Chernobyl at Sea? Russia Builds Floating Nuclear Plant

NewsMax.com: Chernobyl at Sea? Russia Plans Floating Nuclear Plant

Russian Atomic Energy Minister Yevgeny Adamov said Tuesday that Russia planned to build its first floating nuclear power plant

Ministry planners hope to significantly reduce other costs by having the plant's staff live on the sea coast instead of on the floating platform.

The facility would be installed on a barge moored at a dock in the port of Severodvinsk in northwest Russia.

The plant's designed capacity is expected to reach 50 megawatts and will be used primarily to supply power to Severnoye, one of the biggest electricity consumers in the region.

In addition to building nuclear power plants, Severnoye also specializes in building nuclear submarines, some of which are part of Russia's Northern Fleet.

Future projects, shipbuilding, Baltiyskiy Zavod

Main technical data of the floating power plant:

• Max.length 140 m
  
• Midship breadth 30 m
  
• Depth 10,0 m
  
• Draught 5,6 m
  
• Displacement 21760 t
  
• Voltage 10 êV
  
• Electrical power 70 MW
  
• Heat supplied ashore 50 Gcal/h
  
• Type of fuel nuclear fuel
  
• Period of operation 40 years

www.antenna.nl..." target="_blank" class="postlink">WISE: Russia: World's first floating nuclear plant (This article is from July 26, 1996)


Russia has long had plans to build a series of small floating nuclear power plants for use in remote regions which are not connected to the national grid, or to replace thermal nuclear power plants that have grown too expensive because of high fuel transportation costs.

They will be used in inaccessible regions of the Far East, extreme North, Altay Territory and the Kola Peninsula." He noted that Russia is the world leader in small nuclear power plant production and sees these plants as potential export products, especially to developing countries. He added that Indonesia, South Korea, China, and Vietnam have all expressed interest.

But environmentalists are not convinced. "We know about the quality of the Russian fleet's nuclear reactors. A Komsomolet nuclear submarine is still located at the bottom of the North Sea," says Vladimir Sliviak of the Socio-Ecological Union/Antinuclear Campaign in Moscow.

Originally posted by jensy
This plant appears to be a very sensible alternative to a conventional nuclear plant which would take up a lot of room on land

Originally posted by XphilesPhan
This is just great,

the russians cant make safe reactors on land much less water. I think the russians drink to much vodka.

Originally posted by Rasputin13
Can someone please outline the benefits of having a nuclear plant floating on water as opposed to sitting on land? I know it can't really be due to lack of space, especially in Russia's case.

Originally posted by jra

Originally posted by Rasputin13
Can someone please outline the benefits of having a nuclear plant floating on water as opposed to sitting on land? I know it can't really be due to lack of space, especially in Russia's case.

I think the main benefit would be the unlimited access to water for cooling the reactor. Perhaps also being out in the water, it will be a bit more isolated from more populated areas. Those are the two ideas that instantly come to mind for me.

15 Russian nuclear reactors dumped at sea

Greenpeace on February 27 confirmed that 12 submarine nuclear reactors and three icebreaker reactors have been dumped in the waters off the coast of Novaya Zemlya. This is the first public disclosure that Russian submarines and their nuclear reactors were dumped in the Kara Sea.

One whole submarine, the K-27, powered by a liquid-metal cooled reactor, was dumped in the Stepovov Gulf after an accident in May 1968. Its two fuelled nuclear reactors were dumped in the same location off the southern island in 1982.

Eight reactors, three of which still contain their nuclear fuel, were dumped with sections of four accident-damaged nuclear submarines in waters just south of the K-27. The submarine sections -- from the K-11, K-3 Leninski Komsomol, K-19 Hiroshima, and one unknown -- were reportedly dumped during the years 1964-65.

Five more reactors litter the seabed, including the three damaged reactors from the icebreaker Lenin. More than 17,000 containers of liquid and solid radioactive waste were also dumped; the location of some 10,000 of these containers has now been made public.

Novaya Zemlya, an archipelago in the Arctic Circle used as a nuclear test site, is proving to be one of the largest nuclear dumping grounds. The information comes from sources inside the Commonwealth of Independent States, researched by Alexander Yemelanenkov, Russian chairman of the anti-testing association Towards Novaya Zemlya, and Andrei Zolotkov, a nuclear engineer aboard the Imandra, a nuclear refuelling ship for icebreakers in Murmansk.

“The waste from the nuclear icebreakers is a molehill compared to the mountain of waste created by the Russian nuclear navy”, said John Sprange, Greenpeace disarmament campaigner. “This is the beginning of an uncontrolled landslide.”