I took a broader look at Russia's nuclear power program here - <a href="https://www.economist.com/europe/2018/08/02/the-world-relies-on-russia-to-build-its-nuclear-power-plants" rel="nofollow">https://www.economist.com/europe/2018/08/02/the-world-relies...</a>
<i>Russia is conducting an experiment with nuclear power, one that backers say is a leading-edge feat of engineering but that critics call reckless.<p>The country is unveiling a floating nuclear power plant.</i><p>Um, "unveiling" ??<p>We've have floating nuclear power in submarines, aircraft carriers, maybe other vessels for half a century.
It's a good idea. Afaik, naval nuclear power has a pretty good track record.<p>Who knows if that will continue for commercial power generation?<p>But at least it solves the stupid "perpetual one-off design" space nuclear power seems to have been stuck in. (Although I believe I read that at least France standardized all their reactor buildings?)
During a power crisis caused by a high tension cable breakdown Auckland depended on ship borne power. I'm pretty sure it was GE gas turbines. There is a well understood model for mobile power, I don't see why this model can't work and guy lots of use cases. Nuclear why not?<p>The loss of competence in nuclear engineering worldwide worries me. Do we need to start sending engineering grads to Brazil? Britain outsourced it's coming plants to China didn't it?
Its worth mentioning that new turbines for generating electricity are in development with higher output compared to the steam powered turbines. This will basically increase the electrical output of the nuclear plant with the same amount of fuel which will make NPPs even more viable in the future
The nuclear power plant of the future can be found in a science museum. All dangers of a catastrophic accident aside, nuclear energy has become economically infeasible. Just recently, half-build powerplants have been abandoned in the US for pure financial reasons, and the other projects under constructions face severe cost problems too. And this is not counting for the still unsolved problem of disposing the nuclear waste. Meanwhile, solar and wind have become much cheaper than nuclear, and counting in the construction costs for new clean plants, even coal.<p>The idea of putting a nuclear power plant on a float is faszinating. It solves cooling, allows relocation of the power plant and in the case of disaster, it can be dumped into the ocean, which is somewhat better than contaminating occupied land, but still isn't acceptable.<p>Unless there is some significant breakthrough in operating costs and safety as well as a solution for the nuclear waste, nuclear isn't the future.
>given the seeming importance of sobriety on such a vessel, have a drink at the bar.<p>if the journalists ever mentioned the "importance of sobriety on such a vessel" in the presence of the crew, i'm pretty sure it immediately became the next, right after "Za mirnyy atom!", popular drinking toast on that ship. "Nu! za osobuyu vazhnost trezvosti na yadernom reaktore." Amen.<p>These floating reactors aren't the future - you just don't want a potential Chernobyl delivered right to your city (just lookup the safety record of Russian nuclear submarines what these peaceful reactors are built after). These ships are a classic Russian solution (cheap, low tech simple/crude, without long-term thinking) to the typical Russian issue of lack of infrastructure at the time when climate change encourages and political situation pushes Russia to increase development in the North-East regions.
There isn’t a country on earth that would actually allow Russia to park an actual nuclear bomb off their coast. Even the ones aligned with Russia. Oh, how do you build a sarcophagus on a sunk nuclear reactor?
> "Rosatom plans to serially produce such floating nuclear plants, and is exploring various business plans, including retaining ownership of the reactors while selling the electricity they generate."<p>No sane govt will allow a foreign power to literally be able to shutdown one of their cities on a whim.<p>I think what the Russian Govt realized is that instead of building nuclear power plants, its going to be more profitable to hold the electric grid of some country hostage, just like the hard profit they make holding Europe hostage with their gas pipelines.<p>EDIT:<p>There a lot more issues I have with their idea but that was the one most striking to me.<p>- How are going to supply electricity during a hurricane ? Most cites are located on the path to some hurricane / cyclone / tornado.<p>- Coastlines near cities are expensive real estate (not to mention anyone with property there allowing a literal power nuclear plant blocking their view ) - it takes important real estate from ports that are much more useful for docking ships, etc. Its possible to build a separate port far away from the city; but then you have to pay the extra cost of building some extra infrastructure to deal with the ship, at that point its just easier to build your own power plant.<p>- "Rosatom, in a statement, insisted its plant was 'invulnerable to tsunamis.'"<p>Really ?? why are they trying to sell dumb electricity when they have the much more valuable technology of invincible ships. How many tsunamis has one of their ships survived exactly ?
I am starting to get sick of environmentalists complaining, doing nothing to solve the issues their so "passionate" about, and then harassing / criticising any solution that gets proposed.
> Inside, the floating reactor is a warren of tight corridors, steep staircases, pipes, wires and warning signs in Cyrillic letters.<p>What? So Russians would have warning signs in English?<p>Indeed, the article overall sounds like anti-Russia propaganda. What's going on with the NY Times about Russia and China? Just grasping for clickbait?