Underwater Nuclear Power Plant Proposed In France 314
nicomede writes "The French state-owned DCNS (French military shipyard) announced today a concept study for an underwater nuclear reactor dedicated to power coastal communities in remote places. It is derived from nuclear submarine power plants, and its generator would be able to produce between 50 MWe and 250MWe. Such a plant would be fabricated and maintained in France, and dispatched for the different customers, thus reducing the risk for proliferation."
Re:heat generated would dissipate into the ocean (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Underwater nuclear power plant (Score:2, Informative)
everytime I hear about nuclear and water I recall the wormwood=chernobyl reference
This reference is spurious at best.
In the Bible (that is, in Revelation) the Greek word is apsinthos, referring to the common wormwood plant (artemisia absinthium). Ukrainian chornobyl, on the other hand, does not mean "wormwood", but "mugwort" (artemisia vulgaris), which is a related, but different plant. The Ukrainian for "wormwood" is polyn hirky, the Russian is polyn' gor'kaya. No resemblance to Chernobyl there.
This is exactly the kind of reference constructed by people insistent on reading references to the present into fictional texts of the past. As soon as you look at things in detail, these references tend to break down.
Re:Man up! (Score:4, Informative)
Ecologically it makes more sense to just recycle the damn stuff, so it doesn't turn the world into Fallout 3.
Re:MWe (Score:5, Informative)
Re:heat generated would dissipate into the ocean (Score:2, Informative)
And? The heat for every nuclear plant dissipates into a nearby body of water, and they all flow into the sea.
Not quite true. The Candu reactors use heavy water that does not dump into the sea, but do use a body of water for heat transfer. No water is cycled through those reactors and back out - they are self contained.
Re:heat generated would dissipate into the ocean (Score:5, Informative)
No water is cycled through those reactors and back out - they are self contained.
Uh, that's true for every halfway sane nuclear reactor out there.
Most nuclear plants actually consist of two to three separate water loops - reactor core, which would be the heavy water that CANDU reactors(as well as others) use. The heat from this is transferred to the second which is used for the steam cycle that actually turns the turbines - this is generally treated distilled water. The last would be the water that's generally taken from a lake or river, and used to cool the steam water, then returned.
Some plants combine the first two, directly using the water from the reactor to power the turbines.
Re:heat generated would dissipate into the ocean (Score:4, Informative)
Then why do they have cooling towers?
If the water were not cooled prior to putting it back in the local river or lake, the heat would kill all the fish and the algae would flourish like mad. The lake or river would be a nasty mess in short order.
Re:I wonder why underwater? (Score:5, Informative)
>>Security is probably another advantage to add to those already mentioned. At a depth of 100 meters, it is not easily accessible and it is then probably easier to secure from any unauthorized access.
Efficiency is also a nice plus. As we all know from physics, the efficiency of an engine depends on the size of the difference in temperature between the hot and cold reservoirs. The colder the water you pump in, the more work you can extract from a cycle.
On a related note, France has had to shut down some of its reactors during the heat waves they've been getting in recent years, due to the plants' water supply becoming too warm. For a country that relies on nukes for its power, I can see why they'd find marine plants to be attractive.
It all comes down to cost, though. TFA had no information on pricing.
Re:Man up! (Score:5, Informative)
What site? The site of a repository or the site of a wrecked truck?
Nuclear waste is not the only toxic waste that must be held in repositories forever. Your children's children have a lot of places to avoid, and nuclear material inhabits the least of those areas.
The site of the wrecked truck would NOT be uninhabitable for decades; in fact, it would be inhabitable in a matter of days to weeks, because it could be completely cleaned up. Completely. Cleaned. Up. In ways that other chemical spills could never be cleaned up, with the dangerous material gathered up and removed to its some holding place in a way that many other chemical contaminants never can be.
And there are holding places, probably closer to you than you think, probably holding more mobile and more immediately threatening things than nuclear waste, that will be around until geology itself takes care of them.
What does half-life have to do with it?
There is no half-life for arsenic-laced mine tailings that cover miles and miles of land. There is no half-life for mercury.
There is no half-life for coal ash.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly_ash_slurry_spill [wikipedia.org]
There is no half-life for alumina sludge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajka_alumina_plant_accident [wikipedia.org]
There is no half-life for heavy metals pollution and the half-life of many chlorinated compounds, like dioxins (e.g. agent orange), reaches well beyond a human lifetime. You claim that nuclear waste pushes the problem to the future. This is in no way unique. Not in terms of half-life. Certainly not in terms of volume.
Like I said, nuclear power produces toxic waste. That waste is *very* toxic. But you have a fundamental misconception of how much very toxic waste we deal with routinely. Nuclear waste is different, but not in many of the ways that you think it is.
Nuclear waste is among the most acutely dangerous wastes, but it comes in a much smaller volume than many other *very* toxic wastes that we produce, store, and avoid. It also comes in a package that, chemically and physically, is harder to 'lose' in the environment.
I'm not downplaying nuclear waste. I don't deny that it's a problem. I'm trying to express to you the gravity of the other wastes we deal with, and help you put them in perspective. The problem is that you never heard people talking in hushed tones about 'alumina bombs,' or that you never saw pictures of chromium VI leveling a city. The problem is that we do a good enough job of dealing with all of the other toxic substances out there that you have no appreciation for how much--and how dangerous--the other stuff is. When put in perspective, nuclear waste is a bad actor among bad actors, but not in all cases the worst. The problem is that without an appreciation for how truly bad the 'normal' toxic waste is, you think comparisons must necessarily be white-washing nuclear waste. The problem is that you will not understand the gravity of these substances, because you don't have to.
There is no arguing facts about nuclear waste when your first association is bombs, or when you think that 'thousands of years of toxicity' is something unique to radioactive waste, and not the norm, or when you think there are 'true' solutions for any of these things. You don't have to like, accept, or advocate for nuclear energy, but you can't make appeals to reason when you don't even know the real reasons why you should be concerned.