Floating Nuclear Power Plants for China
2018-08-30
Viet Phuong Nguyen on China's Floating Nuclear Power Plants: https://thediplomat.com/2018/05/chinas-risky-plan-for-floating-nuclear-power-plants-in-the-south-china-sea/I dislike the above hand-wringing on China's FNPPs. Atomophobia in general strikes me as Baizuo-ism (given certain caveats about the need for strong safety and security reguations). Don't @ me with your environmentalism; I care about the environment, too, and I'm perfectly well aware of all the arguments. So let's talk about the advantages of FNPPs.
1. The Russians have been running nuclear icebreakers for decades without incident, proving that the technology (which is new in the sense that the use-case is new) is at least well understood and has a legacy of safety and efficacy. It should be noted that most modern navies operate nuclear vessels; the US has over 60 nuclear ships and submarines. The first FNPP, called the Akademik Lomonosov will launch from the town of Pevek sometime in 2019.
As you can see from the photo, Russia is poised to deploy FNPPs along much of its northern border. These regions are hard to reach but are becoming increasingly important as Russia takes advantage of thawing ice in the Artic and new sailing and trade routes being opened up by global temperature increase.
The ability of FNPPs to project power brings us to the advantage for China, which is:
2. The ability to deploy nuclear barges into the South China Sea to support defense of their islands there against other claimants as well to support oil and gas discovery and drilling. The barges can provide not only electricity but also crucial desalinated water for the islands. As Nguyen notes: "China National Nuclear Corp. (CNNC) and China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN), announced a plan to jointly develop the first Chinese nuclear power barge for deployment in the South China Sea by 2020, the first of a planned 20 such reactors."
3. Concerns over meltdowns can be massively assuaged by the fact that FNPPs can use the entire ocean as heat sinks.
4. Other advantages include the ability to build in shipyards (where there are highly trained workers), massive cost advantages over traditional reactors in the form of modular design, lower operating costs and efficiency.
Indonesia is, in fact, heavily investing in FNPPs it calls 'nuclear islands.' You can read more about those here: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/08/china-and-russia-looking-at-27-floating-nuclear-reactors-but-thorcon-and-indonesia-could-scale-to-100-per-year.html
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