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A Nuclear Powerplant Barge?
Russia has dug back 30 years in our nuclear history to find a solution for some of its own energy woes: the floating nuclear power plant. The Russian nuclear-energy company Rosenergoatom is planning a mobile plant to deliver electricity to hard-to-reach northern territories near the White Sea. The $200-million floating plant is slated for construction next year. Although the concept of a water-borne nuke plant might sound outlandish, it isn't new, nor did it originate in Russia. Westinghouse Electric Company considered the idea in the 1970s and built an immense dry-dock facility in Jacksonville, Fla., where plants would be launched and floated north along the Eastern Seaboard, conveniently doling out power to towns in need. The Russian plan is to mount two reactors on a football-field-size barge, float it to a port, connect power lines to the mainland, and turn on the reactors, providing communities with affordable electricity. The plant will store waste and spent fuel in an onboard facility that workers will empty every 10 to 12 years during regular maintenance overhauls. After 40 years, the normal life span for a nuclear plant, the decommissioned plant would be towed away and replaced with a new one. The reactor and spent fuel would go to a storage facility, but the barge could be recycled. Yet because the safety of the Russian facility is still unknown, the prospect of resurrecting the Westinghouse idea in the White Sea has drawn protest from environmental groups such as Greenpeace and the Norwegian foundation Bellona. In a worst-case scenario, an overheated core could melt through the bottom of the barge and drop into the water, creating a radioactive steam
explosion. Such a cloud could do far more damage than the plume of nuclear fallout kicked up by the 1986 explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the former U.S.S.R., Lochbaum notes, because the human body absorbs radioactive water droplets more easily than it does radioactive ash. (Source: http://edition.cnn.com)
Record for Underwater Concert Set
On October 2, Katie Melua set a Guinness World Record for the deepest underwater concert when she performed a concert at the bottom of the North Sea. The concert will be held at the bottom of one of the four shafts of the Statoil Troll A Platform gas rig. The Troll platform is 1,548 ft. (472 m) high (higher than the Eiffel Tower and the tallest structure ever moved by humans), of which 1,210 ft. (369 m) lie below sea surface. The Troll field ranks as Europe`s largest offshore gas field in production. In addition to the gas rig staff, the audience included Craig Glenday, Editor-in Chief of Guinness World Records, who adjudicated and verifiedthe validity of the record - certain criteria will be in place, including that Katie must perform a "traditional concert performance of vocals and instrument to an audience." All visitors to the platform, including Katie, the band, crew and Craig Glenday underwent medical examinations and received extensive emergency training prior to the helicopter flight to the platform. (Source, text & images: www.katiemelua.com)
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Maritime Reporter & Engineering News