Tuesday, December 29, 2020

"Floating 'Mini-Nukes' Could Power Countries by 2025"

From The Guardian, December 17:

Danish company plans to fit ships with small nuclear reactors to send energy to developing countries

Floating barges fitted with advanced nuclear reactors could begin powering developing nations by the mid-2020s, according to a Danish startup company.

Seaborg Technologies believes it can make cheap nuclear electricity a viable alternative to fossil fuels across the developing world as soon as 2025.

Its seaborne “mini-nukes” have been designed for countries that lack the energy grid infrastructure to develop utility-scale renewable energy projects, many of which go on to use gas, diesel and coal plants instead.

The ships are fitted with one or more small nuclear reactors, which can generate electricity and transmit the power to the mainland. The first ship of this kind began supplying heat and electricity to the Russian port of Pevek on the East Siberian Sea in December 2019.

Troels Schönfeldt, the chief executive of Seaborg, said the company’s 100-megawatt compact molten salt reactor would take two years to build and would generate electricity that would be cheaper than coal-fired power.

Seaborg has raised about €20m (£18.3m) from private investors, including the Danish retail billionaire Anders Holch Povlsen, and received the first of the necessary regulatory approvals within a four-phase process from the American Bureau of Shipping this week....

....MUCH MORE

Related:
"Floating nuclear power plant leaves Murmansk for Russia’s eastern Arctic"

"Russia’s first sea-borne nuclear power plant arrives at its Arctic base"

Russia's New Floating Nuke Power Plant Begins Delivering Electricity