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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   2504 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 4, 2022

Be advised; this thread is not for serious in depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I’ve recently become quite enamoured with the idea of offshore nuclear power, as laid out in this presentation.

The benefits seem quite numerous:

  • the possibility of mass producing standardised power stations at significantly reduced cost

  • export business model

  • reducing the risks posed by tsunamis and earthquakes

  • sidestepping the NIMBY problems that normally emerge with these kind of projects

Anyone here able to point out why this is likely to be a terribly stupid idea in practice?

One thing I didn't see anything about in that presentation was transmission, i.e. how they plan on getting the power from the station to the onshore grid. While the station itself can float transmission towers would have to be fixed in place, and the cost of doing this for however many miles out these would be could possible undo any savings from the construction of the plant itself. Another concern is that using the ocean as a heatsink could cause heat pollution in the area around the plant. This wouldn't be so bad for one plant but several plants scattered at regular intervals could potentially cause problems. I'm generally pro-nuclear but I tend to be skeptical of too-good-to-be-true proposals.

I know very little about electrical transmission, but my understanding is that it isn’t likely to be a huge problem. There appears to be a number of existing subsea interconnectors that transmit large amounts of power over long distances.

Heating of the local area is a really interesting point that I’m not sure of the implications!

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