Floating Nuclear Power
By Gordon Prather
© 2001 WorldNetDaily.com

The rolling blackouts on the West Coast, soon to be visited on the East Coast, result from interveners -- those wonderful people who Think Globally and Act Locally -- taking advantage of all the federal, state and local public hearings that are required before you can get a federal, state or local permit to do whatever it is you want to do. They can delay, delay, and delay what you want to do, if not stop it dead in its tracks. The intervener goal is to shut down -- among other things -- all electric power production, no matter whether coal-fired, oil-fired, gas-fired or nuclear-fueled. They are even trying, right now, to block the New York Power Authority from building seven gas-fired emergency mini-power generators in New York City, which could provide up to 450 MWe of electricity this coming summer.

The immediate cause of the rolling blackouts is a scarcity of natural gas on both coasts, but that scarcity has resulted from interveners forcing coal and oil-fired power plants to shift to natural gas -- and then preventing anyone from building any new pipelines to transport the additional natural gas required from where it is found in the ground to where it is needed by you, the people. That scarcity can neither be quickly nor easily remedied. And even if the New York Power Authority can defeat the interveners and -- by some miracle -- get those seven mini-plants built on time, that is going to be very expensive electricity.

So, what about nuclear power? It's not only cheap but it's insensitive to the price of natural gas or OPEC oil or even Uranium. Nuclear power produces no pollutants or greenhouse gases. However, despite those environmental advantages -- largely because of past experience with interveners -- no electric utility has even tried to build a nuclear power plant in this country in the last twenty years. How could nuclear power plants -- in the present regulatory climate -- come riding to the rescue of all you tree-huggers sooner than gas pipelines could be laid or coal-fired plants built?

Well, the answer may be that those nuclear power plants won't be built in this country and they won't come riding to the rescue -- they'll come floating.
Suppose you are freezing in the dark in Eureka, California, or Portland, Maine, or some other small city on the seacoast and someone tells you that the USS Nimitz has just come to your rescue. The Nimitz is powered by two nuclear reactors, which drive eight steam turbine generators, producing a total of 64 MWe of electrical power. At sea, most of that electrical power is used to drive the Nimitz to speeds in excess of thirty knots and its reactors can operate at full power for a dozen or so years, essentially continuously, and without refueling. But when the Nimitz is dockside in Portland or Eureka, it costs no more to continue to operate its reactors at full power; and most of that 64MWe generated could be provided -- in principle -- to you people ashore, in small cities, freezing in the dark. All you people need there in Portland or Eureka -- in principle -- is a very large industrial strength power cord.

But that would be silly, of course, using the Nimitz to keep you from freezing in the dark. You don't need a multi-billion dollar, 95,000-ton displacement, 1092-foot long, 252-foot wide aircraft carrier to provide the 60MWe you need. All you need are the nuclear reactors and their steam generators mounted on some kind of unsinkable barge. And it would be a very good thing if the entire power plant sited on the unsinkable barge could be constructed somewhere else, far out of the reach of our federal, state and local regulators, and hence out of the reach of "interveners."

Well, as it happens, the Russians began constructing about five years ago a factory to make at least a dozen such unsinkable barge-mounted nuclear power plants for their own use at remote Russian cities in the Arctic. Because of the financial meltdown in Russia in 1998, the construction was put on hold, but it appears that President Putin has now made resuming construction and the international marketing of these nuclear power plants a fairly important item on his agenda. He certainly did so on his trip earlier this year to Indonesia.

The power plant comprises two KLT-40 reactors, driving four steam turbine generators, producing 70 MWe. The power plant is mounted on a 160-meter long un-propelled double-hulled ice-breaker-like steel barge that will also house the living quarters for the 60 crewmen. The KLT-40 nuclear reactors are presently used in Russian nuclear-powered icebreakers and already have a repair-free life span of 110,000 hours. They can operate continuously for periods of up to 9,000 hours in harsh Arctic conditions.

The factory in Murmansk will "mass produce" the barges and power plants, including on-board refueling and waste management facilities. Each reactor is encased in a containment structure able to withstand high over-pressure. The main hull and superstructure framework is made from D40 steel, which has a high resistance to brittle fracture under low temperature conditions. The hull will be a completely welded structure, reinforced against hitting icebergs in transit and the pressure of being frozen in ice all winter.

The dozen or so Russian barge-mounted nuclear-power plants being built are intended to keep 20 million Russians living in remote communities in the Arctic Circle and the Bering Strait from freezing in the dark. The floating nuclear power plants will not require refueling for up to 4 years, will operate for up to 40 years, being interrupted every 13 years for a return to Murmansk for maintenance.

Separately, Putin and the Russians are also proposing to substitute desalination units for steam turbines on some barges. While not yet a problem in Maine, there may soon be a fresh water deficit in California. It is estimated that there is already a combined fresh-water deficit for India, Pakistan, China, Egypt, Algeria, etc. of more than 10-million cubic meters daily. Each Russian APWS-40 barge mounted nuclear powered desalination plant is expected to be capable of supplying up to 80,000 cubic meters of fresh water daily at a cost of about a dollar per cubic meter.

The disadvantage of using the KLT-40 reactors for power generation is that they are an old design, not very efficient, and use fairly highly enriched (60% U-235) Uranium. It would be a good thing if, for example, the modularized 110 MW "pebble-bed" nuclear power plants -- also a well-proven design but far more efficient and more nuke proliferation resistant -- developed in South Africa by the South Africans (Eskom), Russians (Kurchatov), Germans (Siemens) and Americans (Exelon) could soon be built in South Africa and/or Russia and mounted on unsinkable barges and towed to our shores.

But, at the moment, the enormous advantage of the KLT-40 design is that it has already met all Russian nuclear safety and radiological regulations, and already incorporates all pertinent safety recommendations of the International Atomic Energy Agency. What that means is that the interveners can't stop these nuclear power plants from being built in Russia. They can't even delay them. The Russian floating nuclear power plants could be off our shores in a matter of two or three years. Then, about the only way the interveners can force you to freeze in the dark is to prevent you from taking your very large industrial strength power cord, rowing out to the Russian barge and plugging it in.