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Raph's avatar

Jack, would be interested to see you write on the prospects for floating civilian nuclear power. You seem particularly well qualified to comment. https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Japan-s-Onomichi-Dockyard-leads-80m-bet-on-floating-nuclear-plants

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Jack Devanney's avatar

Raph,

As you know, I've already posted a piece on shipyard production of NPP's

https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/shipyard-production-of-nuclear-power

That is about as far as I can go without commenting on specific designs whihc is not the role of this substack. I will say two things:

1) The idea is not new. The Atlantic Generating Station inthe 70's made a lot of progress before it was canceled.

https://ans.org/news/article-1239/the-atlantic -generating-station

You can still see remnants of the yard in Jacksonsville.

2) Floating plants wont solve nuclear's basic regulatory problem. Unless we drastically change the way we regulate nuclear power, floating plants will end up being just as expensive and slow as Vogtle and NuScale. However, floating plants could build in a natural way on the successful Classiification Society system if a coastal state has the guts to assert its sovereignty and tell the IAEA and the weapons states to get lost.

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