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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   2499 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?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademik_Lomonosov exists, and it's a vanity project. 70 megawatts of electricity is a pittance. A fossil fuel power plant in Kostroma produces 3600 megawatts. And caviar.

What is we tried to scale it up? The main building of Smolensk NPP (3000 MW) is about 650 metres long and 150 metres wide. Prelude FLNG is 488 by 74, three times smaller. So a 1000 MW plant is probably the biggest floating NPP we can build right now, even if we somehow ignore the whole problem of squeezing in a substation, which needs a lot of open space and won't like ocean spray at all.

Smolensk NPP size is irrelevant, it's a RBMK-type reactor which is large compared to any other type of nuclear reactor. Water-water reactors are a lot smaller.

That's an important correction. I checked Rostov NPP instead (since it uses VVER), every one of its units is 205 by 136m for 1 megawatt of power. Again, one Prelude FLNG-sized barge.

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