300 power plants of the type now in use. The waste produced each year would then be enough to kill (300 x 50 million =) over 10 billion people. I have authored over 250 scientific papers over the past 35 years presenting tens of thousands of pieces of data, but that "over lO billion" number is the one most frequently quoted. Rarely quoted, however, are the other numbers given along with it11: we produce enough chlorine gas each year to kill 400 trillion people, enough phosgene to kill 20 trillion, enough ammonia and hydrogen cyanide to kill 6 trillion with each, enough barium to kill 100 billion, and enough arsenic trioxide to kill 10 billion. All of these numbers are calculated, as for the radioactive waste, on the assumption that all of it gets into people. I hope these comparisons dissolve the fear that, in generating nuclear electricity, we are producing unprecedented quantities of toxic materials.
Although I would be one of the first in line to adopt solar, hydro or hydrogen energy approaches, none are feasible on a global scale. My belief is that nuclear is the best choice if we can just get beyond everyone's fear of it.
Depends on your definition... (Score:5, Informative)
As a very crude but hopefully useful analogy, imagine you had a lot of very heavily waterlogged and thus incombustible wood, a coal-fired heater, and a relatively small amount of coal. You use the heat from the coal to dry out the wood. You haven't violated the laws of thermodynamics, but you've got yourself a whole lot more useful fuel. And you can use the burning dried wood to dry some more wood, and so on.
Now, this isn't some kind of perpetual motion machine. Once you've burned the plutonium (the dried wood), you can't burn it again. But there is so much waterlogged wood (U-238) that we're not going to run out for a very, very, very long time.
Re:European Water (Score:1, Informative)
First, according to Minatom (Russian Ministry of Nuclear Energy), the project's cost is about 150-200 MUSD, not thousands, and this sounds more realistic.
Second, it takes not only 1,5 hectares on water but 0,6 hectares more on land to build up this plant--the heat point, distribution unit, hot water tanks and security unit will be situated on earth.
Third, your're almost right, the nuclear reactor is actually modified Russian AK-900 a.k.a. KLT-40, which is the primary nuke drive for Russian *civil* fleet (59 vessels of 128 with this drive) at the moment.
It will be changed this way: heat power will be raised from 50 to 146 GCal/hour, but electrical power will be lowered from 65 to 50 MW.
This floating plant will also become a 'desalting plant' for civilians.
And finally, AFAIK there NEVER was a meltdown with this type of engine.
-- a chum from Russia
Re:European Water (Score:3, Informative)
1) Almost every (note: not every. There are some anti-proliferation designs out there) uranium-fired reactor can double as a weapons materials production facility. High energy neutrons impacting U-238 produce plutonium.
2) The "largest accident" involving a "properly designed commercial power reactor" depends on what you call a "properly designed reactor". Here's just the briefest introduction [wikipedia.org] into nuclear power accidents in history (note: only about a third of the entries are about nuclear power; the rest are about weapons). There are far, far more than made the list. Even modern CANDUs have had significant accidents.
Part of the problem is the environment that nuclear reactors operate in. You start with a nice, relatively simple setup, but as the reactor operates, everything breaks down. You get high temperatures and pressures. Decay products are often quite corrosive and reactive, some readily leakable (gasses, et al), etc. You get high radiation fluxes, which weaken metal lattices. Etc. Between the (relatively) low profit margins on the nuclear industry (it's heavily subsidized to stay afloat), the difficulty in maintaining hot core elements, and the extreme risks from part failures, it's not an easy task.
In *perfect operation*, the entire nuclear cycle releases about as much radiation into the atmosphere (depends on the study - one study I saw showed as little as half as much) as coal power plants. Yes, there are radiation releases in normal operation of the nuclear fuel cycle - much of it in mining, for example. That's in perfect operation, mind you, and ignores the waste which must be stored. To make it worse, most coal radiation is alpha, which isn't particularly nasty. In an accident, though, the scale of released waste can be catastrophic. It's not generally the number of casualties that's the problem - Chernobyl, Chazhma Bay, etc, had few casualties. The problem is the land that they ruin and people that they displace - in a bad location, they can be a truly monstrous economic disaster.
Of course, nuclear doesn't release quantities of soot and CO2 best measured in exponential notation.
By the way, you may want to rethink what makes a reactor safe. For example, the darling of many slashdotters, the PBMR, *is* a graphite moderated reactor. Reactor safety is a complex issue, and even the void coefficient isn't the only thing you have to worry about. Residual heat, chemical reactions, and pressure buildup can all be equally problematic.
Probably the biggest thing leading to reactor safety is a containment structure. While not invulnerable (a buildup of hydrogen gas, a liquid sodium/concrete detonation, etc), containment structures have saved us many times, and will continue to for the forseeable future.
Re:European Water (Score:2, Informative)
For the short term, yes. But after plunging through ~4 km of supercooled water (which also acts as a neutron moderator), it won't be hot (in either sense of the word) for very long.
"What do you think that heat would do to the thermoclines?"
At the pressures down there, not much. First, the heat would have to fight the pressure enough for the local water to expand. Then the local water would have to be hot enough to retain enough heat to make it all the way up (kilometers) to the thermocline. Then it would still have to have enough heat to be drastically less dense than the water above the thermocline in order to punch through and continue up to the surface.
If the pile is sufficiently hot for local water to actually convect up to the thermocline (i. e. temperature similar to a volcanic vent), it'd probably be more inclined to raise the thermocline than to pierce it. Between the heat conduction and pressure drop of the surrounding water as a packet of hot water moves up (1 atm every 30 m), it's just not going to stay hot or organized enough.