Underwater Nuclear Power Plant Proposed In France

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."

heat generated would dissipate into the ocean

[jsepeta]

i'm not sure that this is the best location for a nuclear plant, but it may lead to a cool james bond flick.

Well, I can see the tradeoffs.

[RsG]

On the one hand, you're introducing corrosive seawater to the mix. And you're putting it in a cramped, high pressure environment, though if it's heavily automated that won't cause as many problems as if it had a large full time crew aboard.

On the positive side, you've now got a handy, high heat capacity, thermally conductive environment to work with, which nuke plants benefit from. And you're making it such that any contamination from a disaster will be limited to irradiated seawater instead of airborne fallout, which is a good trade off as far as limiting both human and environmental damage goes. Not that contaminating the water is a good thing, but airborne fallout is much, much worse.

Plus, when you want to decommission one of these things, you can tow it to wherever it's going, instead of dismantling it on-site and taking it away in pieces.

I wonder why underwater?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

My impression(not speaking as an expert shipwright or anything) is that if you want to take a land-based system and get it going for reliable marine use, you'll be lucky if the cost doubles(Boat. Noun. A hole in the water into which one pours money). That, though, I I can see the benefits of. The art and science of building large floating objects is pretty well established, and then you pretty much plunk the reactor on top of that. Nice and portable, coolant all around, and sure beats trying to make your nuclear reactor a helicopter or something. Float it where you need it, run a glorified extension cable to shore, and away you go.

Underwater, though, just seems like a recipe for making the whole thing even more expensive than on the water, along with harder to monitor and maintain, and likely to be much more exciting if there is a steam leak or something. Is there some advantage that I am not seeing, or is this a case of "when you are a post-cold-war-nuclear-submarine-designer everything looks like it needs an underwater nuclear reactor"?