Created by engineers at MIT, U. Wisconsin and Chicago Bridge and Iron, the offshore nuclear plants keep the scheme simple by leveraging the mature designs of oil and gas drilling platforms and light water reactors. Built onshore at a shipyard, the plant would be towed five to seven miles out to sea where it would be moored to the ocean floor. To transmit its product back to land the plant would be connected to an onshore substation via an underwater electric transmission line.
While many people may feel that anchoring a nuclear plant out in the ocean is just a disaster waiting to happen, the minds behind the project believe their new design is actually safer than the terrestrial alternative. According to an MIT press release, “[F]loating plants would be designed to be automatically cooled by the surrounding seawater in a worst-case scenario, which would indefinitely prevent any melting of fuel rods, or escape of radioactive material.”
As of now no plans have been made to build or deploy the floating nuke concept. However, if the technology were to get the green light designers say the concept is a flexible model that can be built to house anything from a 50 to 1000-megawatt reactor. Yet regardless of its end size, you can bet that both governmental oversight committees and activists groups will want to have their voice heard before any nuclear plant is placed on their oceanic horizon.
Image and Video Courtesy of MIT