There are bad ideas and then there are really bad ideas. This qualifies as a really bad idea: (via Andrew Sullivan)
Researchers find advantages in floating nuclear power stations
THERE are many things people do not want to be built in their backyard, and nuclear power stations are high on the list. But what if floating reactors could be moored offshore, out of sight? There is plenty of water to keep them cool and the electricity they produce can easily be carried onshore by undersea cables. Moreover, once the nuclear plant has reached the end of its life it can be towed away to be decommissioned. Unusual as it might seem, such an idea is gaining supporters in America and Russia.
The potential benefits of building nuclear power stations on floating platforms, much like those used in the offshore oil-and-gas industry, were recently presented to a symposium hosted by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers by Jacopo Buongiorno, Michael Golay, Neil Todreas and their colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, along with others from the University of Wisconsin and Chicago Bridge & Iron, a company involved in both the nuclear and offshore industries.
For starters this doesn’t address one of the biggest problems with nuclear power – disposal of the waste. Second, over three years latter the disaster at Fukushima Japan is still contaminating the Pacific Ocean. We were promised that nuclear power would be nearly free but it’s EROEI (energy returned on energy invested) remains very poor.