Russian world-first: A floating nuclear plant

http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/redir.php?jid=ac5d43a8b3b54688&cat=9dd26ff7f3fbfc0e

MOSCOW - An Arctic military shipbuilding plant and Russia's Atomic Power Agency signed a contract Wednesday to build the world's first floating nuclear reactor.

The $336 million reactor will be built by the Sevmash plant in the Arctic port of Severodvinsk beginning next year, and will be commissioned in October 2010, said Sergei Obozov, head of the state-controlled Rosenergoatom consortium in charge of nuclear power plants.

He said the reactor — to provide heating and electricity to Sevmash — was the perfect solution for supplying energy to remote Arctic sites, and that Russian authorities were looking at 11 other possible sites for such reactors.

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Maybe its me but wouldn't the water in the ocean carry the radioactivity if it leaks??? but I do know the subs have them...

Back in the seventies, New Jersey Public Utilities proposed building a floating nuclear plant in the Atlantic. Lots of R&D was done and plans were drawn up; however, the Three Mile Island incident in 1979 pretty much stopped all US nuclear power development.

Here's a one-page PDF describing the project, including an artist's conception. Also, John McPhee, in his anthology Giving Good Weight, has a longish essay describing the project.

of Russia).bay This is not good. They don't have a good track record of nuclear safety of any kind http://www.bellona.no/en/international/russia/report_1-1994/7568.html

(entire villages in the Urals were obliterated decades ago by error; http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/CIA-Nader-Ural-AccidentsNYT26nov77.htm).

Whoops, sorry, wrong control panel. Chernobyl ->