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TechnoratiRussia to Build Floating Arctic Nuclear Stations
Environmentalists fear pollution risk as firms try to exploit ocean's untapped oil and gas reserves
Russia is planning a fleet of floating and submersible nuclear power stations to exploit Arctic oil and gas reserves, causing widespread alarm among environmentalists.
![[Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Russia is planning a fleet of floating and submersible nuclear power stations to exploit Arctic oil and gas reserves, causing widespread alarm among environmentalists. (AFP/RIA/Mikhail Klimentyev)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/medvedev.jpg "medvedev.jpg")
A prototype floating nuclear power station being constructed at the SevMash shipyard in Severodvinsk is due to be completed next year. Agreement to build a further four was reached between the Russian state nuclear corporation, Rosatom, and the northern Siberian republic of Yakutiya in February.
The 70-megawatt plants, each of which would consist of two reactors on board giant steel platforms, would provide power to Gazprom, the oil firm which is also Russia's biggest company. It would allow Gazprom to power drills needed to exploit some of the remotest oil and gas fields in the world in the Barents and Kara seas. The self-propelled vessels would store their own waste and fuel and would need to be serviced only once every 12 to 14 years.
In addition, designers are known to have developed submarine nuclear-powered drilling rigs that could allow eight wells to be drilled at a time.
Bellona, a leading Scandinavian environmental watchdog group, yesterday condemned the idea of using nuclear power to open the Arctic to oil, gas and mineral production.
"It is highly risky. The risk of a nuclear accident on a floating power plant is increased. The plants' potential impact on the fragile Arctic environment through emissions of radioactivity and heat remains a major concern. If there is an accident, it would be impossible to handle," said Igor Kudrik, a spokesman.
Environmentalists also fear that if additional radioactive waste is produced, it will be dumped into the sea. Russia has a long record of polluting the Arctic with radioactive waste. Countries including Britain have had to offer Russia billions of dollars to decommission more than 160 nuclear submarines, but at least 12 nuclear reactors are known to have been dumped, along with more than 5,000 containers of solid and liquid nuclear waste, on the northern coast and on the island of Novaya Zemlya.
The US Geological Survey believes the Arctic holds up to 25% of the world's undiscovered oil and gas reserves, leading some experts to call the region the next Saudi Arabia. But sea ice, strong winds and temperatures that can dip to below -50C have made them technologically impossible to exploit.
Russia, Norway, Denmark, Canada and the US have all claimed large areas of the Arctic in the past five years. Russian scientists used a mini-submarine to plant a flag below the North Pole in 2007 and have claimed that a nearby underwater ridge is part of its continental shelf.
Last week, ministers from many Arctic countries heard scientists and former US vice-president and Nobel prize winner Al Gore say that the Arctic could be free of ice in the summer within five years, with drastic consequences for the world's climate and human health.
But many countries bordering the Arctic see climate change as the chance to exploit areas that were once inaccessible and to open trade routes between the Pacific and Atlantic.
According to a new report by the Arctic Council, an intergovernmental forum, Russia is considering other nuclear plants for power-hungry settlements. "The locations that have been discussed include 33 towns in the Russian far north and far east. Such plants could be also used to supply energy for oil and gas extraction," says the report by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme.
44 Comments so far
Show AllSolarBob, Editor BSOLR.com, "The Precautionary Collection"
Users of nuclear energy are radioactive idiots and possibly ignorant of science.
In light of known power sources, i.e.: photo-voltaic, geothermal, concentrating solar-thermal, wind, tide and the smart grid to deliver their outputs!!!!!!!
WHY ARE the RIGHT-WING, Nut-case, Wall Street BANKERS AND Their LUNATIC RUSSIAN COUNTERPARTS building these monstrosities? Because they don't respect or understand what they do to all of us. They are world criminals in the truest sense and should be watched like hawks.
Best regards, SolarBob
Always nice to see a fair and balanced perspective
Best regards,
Nuclear Bill
Time to negotiate Arctic territoriality and development rights.
US can learn to cooperate . . . or suffer consequences.
Russia and the rest of the world are moving on.
This idea is just nucking futs!
The amount of BTU's transferred to the Arctic ocean water will drown every polar bear in earth. This desperate need to compete for energy domination is so cruel.
Accelerating the melting of the ice cap; my God! it is really hard to contemplate what a terminally bad decision this is. And they choose Pete Seeger's birthday for the announcement. I thought the Russians were smart? Don't they play a pretty good game of chess? They've got to be joking, right? This is a parody of our drilling at Prudhoe Bay, right please tell me that this is not serious.
A few years back Europe was experiencing a hot summer. I was stringing news items for Flashpoints Radio at KPFA. There was a UPI story about the cooling water from French nuclear plants actually raising the temperatures of the rivers next to the plants where it was dumped back into the river. When the next plant down the river got the water and put it through its cooling system it was warmer before it even entered the second plant's cooling system. All the downstream plants got hotter water. Hotter water does not cool as effectively so the plants had to be operated at increasingly lower capacity to maintain safety from meltdowns. With lower capacity electrical power generation the necessity for blackouts in the cities became necessary. This in turn meant air conditioners had to be shut down and as a direct result the heat started killing the elderly people who needed the air conditioning.
It is time to rethink everything regarding energy.
michael jordan
http://sites.google.com/site/apolloguide/
This is like chopping off your leg and cooking it over an open fire because you are starving to death.
michael jordan
http://sites.google.com/site/apolloguide/
We need a new monetary and education system, but we will never have either until people see the Corporate Media for what it is.
Global Start Date: September 22, 2012...begin growing food now, make the switch then...no industry, no electricity...imagine living the natural way again...self-directed, self-reliant and in harmony with your neighbors...
water, food, shelter, medicinals: the planet will provide, just as it provides your very body...
the problem we're facing isn't a dying economy, it's a dying planet due to our economy...
After 1984, Oceania's relentless imperialism pushed Eurasia to "escalate" fossil exploration for "added insurance". Arms races, fossil races, economic races, nuke races. "Great Games" are played and the people are in chains.
Using floating nuclear power units to drill for oil in such a dangerous and fragile environment is double jeopardy for this planet.
Russia should be coerced into abandoning this ill conceived scheme since safe alternative method for developing energy exist–ie solar and especially wind power. This would require that the USA set the example and lead the would in earth preservation, rather than non participating or opposing international reforms and continuing our excessive waste of energy, as has been the practice especially for the last 8 years.
The cooling for this is going to go straight into the ocean. Any accidental spills will go straight into the ocean. Any more serious problems will go straight into the ocean. Russia does not see any problem of contaminated Russian land (e.g. ?? km around Chernobly), because this will happen in the Arctic, so no need for the bother with too much care. All the contamination will be spread around the entire ocean, and wont bother Russia too much in particular.
One planet - and we are all in it. If I ever find my own planet, I will be sure to keep it pristine.
This must be stopped. Just like the use of D.U. Just like the oil extraction from the Canadian tar sands.
The madness of seeking power and wealth through the short term application of inappropriate technology is American born and bread. Until the people who do the work say no, and make better choices, the insanity will continue, and survival will remain very suspect. Wealth and power breed madness.
A potential disaster! But, as I read this article, I had a green thought that I haven't heard anyonre mention. In grade school 75 years ago,I learned that for part of the year, the Sun in that region shines 24 hours a day. Would it be feasible to plant thousands of solar collectors up there and transmit electric power all Winter to the closest populations?
I like your idea and for Antarctica too. And let's start encouraging zero population growth for human beings and other human-like forms.
michael jordan
http://sites.google.com/site/apolloguide/
I was flabbergasted upon reading this. Has humanity and science reached an endpoint of insanity?
"Highly risky...nuclear accident on a floating power plant...impossible to handle..." just about say it all.
Titanic meet the Exxon Valdez meet the China Syndrome meet Chernobyl.
Didn't the world's leading scientists learn a damned thing?
Nuclear waste/discharge of this magnitude _in the oceans_ will damn mankind for tens of thousands of years. What madman conceived this "brilliant" plan? Dr. Evil?
Have a heart, dude. Your kids and mine will inherit this spaceship.
And just who is funding this insanity? Do these bankers have spaceships to some undiscovered, life-sustaining planet we don't know about?
Is there a "collective death-wish" virus in circulation that we should be aware of? Quarantine time, folks. Better yet, bring along butterfly nets, strait-jackets and thorazine...
it looks bleaker and bleaker for us younger ones and the coming generations.. We need a new currency..
and these nuclear power plants would be cooled in the tropical waters of the Arctic Ocean.
F-king idiots!
So there is always a bright side, even to global warming
Maybe brighter than you think; wear very, very dark glasses and keep your back turned.
What a shame that we allow those with money and power to lead us to catastrophic
consequences of their lust for money. When the tipping point is reached and the
fall into economic and social chaos ensues,once again the innocent among us will
suffer untold miseries. The tipping point is fast approaching,the speed at which it
will come is exponential to the rapidly deteriorating environment. The delusions we
are fed by those with power do not have the ability or the motivation to reverse the course we are on. I believe humans are an aberration and do not belong here on
earth. Species adapt through eons of time and self regulate to their environment.
We on the other hand seek to control rather than to live harmoniously with the
natural world. Our current behaviors will leave a legacy of neglect and abuse of
the planet that succeeding generations will struggle mightily to reverse. I for
one am ashamed it took me so long to see the delusions I held on to for so long.
And so the game goes on...the eternal grab for material wealth while destroying the very planet that provides life.
I want to know what these "wealthy" people will do when they can no longer eat fish from the sea and crops from the land. What will they "buy" then with all of their money?
A trip to the space station? Maybe more cloned fish and meat? Hydroponically grown, chemically saturated foodstuffs?
All they are ensuring with their wealth is that they may be the last to die. And in doing so they will be able to watch their children and grandchildren die first.
"The only wealth is food."
- Eduardo Galeano, from Upside Down.
(Galeano is the author of The Veins of Latin America, the book famously given to Obama by Hugo Chavez last month).
This article is a great illustration of the dysfunctional nature of most types of technological "innovation." For people (apparently including the Russian scientific and technocratic communities) who believe that nature is ours to conquer, there are no good reasons to refrain from anything the mind of man can conceive - especially if there's money (and the attendant power) to be gained.
The entrepreneurial geniuses will kill us all.
Using safe portable nuclear generation in the Arctic is not necessarily a bad idea. A small town in Alaska has been negotiating with Toshiba for a "nuclear battery" that would replace its diesel generators. After 20 or 30 years, Toshiba simply pulls it out, takes it back to the shop in Japan, and plugs in a new one.
But the prospect of the of the Russians (who want to be the world's supplier of recycled nuclear fuel!) doing this, especially on a grand scale, is truly scary. Even without Chernobyl, their nuclear track record, and respect for the environment and human life is abysmal.
Western Europe needs to add weaning itself off Russian and ME gas to its list of green projects. Talk about US energy independence! Russia has those guys by the you know whats!
While I abhor the thought of another nuclear reactor at sea, the reactor technology (and safety) that is used in submarines and ships is quite superior to that used in land-based commercial power plants. The reactors used in ships can be scaled to produce commercial plant output, and so if safety is scaled appropriately, there should be little to fear.
I wish I could say the same about ocean-bottom oil production (which this article is about), which is far, far more hazardous and risky than any nuclear reactor. Can you imagine a blow-out in 1,000 meters of water? Ya can't cap it!
Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins - Native American proverb.
"the reactor technology (and safety) that is used in submarines and ships is quite superior to that used in land-based commercial power plants. "
(emphasis mine.)
Is sea borne nuclear power really safer WTF? I am not sure. I am aware of a high number of "loss-of-control" accidents of nuke vessels while at sea. Granted nuke power was first deployed widely at sea, so a severe learning curve had to occur after the 1940's.
Here are the accidents I'm aware of. Most of these resulted in reactors crashing onto the sea floor, some at tremendous speeds. They will be sitting there spreading radiation into the food chain for what? Six hundred years?
Nuclear powered submarines have suffered a number of accidents (not all related to the power supply).
K-19, 1961, the reactor almost had a meltdown and exploded. Several of the crew died of radiation exposure. The events on board the submarine are dramatized by the film K-19: The Widowmaker.
K-219, 1986, the reactor almost had a meltdown. Sergei Preminin died after he manually lowered the control rods, and stopped the explosion. The submarine sank three days later.
K-141 Kursk, the generally accepted theory is that a leak of hydrogen peroxide in the forward torpedo room led to the detonation of a torpedo warhead, which in turn triggered the explosion of half a dozen other warheads about two minutes later.
USS Thresher (SSN-593) was lost during deep diving tests in 1963 and later investigation concluded that failure of a brazed pipe joint and ice formation in the ballast blow valves prevented surfacing. The accident motivated a number of safety changes to the US fleet.
USS Scorpion (SSN-589), lost.
HMS Vanguard & Le Triomphant, February 2009, the French and British submarines collided in the Atlantic while on routine patrols. There were no injuries among the crews, but both ships were damaged during the collision. The chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Kate Hudson, said "the dents reportedly visible on the British sub show the boats were no more than a couple of seconds away from total catastrophe."[10]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_submarine
Wikipedia is great because it is untainted by corporate or gov censorship. Google Earth used to list the coordinates of these lost nuclear submarines. It requires a layer to be activated before you can see where they crashed.
So how many reactors do we not know about is what I want to know? The Cassini space probe to Saturn used a RTG and there was great resistance to it because an explosion before "throttle up" would surely spread plutonium around the globe. I bet ya RTG spacecraft are now secretly launched so no one will object.
The nuclear menace is going to get you sooner or later. You cannot "contain" an explosion. You can only try to clean it up. I know the physicist who was dispatched to Three Mile Island and he told me that the documentary movie "Minutes to Meltdown" where the helicopter hovers above the containment building was typical government flying (he is also a helicopter pilot.) He said if the cement building casing the reactor had belched, those guys would have been instantly cooked. The airshow with the EPA directed helicopter was just done to make the public believe something was being done about the problem. Bill set up a radiation detector he had made from a cellphone and dropped it in the river downstream of the plant. He programed it to speed dial his house if it detected a dangerous release of radiation. He was awarded a presidential medal for bravery by Jimmy Carter for walking up to the ticking time bomb, of which, nobody knew what exactly was going on just outside the reactor. Had it vented rapidly, hundreds, or thousands or ten thousands of people would have been likely, eventually killed.
Is it worth it?
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
Thanks for writing. Nuke sub technology has come a long way since those early accidents. One only has to look at recent sub accidents (such as the Kursk) to see that reactor breaching rarely happens, if at all. Though it would be foolhardy to say that a nuclear accident could never happen.
The biggest problem with nuke subs comes at decommissioning time. This is one of the reasons why most of Russia's fleet is rotting in Vladivostok as no-one has figured out a way to economically decommission and extract the dirty bits. Now Vladivostok is a nuclear accident waiting to happen, albeit slowly.
RTGs are very-low power reactors. Effective but nasty. I know that Russian service technicians who worked on the early models (built through the mid-80's) were chosen because of their desire NOT to father children, and were mostly impotent.
Yeah, this is nasty stuff. Reactors can be made safe, but cleaning up after them is a bloody mess.
Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins - Native American proverb.
WTF,
I am curious what you believe to be the technological differences between naval reactor technology and land based reactors. To my knowledge, all of the US naval reactors currently in service are PWRs (pressurized water reactors) and are quite similar in technology to land based PWRs. The navy puts a higher premium on compactness because, in many cases, the reactor size defines the size of the ship.
They are built to similar quality specifications. Navy reactors are supervised by the Naval Reactor office of the Dept of Energy. Commercial reactors are supervised by the Nuclear Regulatory Agency.
PWRs are used in naval applications because they are inherently more compact than a BWR (boiling water reactor) but not necessarily technilogically superior. Naval reactors are smaller and lower power than commerical land based units.
Land based reactors are designed to withstand earthquakes, tornadoes and crashing airplanes. Naval reactors are designed to withstand torpedos, collisions and sinking.
Naval reactors use a higher enrichment of U-235 in order to get the reactors to go longer between refuelings. (Naval units are not normally refueled more often than every 20 years whereas commercial plants refuel every 1 to 2 years.) This would be a very expensive proposition for a commercial plant.
It is not a technological difference but the naval units are run by younger folks, including a lot of teenagers. The commercial plants are mostly operated by seasoned retirees from the navy.
Bill
Bill,
Thanks for your excellent post. You are accurate on all point (though I would advocate stricter standards within DOE/DOD viz NRC). Perhaps I used the word "technology" out of place, and instead should have used the word engineering.
However, the article is about Russian plants, where there is even greater disparity between military and civilian implementation and oversight.
Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins - Native American proverb.
It has been well documented that Oil and Gas drilling can trigger Earthquakes.
Remember that these pools of Oil and gas under the oceans floor are often under great pressure. When punctured tremendous pressures can be released. As the reservoir is depleted from beneath the ocean floor, that ocean floor can settle which will trigger an earthquake or Tsunami.
There are a good many geologists who believe the Indonesian Tsnumai of a few years back was triggered by the Oil companies in the region who have been tapping a reservoir of natural gas right at the epicenter of the quake.
I will have to call you on this. What has been noted that when water injection is used to extract oil/gas in tectonically-active regions is that there is an increase in micro-earthquake activity. In the early days of this technology, larger events were noted (though still too small to be felt), but now fields that use water injection monitor very closely the rate of stress relief and appropriately control the water injection rates.
I cannot believe any correlation between the 2004 Sumatran event and gas extraction. The region had accumulated a terrific amount of stress which inevitably had to be relieved, without any assistance from man. Further, the epicenter was in deep water far from any gas fields, and was way deeper than any drilling (research projects like MOHOLE and SAFOD aside).
Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins - Native American proverb.
Some are actually quite large 5.1 in the case of Snipe lake in 1970.
[http://article.pubs.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/RPAS/rpv?hm=HInit&afpf=e98-080.pdf&journal=cjes&volume=36]
Although I'm not sure about the tsunami of 04, if you look up USGS earthquake data for significant quakes in Afghanistan (Kabul region) before and after the US bombed the country, you'll see an overall, dramatic rise in quakes. You have to go year by year and count the number for each year (I went back about ten) but they do jump dramatically--and this could be just from surface bombing. Mining will do it too. I'm no geologist, but I am a Californian--we're constantly told we don't know much about the earth in this respect and to claim that well monitored injection wells don't do squat to make earthquakes strikes me as being a bit too sure. That said, I myself am sure that if I went down to Palm Springs, jumped down into a certain giant tear in the planet's crust and walloped on a big rock with a sledgehammer, I'd totally wipe out Los Angeles.
I am not familiar with the data that you mention re Afghani quakes, but there is a simpler explanation - more seismometers! Since the US invasion, USGS installed seismometers in Afghanistan and of course once instrumentation is in place, then you can record earthquakes, and this gives the appearance of increased activity. The number of seismometers in Afghanistan have increased exponentially in the past 6 years, with a concomitant increase in the number of recorded earthquakes. "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"
Seismologists will admit that they do not know what triggers earthquakes, though they will agree that an earthquake on one fault can trigger an earthquake on an adjacent fault. Man's activities are pretty insignificant compared with the energy that can be stored along a fault under stress, so there does exist the possibility of man triggering release of this stress, albeit unlikely. It's the "can a butterfly fluttering its wings in South America trigger a hurricane in the Atlantic" scenario; possible but unlikely.
Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins - Native American proverb.
In my younger days it was always my hope that the Arctic nations, those surrounding the territories of the Arctic ocean, would come to an agreement to preserve those regions from economic exploitation.
To make them into some sort of Sanctuary.
Russia has a deplorable record when it comes to the dumping of toxic and radioactive wastes at sea. It just gets worse and worse.
The Russians work hard and find new oil the Americans kill hard and steal Iraq's oil.
I can't believe you are STILL trying to sell that totally discredited and false statement that the US is stealing Iraqi oil. There is absolutely ZERO proof the US has stolen any Iraqi oil (except in the minds of conspiracy nuts and those suffering from bush derangement syndrome). Where is it going? Read below.
Stolen Oil Profits "Money Pit" Of Iraq Insurgency
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/15/
stolen-oil-profits-money_n_91722.html
Yes, but why is America's oil under Iraq's sand in the first place?
This sounds pretty dangerous.
It is way beyond dangerous. next to China, Russia has the worlds worst oil pollution record (per the UN). Russia is the only country that has had a nuclear core reactor meltdown. A few years ago one of Russia's top of the line nuclear subs sank in the Arctic, it's reactor is still down there. This will not be a global disaster it will be a global nightmare! What will happen if one of those reactors has a melt down and crashes through the floor of the Arctic? The heat from the reactor will release world destroying amounts of methane. We will have gone from global warming to global frying, and there will be no stopping it.
Considering this is essentially the same country that gave the world Chernobyl, this is truly dire. This has to be amongst the worst of Czar Putin's actions.
I suspect the inaction on Global Warming is very much an effort to access the Artic fossil fuels.
Fossil Fuels are for losers.
The human race: keep multiplying and consuming the Earth until the Earth can no longer support us. Very strange.