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Did we not already learn our lesson that nuclear power plants on or near the ocean are bad, very very bad! Stop this nonsense. Build it on tracks or as a vehicle if you realy want to... anything but this!
It depends on who builds them. The US has been operating nuclear-powered sea vessels (lots of them) since 1954 without any nuclear incidents, while USSR/Russia has had many nuclear incidents at sea.
Nuclear-powered marine vessels are in use for a variety of applications. We also use nuclear power for many of our deep space missions. (Actually, there was a plutonium RTG (Radioisotope Theroelectric Generator) on Apollo 13 when it crashed into the ocean and they think it ended up in the Tonga Trench, they're not sure.)
Yes, if they're carrying the really hot stuff it can be a security issue. Russia has a bunch of nuke-powered icebreakers -- not much worry about somebody hijacking one of those in the middle of the arctic.
I think the Danes are competent engineers and they'd have no problems with accidental release. But they may not be calculating in the extra cost of 24x7 high security for those ships.
@Pat A lack of nuclear incident in the past is not a good mark for acceptability. A single incident, any incident, becomes uncontained, that is unacceptable regardless.
It is also incorrect to say there has been no incidents. There have been 2 US incidents where a nuclear vessele has sank and its nuclear material, as such, leaked into the ocean. Thankfully these vessels carry much much less nuclear material than a power plant so the damage was less but still very real.
What does that have to do with anything? You are missing a few key points:
1) Enriched uranium is what we care about when talking nuclear power, not uranium ore in general.
2) The uranium itself isnt even the biggest or only issue when it comes to nuclear incidents. Nuclear plants convert uranium to plutonium internally and 1/3rd of their energy comes from the produced plutonium component. Enriched plutonium, having a much shorter half life, is a much bigger issue in many ways.
Incorrect, it is significant enough to be measurable by over the counter Geiger counters. The fukishima incident made it very noticeable on Geiger counters when measuring west coast fish radiation levels, for example.
To give you both an idea of actual numbers, fukishima is estimated to have caused about 2000 additional cases of cancer from 2011 to 2015, and those cases continue to add up as time goes on. So over the course of decades we are talking tens of thousands of cancer incidents in humans.
This also doesnt account for the death in wildlife population that occurs from cancer which would be much much higher of course.
Its also important to note the half life on these things are long enough that the effects that the deaths we see per year from this will go on for tens of thousands of years. So it is cumulative in the extreme. If each incident adds 5000 cases of cancer per decade for at least 20,000 years into the future thats a case to find not even one such incident to be acceptable.
I wasn't aware of those US incidents.
In any case, there have been lots of incidents and the impact has not been apocalyptic. Those incidents caused much less impact than, say, a large oil spill.
@Pat A **lot** of people have died of cancer that didnt need to because of our nuclear contamination. It doesnt need to be apocalyptic to be serious.
Also as I already said, which you seem to be ignoring, is that the nuclear power plant on a US army vessle is **much** smaller than a power plant designed to provide power for a city or town. So it isnt exactly comparable to the plan we are discussing which are mobile power plants that hook into power grids.
A lot MORE people die of cancer from gas/oil/coal plants. And that's when they operate to spec.
I just researched this a little more thoroughly. The Danish ships use molten salt reactors -- much safer than what's on military ships/subs. Also, they are small, about 200MW -- comparable to a nuclear marine vessel. And they are designed so the fissionable material will solidify if there is ever a breach.
And they are designed to be used in developing countries to offset coal plants and other really ugly stuff. that causes disease, pollution, and wars.
@Pat irrelevant. No one is claiming you should use gas oil or coal either. I am perfectly ok with building nuclear power plants inland where the ability to contain a leak is much more feasible.
The Fukushima plant is a completely different animal. There is no comparison whatsoever. That was light-water reactor with pressurized hydrogen, And particular plant was the shittiest design ever. It required active powered pumps to cool the core, an insane design.
The Danish ships are molten salt reactors. Much safer.
And the fact they replace gas/oil/coal IS significant. It's opportunity cost. If they use the gas/oil/coal plants, that's terrible for people and the environment.
The cool thing about the ship idea is that they can build them in developing countries where there is the talent and infrastructure to do it properly, whereas in developing countries most kinds of power plants are much more difficult build.
@Pat Inland power plants also replace coal plants, so again your argument of coal is a moot point here.
The ships being safer and less likely to blow is nice and all, but again not acceptable enough reason to have them on the water. Nuclear material should never be on or near the water.
> "...should never be on or near the water."
So, we should immediately halt all oil tanker traffic? An oil spill from a single oil tanker is much more devastating to people and the environment than a nuke sinking.
Have you ever tried to scuba in an oil spill?
@Pat Again, incorrect. While an oil tanker is quite devestating it is no where near as bad as a single nuclear leak into the ocean.
Remember nuclear leaks result in deaths for tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years into the future, perpetually year after year. An oil spill causes death, and its significant, but over a much shorter period of time. The total death toll is no where near as bad.
That said, yes, we should try to eliminate oil tankers as much as humanly possible by... wait for it... building in land nuclear plants.
Again for the 3rd time, arguing oil is worse is moot, no one is advocating oil.
The Danish ships are designed to solidify on contact with seawater, so it doesn't disperse like a venting into the atmosphere or leaking loose fissionable material into the water.
Worst case is that they get flooded, solidify and sink to the bottom of the ocean. It's all in one spot, which could even be recovered if necessary.
Also, nuke risk depends on the isotope. A thorium reactor, for example, has a much shorter period (half-life) of potential risk.
@Pat You do realize solid salt dissolves in water right?
@Pat Even relatively insoluble salts will dissolve away in large quanties of water....
> "Even relatively insoluble salts will dissolve away in large quanties of water...."
I don't know enough about that specific design to know if that's the case or not. Some designs seal the molten salt in separate small containers fix the corrosion problem. And I'm not sure what that specific molten salt mixture wold do in seawater.
If that was a possibility, that the molten salt mixture with the fissionable fuel could become exposed to the open ocean in a way that would allow that material to spread in significant amounts, then yes, that would be a problem. That wouldn't work. But I don't know enough about the Danish design to know if that is the case or not.
The gold standard for nukes is fusion. But they can't seem to get it together enough to bring those into production. (Pun intended.)
@freemo @Pat “It’s estimated that there is at least four billion tons of uranium in seawater, which is about 500 times the amount of uranium known to exist in land-based ores”