Offshore Floating Nuclear Plant: How to Enable a Large Nuclear Energy Expansion by MIT Floating Reactor

Nuclear power has its advantages, but it's very not-green overall. From the extraction of uranium to the radioactive waste disposal, the damage to the environment is huge. It may give you affordable energy now, but your grandchildren would pay for that. Offshore has potential for much better energy sources: http://energytransition.de/2013/11/denmark-surpasses-100-percent-wind-power/ Cheers !..

I see nuclear power as a really bad idea. There are so many better, safer alternatives out there. Look into how the pyramids used to work for example. It was very similar to what Nikola Tesla was doing. We ought to try some of those methods before risking obliterating our planet any further with nuclear power plants that tend to go boom. In the ocean, this is a particularly bad idea because if there is a meltdown, the radioactive crud goes straight into the ocean. And right into our fish, and into our rain, and beaches, and overall, nuclear power just generally causes more harm than good. I would love to have your input however and support on my proposal. https://www.climatecolab.org/web/guest/plans/-/plans/contestId/1300403/planId/1305704 Thanks for taking an interest in making the world a better place! Cheers, Chad

timwelders comment is correct. Most folks that recoil at the idea of nuclear have no understanding of the IFR and other new designs.

Fast reactors have their advantages, and I've advocated them in previous contests. I'm not sure it makes sense to offshore them though. It's worth pointing out maybe that the reason we use light-water reactors is that they were designed for offshore use in the first place...in Navy submarines. We built those first and ended up leveraging that experience for civilian power. Putting a water-cooled reactor in the ocean makes a lot of sense. Light-water reactors by themselves can't provide enough energy to power the whole planet for long. But if we do move to IFRs, and want to build them quickly enough to address climate change, we're also going to need more light-water reactors to provide startup fuel (which right now we're calling "waste"). Tom Blees worked out the numbers in his book Prescription for the Planet.

Glad to see the proposal. Nuclear certainly has great importance in the current global energy mix. It would be worth looking into two different aspects to evince the merit of this proposal First, the proposal may include some detailed information with some examples about what and how the proposed plan addresses the central question Second, what is the actual feasibility of the proposed plan in the given socio-economic and geopolitical situation. Also, it is of value to address the question about how far this proposal can get the attention of economies that are major GHG emitters. All the best

Hello Timwelder. Roger that. Short story on Nuke Ships. I was aboard a U.S. Navy Destroyer in an Orange-Blue War Game Exercise. The "Orange Force" was made up of US ships acting as "USSR units." Blue Force ships are U.S. as well. Basically, the Captains of each ship use tactics to avoid detection, etc. We went at top speed for an over the horizon "attack" on the nuke powered Enterprise aircraft carrier - which turned its stern to us and poured on the power, walking away at an amazing speed. Sort of like a Porsche Turbo vs. Prius. The Enterprise is a very fast ship. 4 props and tons of Nuke Horsepower. It's length to width ratio provides excellent hydrodynamics. I'm off script, but wanted to share with you.

Posts on this project are diminishing. TEAM, THINK AND SHARE WHAT YOU WILL to continue. Mark

Thank you Filipe. It's fundamental to consider "ocean solutions" since the earth is 70% ocean. I saw a stat in recent years which said "98% of the world population" lives on "less than 5% of habitable land masses." As populations become more advanced, prosper, and grow, energy sourcing from the ocean is inevitable. Concerns raised by you and others (me too) are reasonable concerns worthy of intense analysis resulting in "fail-safe" remedies. In the nuclear Navy and among our nuke power plants, basically it's a world of "zero risk" - e.g., welded components are checked QC/QA to a level which theoretically eliminates risk. This is why so few submarines have been lost over the past 100+ years - not to divert, but this is an interesting bit of history as it relates to subs before the advent of current technologies: The first military submarine was Turtle in 1776. During the American Revolutionary War, Turtle (operated by Sgt. Ezra Lee, Continental Army) tried and failed to sink a British warship, HMS Eagle (flagship of the blockaders) in New York harbor on September 7, 1776.

Interesting idea. Nuclear submarine designer/builders seem like the natural fit for this idea. This website argues in favour of small nuclear reactors. http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2012/ph241/adijanto2/ Perhaps a fleet of moored nuclear submarines connected to shore by an underwater cable makes some sense. Once a design is finalized (or chosen), building a large number of copies might be relatively cheap? Cautionary tales to consider: "Of the 8 [nuclear submarines] sinkings, 2 were due to fires, 2 were due to explosions of weapons systems, 1 was due to flooding, 1 was weather-related, and 1 was sunk intentionally due to a damaged nuclear reactor. In 1 case, the cause of sinking is unknown." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sunken_nuclear_submarines I wonder how far a nuclear sub can travel once a possible meltdown situation has been detected? This would potentially save the nearby mega-city, but would still result in a nuclear mess.

As the Navy's trident subs are taken out of commision could they be converted to use as offshore reactor plants?

Discounting for a moment the nuclear safety and waste aspects, I do have one other big concern over this concept, that of security. Any large moored floating platform is incredibly vulnerable to attack, and a nuke would be a spectacular high-value target whether we're looking at conventional or asymmetric warfare. It's worth bearing in mind the new "Sizzler" ("Club") supersonic cruuse missile and the Squall cavitating torpedo are regarded as massive threats by even leading-edge Navy vessels (see https://www.climatecolab.org/web/guest/plans/-/plans/contestId/1300201/planId/1308911) - a static platform like this would be a sitting duck and very probably indefensible. The environmental damage resulting would be horrendous - which sadly would probably make it more, rather than less, attractive as a target to terrorists or certain regimes. Has this aspect been considered?

The contributor has proposed an Offshore Floating Nuclear Plant (OFNP) concept to utilize the vast amounts of ocean water for cooling in case of events and an in-building manufacturing process to maximize productivity. At a first glance, the proposed scheme adds significant cost to the structure vs on-shore nuclear power plant and positions the nuclear plant in an location more exposed to terrorist attacks. Furthermore, as mentioned by Tim, team's estimate for time to market appears to be unreasonably optimistic. However it may be worthwhile to further investigate the cost side, both in the manufacturing and in the construction/movement of the OFNP. This is a very interesting high level concept. Many questions remain that must be answered before one can judge whether or not this could be viable. However, the team appears to have a good handle on many of these questions and describes a reasonable path forward. It would have been helpful to have more details at a back-of-the-envelope level to assess whether there is any chance that this could be cost effective. While there are certainly a number of obvious safety questions that would need to be addressed, in my view, none of these are technically or economically insurmountable. Moreover, the concept also has many clear advantages over the traditional model of custom-built land-based 3,000 MW power plants. On balance, this concept may well prove to be both cheaper and safer. The advantages of mass production, in particular, could make a relatively small power plant economical to build and operate. Designing safety systems for a relatively small power plants, e.g., 100 MWe, is considerably simpler than for larger units. For example, it may be possible to design an entirely passive mechanism to maintain the core safely cooled in the event of an accident for these types of reactors. For land based pressurized or boiling water reactors, the type in use in the US, this is not possible. That is, the safety systems have to be powered to “actively” circulate the coolant through the reactor. Also, a floating nuclear power plant is not an entirely new concept. The US and British navy have more than half a century of experience operating nuclear powered vessels. The proposed commercial reactor described here, in many respects, would be simpler and easier to design for they would not need to meet specifications for military propulsion (e.g., rapid power up and acceleration).

just a question : why nuclear?...its not safe yet. My 2 cents, we can even handle oil spills (which are very frequent and destroy a lot of stuff) I really don't want floating Chernobyl or Hiroshima's around in storms (which are increasing in strength and numbers)

This proposal is consistent with recent survey of climate scientists viz. the importance of nuclear power for climate stabilization. See: http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/nuclear/experts-favor-retiring-coal-keeping-nuclear

Hi MIT Floating reactor and your friends, kindly consider voting for my proposal shown on this link. https://www.climatecolab.org/web/guest/plans/-/plans/contestId/1300206/planId/1002 Thanks.

When there are 9.5 billion of us in 2050, we will need to produce 3 times more energy than we use now, for everyone to have a deserved and equitable share. Every one on the planet will be fighting tooth and nail for a decent way of life. It may become a sick race between water wars and energy-security wars if we don't get it right. AGW may be of little consequence to career politicians, driven only by the imperative of meeting energy and water demands. One - and only one - technology can supply all of the energy humankind can possibly use for all of eternity. Breeder reactor technology is our only hope of a strife-free future for our children and grandchildren. Breeder reactors, fuelled by inexhaustible sources of uranium and thorium can supply electrical energy to produce all of the potable water we can ever need and carbon-neutral liquid fuels for transport. They can also provide the energy to produce carbon-neutral ammonia for fertilisers to feed the world. The minuscule amount of 'final' waste they produce decays to background radiation levels in only 300 years. Easily, cheaply and safely stored. They will burn up as fuel, an existing precious energy resource, which the duplicitous call 'nuclear waste'. IFRs may not be the best breeder reactor version for a submerged environment, so the emphasis should be on LFTRs for offshore deployment.