14 DAY TRIAL // Thanks to Chernobyl and Fukushima, best described as two of the most destructive accidents to have until now happened, greenheads don't quite fancy nuclear power. Folks in the energy industry, on the other hand, have no such issues.
Thus, it was not too long ago that representatives of China-based CNNC New Energy visited Russia and met with the people behind Rusatom Overseas, a subsidiary of Russia's State Atomic Energy Corporation ROSATOM.
The goal of this visit was to give the Chinese delegates the chance to talk to folks at Rusatom Overseas about the possibility of working together on the development of floating nuclear plants, Green Car Congress informs.
By the looks of it, the Chinese delegates that got to visit Russia got along so well with representatives of Rusatom Overseas that a Memorandum of Intent was eventually signed, information shared with the public says.
What this means is that all that is missing for CNNC New Energy and Rusatom Overseas to get to work building floating nuclear plants together in perfect harmony is the establishment of a Chinese-Russian working group.
Commenting on the need to develop such facilities, D. Aliev, the current CEO of Rusatom Overseas, says that “The potential use of floating nuclear power plants is significant. The design provides for two options: self-propelled or barge-mounted floating NPPs [nuclear power plants].”
“They might be connected to coastal infrastructure or float next to consumer. Floating NPPs can provide a reliable power supply not only to remote settlements, for example, in the Far North or Far East regions, but also to large industrial facilities such as oil platforms,” he adds.
For those unaware, Rusatom Overseas is not exactly new to the business of building floating nuclear plants. On the contrary, it is now busy piecing together one such facility dubbed the Akademik Lomonosov. Should things go as planned, this floating nuclear plant will be online by 2019.
Word has it that, when completed, the Akademik Lomonosov, which will sport two nuclear reactors whose combined electricity generating capacity will amount to 70,000 megawatts, will be put to work in the proximity of the port of Pevek on Russia’s Chukotka peninsula on the East Siberian Sea.
Interestingly enough, folks in China and Russia are not the only ones to have taken a sudden interest in floating nuclear plants. It was earlier this year, in April, that scientists in the US delivered a model for such facilities that would be able to ride out tsunamis and escape earthquakes unscathed.
At that time, researchers with the country's Massachusetts Institute of Technology explained that such nuclear plants would sit on platforms not too different to those used in offshore drilling activities, would come in a wide variety of sizes, and would be very easy to transport from one location to another.
“The biggest selling point is the enhanced safety. It's very close to the ocean, which is essentially an infinite heat sink, so it's possible to do cooling passively, with no intervention. The reactor containment itself is essentially underwater,” specialist Jacopo Buongiorno says in a statement.
As thrilled as folks in the global energy industry might be about the idea of having floating nuclear plants power one human community or another, or various industrial processes, chances are that environmental groups and their supporters are not exactly jumping for joy when hearing such pieces of news.
More so given the fact that Chernobyl and Fukushima weren't exactly planned for. On the contrary, they were mere accidents that chanced to happen, and, safety precautions and new technologies aside, there is no guarantee that floating nuclear plants will not be vulnerable to similar incidents as well.