Floats equipped with advanced nuclear reactors could start powering developing countries by the mid-2020s, according to a Danish start-up company.
Seaborg Technologies believes it can make cheap nuclear electricity an alternative to fossil fuels worldwide under development as early as 2025.
Its marine “mini-nukes” are designed for countries that do not have the infrastructure of the energy grid to develop utility-level renewable energy projects, many of which go on to use plants. gas, diesel and coal in their place.
The ships have one or more nuclear reactors, which produce electricity and bring the power to the mainland. The world’s first nuclear reactor launched bringing heat and electricity to the Russian port of Pevek on the East Siberian Sea in December 2019.
Seaborg chief executive Troels Schönfeldt said the company’s 100-megawatt molten salt reactor would take two years to build and generate electricity that would be cheaper than coal power.
Seaborg has raised around € 20m (£ 18.3m) from private investors, including Danish retail billionaire Anders Holch Povlsen, and obtained the first of its required regulatory licenses. a four-stage process from the American Bureau of Shipping this week.
Most developing countries could not follow nuclear energy because a carefully managed regulatory system is needed to prevent nuclear accidents or the proliferation of materials that could be used to create nuclear weapons.
Seaborg hopes to start taking orders by the end of 2022 for the nuclear crops, which would be built in South Korean shipyards and hauled to coasts where they could be anchored for up to 24 years, he said.
The “keystroke solution” is key to growing fast-growing economies to power their advanced industries, purify drinking water, and create clean hydrogen as demand for energy access rockets in the years to come.
“The growth of global energy demand is developing a soft spot,” Schönfeldt said. “If we can’t find an energy solution for these countries, they will turn to fossil fuels and we will certainly not meet our climate targets.”
The International Energy Agencies have found that the accelerated demand for electricity – as a result of a growing global population and rising wealth levels – to increase the course of renewable energy growth and confidence in increasing fossil fuels.
Although nuclear energy has been used on board seagoing ships for decades to power submarines and “ice-breaker” tankers, Seaborg’s design would be one of the first examples of a available nuclear galley. commercial to provide electricity to the mainland.
Chris Gadomski, nuclear analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, said: “The idea of a floating nuclear power plant has been around for a long time, and it makes a lot of sense. But there are concerns. “Nuclear reactor technologies and floating power plants posed a sexual risk, so a combination of two could raise big questions for investors and governments, he said.
“In places like the Philippines and Indonesia it makes a lot of sense. But it wasn’t so long ago that the Philippines was a major tsunami, and I don’t know how to make a hedge against such a threat, ”he said.
Jan Haverkamp, of Greenpeace, described floating reactors as a “disaster recipe” including “the disadvantages and dangers of larger on-site nuclear power stations”. “In addition, they face additional risks from the instability of activity in coastal and transport areas – particularly in a loaded state – across the high seas. Think storms, think tsunamis, ”he said.
Schönfeldt said the advanced reactor was designed to be as safe as possible in a worst-case accident, with a system causing the radioactive material to form solid rock outside the reactor core so that it could not spread into the air or sea as a harmful gas or liquid disaster.