First-ever floating nuclear power plant construction underway
Published: 19 May, 2009, 18:36
TAGS: Nuclear, Russia, SciTech
The construction of the first floating nuclear power plant in history has kicked off in St Petersburg.
The plant, which represents a nonself-propelled 144-metres long vessel, will be used for the generation of both electricity and heat as well as sea water conversion at any poorly developed territory close to the sea. The vessel will have two nuclear reactors with a capacity of 35,000 kilowatts each. Constructors say the plant’s life span will be limited to 38 years, while every 12 years it will need to be reloaded.
The ambitious project got underway back in 2007 at the Sevmash factory in Russia’s Archangelsk region. However, the works were suspended soon, due to growing costs of the work and the factory’s overflow. On Monday, the works were resumed in St Pete at the Baltiisky Zavod open joint-stock company.
The floating nuclear power plant's exploitation will be started in the water area of Vilyuchinsk, Kamchatka, on Russia’s Far East. It is planned to have the building completed in 2012. In the future, such facilities will be used for the provision of electricity to other remote areas.
Similar technologies were used in Russia in the 1990s, when nuclear-powered submarines and icebreakers penetrated deep into the country’s eastern territories left without electricity, and improved the emergency situation.
”The creation of the first floating nuclear power plant is a step towards the creation of small nuclear energy sources, able to provide a sustainable energy production under specific conditions. These plants are irreplaceable in the areas with no other sources of energy,” Vladimir Grachev, adviser at Rosatom, told The Voice of Russia.
”Our long experience shows that floatable nuclear plants are ecologically secure. This is the future of the electric-power industry,” Grachev added.
In the near future, the Russian government plans to build seven more such plants with each costing around 10 billion rubles (around $ 310 mln). There are also plans to produce such plants for export.
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3 comments
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11 comments
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The robustness of the design of the core is only as good as the ancilliaries and back up supplies. Yes it may (the core) survive being tossed some distance but then the grid connection is lost and also you will lose vital power for your cooling systems and safety systems. With respect to the siting of these floating nuclear power stations i'm sure they won't all be sited in areas free from hurricanes or tsunamis.
Graham - great comments, and I certainly hope they have thought of all this. From my side, I can't see much diference to this, than a coastal Nuclear plant being hit by a Tsunami, so I think the calculations would be much the same. I think we have quite a good idea where Hurricanes and Tsunamis are high risk, so one strategy could be to avoid. However, I would also say that the core reactor, could be in a very structural robust design, which may even allow it to be tossed some distance and still survive. But the comments are still good, so let's hope we see some environmental planning report about it all. However, the idea of controlled, 'portable' nuclear power, I like very much.
Graham, again good comments. Taking this as an apple for apple comparison with a shore based nuclear reactor, I doubt whether there would be any difference in the surviveability of the Grid connections, as most feeders are through transformers into overhead power lines. So for me the prospect of surviveability is the same for both sytems. basically a Tsunami would take out both, to an equal affect. In terms of safety systems, there is no doubt that in this respect a 'barge' would be far more likely to fragment and break up as a system than a ground based installation. However, if the core remains intact, including fuel configuration, and the moderator is failsafe e.g by using a system like CANDU then even an abrupt interruption would leave the core in an energy decaying state. There would be an issue of heat soak and thermal capacity, to make sure that a complete core system interruption, would not incur a positive temperature ramp, that was unsustainable within the design. This I am sure though is possible to arrange by design. So I still like the idea.