There is one argument against that plan which doesn't hold: tsunamis are only dangerous "near" the coast, where the shallow water lifts the wave. Before that it's a 1 meter scale amplitude over <i>100km scale wavelength</i>. I would be more worried about nasty rogue waves, regular heavy storms, and general piracy.<p>That said, I don't see how it would be more insecure in that regard than your regular offshore oil rig. We also have nuclear reactors in submarines and aircraft carriers so I don't see why the thing would be so unfit to offshore use.<p>When you think of it it's actually quite clever in some regards, using the sea as a damper for anything tough that could happen on earth crust.
Not that this sounds like a particularly smart idea, but it's sad that even Reuters can't write an article about nuclear power without devoting half of it to "what happens when terrorist pirates tow it to a major US city, turn it into a bomb and blow it up???"<p>(Presumably the same thing that happens when they hijack an offshore wind farm, tow it to a major city, turn it into a bomb and blow it up?)<p>Somebody needs to come up with a name for this form of power that doesn't scare people so much.
<i>"</i>All possible emergency situations have been tested."* It's hard to believe this. Sometimes humans are getting a little haughty. What about a small comet? What about lack of recourses maintaining the thing?<p>I'm still not convinced nuclear is the way to go. But spilling oil isn't either..
<i>"Any history of nuclear submarines is a history of accidents," Bellona campaigner Nikitin said.</i><p>Such is the case with almost every technology.
Regarding the headline "Russia's First Floating Nuclear Power Station":<p>For powering nearby onshore areas while docked, Russia's nuclear submarines already earned that 'first' distinction, after a couple such uses in the late 1990s. See:<p><a href="http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/2001.02/0018.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/2001.02/0018.html</a>
Smaller nuclear power plants should have better worst-case outcomes in the case of disaster (less fuel means less heat), but using 40-year-old technology to get there doesn't sound so ideal.
I think it's similar to starting a company. Successfully building and maintaining a safe nuclear power station is more about the execution rather than the idea.
This is silly, and dangerous (and not because of the tsunami). The plant will be exposed to hurricanes/typhoons, as well as be inaccessible in case of emergency, and is there a grantee that the spent fuel won't get into the water when a catastrophe occurs?
Why didn't they just mount some carrier rockets to a lousely settled nuclear power plant, so they can skyrocket the whole bunch of crap when something goes horribly wrong? :)<p>Would be an appropriate "emergency" measure for this thing, too, wouldn't it?