Floating Nuclear Power: Inside Russia's Reactors at Sea

The U.S. and Russian navies have long used nuclear-powered submarines, aircraft carriers, and icebreakers. But a new kind of nuclear power is coming. Russia's Akademik Lomonosov, currently under construction, will be a floating power plant with two 35-megawatt generators designed to supply power to hard-to-reach Arctic communities straight from the ship.

After years of delay, the Rosatom State Nuclear Energy Corporation says it plans to build this first ship by 2016 and to ramp up to four to six in the near future to power up remote cities and industrial areas cut off from the regular power grid.

Rosatom spokesperson Denis Perkin says the new ship?which is not self-propelled and must be towed to a semipermanent pier site?can offer electric power and heat supply, simultaneously offering a desalination plant run by the reactor's excess heat, producing "both electric power and high-quality fresh water."

Paul Genoa, senior director of policy development at Washington, D.C.'s Nuclear Energy Institute, says, "It is an exciting idea to bring power to communities that are really off the grid." But we don't know much yet about the risks of operating a floating nuclear plant.

The Akademik Lomonosov's reactors will be similar to the small nuclear reactors available today, Genoa says. Intensely pure distilled water sealed within the two reactor's primary loop will be continually reused to cool the main fuel source. The nuclear reactor will heat water in a secondary loop, turning it to steam to rotate turbines and create electricity, before that steam condenses back into water. A third condenser filled with water?which doesn't mix with the two loops?cools the second loop and will likely grab saltwater for the purpose.

Waste heat from the reactors isn't hot enough to convert to steam, but would be enough to drive the ship's desalination process, either a reverse osmosis method or an electricity-driven approach that pushes water through a membrane. "Combining production of fresh water with electricity is a really big deal, and these reactors will be very useful," Genoa says.

Russia will use this first ship to provide power and water to the Arctic town of Vilyuchinsk in Russia's far-east Kamchatka region. The ship can dock to a newly built pier and connect with the city's power grid with power and steam lines. Over the course of the 40-year lifespan of the ship (which will also house a crew of 69 people) the fuel will only need to be recycled every 10 to 12 years, Perkin says. The electricity produced can power a city of 200,000 and offer 63 million gallons of fresh water daily. The two modified KLT-40 light water reactors will produce about 70 megawatts total, a size well-suited for small cities and industrial areas, Genoa says.

With the process overseen by Russian state agency Rosenergoatom, the Akademik Lomonosov is under construction in Baltiysky Zavod St. Petersburg plant. More than 90 percent of the new ship's hull is complete, and the two turbogenerators have been installed. The two nuclear reactors remain ready for installation, and the first batch of fuel has been produced. However, it will take three more years to piece together all the components, move the ship to it final location, and complete preparations there.

Rosatom says design standards exceed all theoretical loads possible, even if the ship is struck by a tsunami wave, hits another ship, or runs aground. And though the idea of floating nuclear plants surely sounds dangerous, it's not so far out compared with what the world has now, according to Jeremy Whitlock, reactor physicist at Atomic Energy of Canada Limited's Chalk River Laboratories.

"Ship-based nuclear plants have operated safely for 60 years, including in proximity to cities, so I have no reason to doubt the safety of Russia's plans," he says. "I certainly would feel no safer if a natural gas operation were being planned near a city, especially if we start comparing the risks of LNG [liquified natural gas] tankers. At the same time we have to recognize and address the social side of the safety equation, which is what drives the concern in this case. People are not safe unless they feel safe, regardless of technical argument."

Bill Garland, emeritus engineering physics professor at Ontario's McMaster University, agrees: "There are many ship and submarine vessels powered by nuclear that have operated for decades. That has to count for something."

Indeed, Russia's floating nuclear power plant won't be the first ever attempted. The U.S. Army had a reactor program in the 1960s that outfitted the Sturgis ship with a 10-megawatt reactor and tested it for 11 months on the Potomac River, powering a nearby base, before it operated for nearly a decade at the Panama Canal.

But Russia is the only country today proposing floating plants. As far as regulating a floating power source, Genoa says Russia alone will be responsible for permits and safety standards?beyond following the International Atomic Energy Agency regulations?because the plant will operate within their country, not in international waters.

Follow Tim Newcomb on Twitter at @tdnewcomb.

Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/nuclear/floating-nuclear-power-inside-russias-reactors-at-sea-15695888?src=rss

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