At a symposium held by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers this calendar week , a squad of MIT engineers will deliver an idea that seems to tempt destiny : A floating atomic nuclear reactor , ground out at sea , that would be immune to tsunami and earthquakes . Is it really that crazy of a plan ?
First , here ’s what they ’re proposing . MIT professors Jacopo Buongiorno , Michael Golay , and Neil Todreas are the generator of a paperthat account a monumental nuclear reactor that ’s built in a shipyard , then tow out to sea like an oil colour chopine . A few mile off the coast , the reactor would be anchored in a unmarried spot , feed the power it produces back to the cities on the shore .
Russia isalready building a float reactor , and as Paleofuture has pointed out before , this theme is n’t actually Modern at all : blow industrial plant were figure as early as the 1970s . But Buongiorno points out , but there are some key differences between the Russian programme and MIT ’s , which he say gives their architectural plan “ important advantages . ” First , MIT ’s design is n’t so much a ship that moves around but an anchored platform , which means it ’s never in a situation where a tsunami or earthquake could affect it .
Second , and most important , is the cold ocean water that would ring the reactor . All those billions of tons of saltwater will act as an sempiternal source of cooling for the interior rods , ensuring that they never , ever overheat .
“ The sea itself can be used as an infinite heatsink , ” says Buongiorno . “ It ’s possible to do cool down passively , with no intervention . The nuclear reactor containment itself is fundamentally underwater . ”
Another important part of the designing is how it would fall the danger of decommission the plant in fifty year : Rather than undertaking the long , slow procedure of removing the rod and pulverize the plant , it would be tow “ to a central facility , as is done now for the Navy ’s carrier and submarine reactors . ” If a nuclear meltdown occurred , the plant could “ ventilate radioactive flatulence underwater ” rather than let go them into the atmosphere and forcing millions to void .
Would n’t releasing radioactive gas underwater also be pretty tremendous , environmentally ? Why not just give up building atomic exponent plants altogether ? That ’s not really the doubtfulness these engineers set out to answer . This is about making the plants , whether or not land chose to build them , safe .
But it ’s hard to ignore the sinful moral implications of that picky detail . yield the selection between spraying humans with radioactive fume and spray the ocean base , most of us would probably pick out the latter . It ’s tough to argue with that , but it ’s also hard to indorse it . [ MIT ]
DesignNuclear power
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