Rosenergoatam, a Russian company specializing in Nuclear Energy, is planning to build a nuclear power barge to service the northern territories where the bad weather makes it difficult to deliver oil and coal, making a self sustaining power plant the only available option. This project is estimated to cost around $200 million. The power plants to be used will generate 60 MW each, similar to what is being used in Russian Icebreakers. The completion date is expected to be by 2010.
The design of the barge calls for two reactors mounted on a football sized platform. It will be parked in port with lines snaking out to the grid. Nuclear waste will be stored on board after which it will be removed every maintenance cycle (10-12 year interval) After the 40 year life of the reactors, it will simply be replaced with new ones while the barge will be reused.
This isn’t the first time however for this type of plan to be drawn up as the Westinghouse company once conceptualized this same facility in the 70’s. Cheap OPEC oil however scuttled this plan. Plans of resurrecting this type of power barge again in the US has taken some flack from environmentalists group.
The main issues being :
- That a floating barge with a nuclear reactor could get rammed by another boat. Causing it to accidentally spill nuclear waste - I’d assume that you would cordoned off the area for this. I mean even Oil platforms have a minimum safe distance that they maintain for large boats to approach them.
- If it losses power to run its cooling equipment (via blackout and emergency generator failure) it could lead to a nuclear meltdown of the core … I have to scoff at this one, shouldn’t you be getting power to run your cooling systems from the NUCLEAR POWER PLANT itself???
Their difference of Naval Reactors from commercial Nuclear reactors are:
- More power for less volume occupied.
- Use metal-zirconium alloy as it’s fuel.
- Have longer core lives which means that you can refuel every 10 years with a useful life of 30-50 years.
- Design is for a compact pressure vessel.
- Used mostly for propulsion and not power generation.
Original Article from Popular Science
Category: Nuclear
April 18th, 2007 at 1:56 am
[…] Two Russian companies, Rosenergoatom and Sevmash, have started to build the first ever nuclear power barge in the world. Rosenergoatom, who specializes in Nuclear Power, is financing 80% of the project and Sevmash, who builds nuclear submarines, will finance 20%. $200 M is the estimated cost to build this barge which will be completed in 2010. Announcement of this plan to build a nuclear power barge was made last year. The plant, to be called Akademik Lomonosov, is being constructed in the Northern state of Severodvinsk. It will be initially used to power Sevmash’s shipbuilding facilities. […]