Russian world-first: A floating nuclear plant

[boise1]

'No floating Chernobyl,’ authorities say of Arctic port project

AP - Updated: 30 minutes ago

MOSCOW - An Arctic military shipbuilding plant and Russia's Atomic Power Agency signed a contract Wednesday to build the world's first floating nuclear reactor.

The $336 million reactor will be built by the Sevmash plant in the Arctic port of Severodvinsk beginning next year, and will be commissioned in October 2010, said Sergei Obozov, head of the state-controlled Rosenergoatom consortium in charge of nuclear power plants.

He said the reactor — to provide heating and electricity to Sevmash — was the perfect solution for supplying energy to remote Arctic sites, and that Russian authorities were looking at 11 other possible sites for such reactors.

Atomic Power Agency head Sergei Kiriyenko denied that the reactor would pose a security or safety risk, saying that the Sevmash plant — the only Russian plant where atomic submarines are manufactured — was sufficiently well guarded.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13316942/

[hpot]

1. mmmm

I wonder how those three-eyed fish taste like.

[Throckmorton]

2. Dont tell the US Army.

http://eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/nuc_reactors/superla.html

The last nuclear power plant built by the U.S. Army was on a converted liberty ship, the USS Sturgis. The Department of Energy describes the Sturgis as follows: STURGIS Floating Nuclear Power Plant; Designation MH-1A,

[leftyladyfrommo]

3. Oh great. There go the rest of the oceans.

Maybe it's better than all of the coal mines.

[jwirr]

4. In the Arctic? I wonder what a melt down would do for global

warming up there?

[jody]

5. The Nautilus was the first floating reactor and the Savannah the first

cargo-passenger ship to have nuclear power.

[hunter]

6. This is what they are talking about (link):

http://www.okbm.nnov.ru/en/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=139&Itemid=86

It's a 150 MW thermal plant that would be refueled on site every three years, and refurbished at the factory every ten to twelve years.

[Kolesar]

7. Didn't somebody send a nuclear unit up the Yukon R on a barge..?

I don't know if it stayed on the barge, though