FROM THE ARCHIVE | FLOATING AN IDEA Floating an idea Floating offshore nuclear power is gaining traction as a concept that


offers numerous advantages over its terrestrial counterparts. It is an idea that has been navigating towards commercial success for many decades, with NEi exploring an early design in 1973.


By John C.H. Lindberg, FRSA


More than 50 years after OPS proposed a floating nuclear power station, Russia’s 70MWe Akademik Lomonosov entered commercial operation. Credit: Rosenergoatom Joint-Stock Company.


IN THE JUNE 1973 PAGES of Nuclear Engineering International (NEi), a concept nuclear power station being developed jointly between Westinghouse and Tenneco was presented, but with a slight difference. It was 400ft (121m) long, displaced some 160,000t – and floated. The concept proposed by their joint venture – Offshore


Power Systems (OPS) – was as strikingly ambitious as it was simple: rather than designing a small marine reactor, at that time already commonplace on submarines and aircraft carriers, OPS proposed taking a full-sized Westinghouse reactor and building the entire station on a vast floating platform. The first units were intended for Public Service Electric & Gas Company’s (PSEG) Atlantic Generating Station off New Jersey, US, with OPS envisaging a series of standardised plants manufactured at a purpose-built facility in Florida. Factory construction, repeat designs and reduced dependence on the peculiarities of individual sites with the promise of lower costs and faster delivery – all of this will doubtlessly sound very familiar to anyone following the nuclear debate today. Getting a nuclear station to float, however, presented some unusual, and depending on how you see it, exciting engineering problems. Weight had to be controlled carefully, and heavy equipment distributed to maintain trim. Watertight compartments were designed to protect safety systems from flooding, while ballast tanks could compensate as large loads moved during maintenance and refuelling. The platform itself had to withstand waves, storms and ship collisions. Used fuel had to be handled and ultimately transferred ashore, and electricity had to reach land through submarine cables. The result was part power station, part shipyard and


part offshore platform – complete with accommodation, workshops and facilities for around 120 personnel. Yet


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even as OPS worked through these engineering challenges, the weather around nuclear power was changing. The great summer of atomic optimism was beginning to


give way to autumn squalls. The 1973 oil crisis increased financing costs and weakened electricity-demand growth. Licensing a completely new category of nuclear installation also proved harder than anticipated. This was also the time when the anti-nuclear movement had a strong wind in its sails, and the battle for nuclear power in the US grew into a storm that, once it ended, also saw the construction of new reactors effectively come to an end. PSEG eventually cancelled its orders in 1978 and the


Three Mile Island incident followed the next year. By 1984, Westinghouse had abandoned OPS altogether. For a time, floating nuclear seemed destined to remain moored to the drawing board – but winters always comes to an end. In 2020, Russia’s 70MWe Akademik Lomonosov entered


commercial operation in Pevek. MIT researchers explored offshore plants of 300MWe and 1.1GWe, again combining established reactor technology with shipyard construction and the ocean as an immense heat sink. Indonesia is actively exploring floating nuclear across its vast archipelago, and the US Department of Energy is examining maritime nuclear applications, while developers are again studying reactors mounted on barges and offshore platforms. Many of the arguments sound remarkably familiar:


build reactors repeatedly in controlled shipyards, tow them where power is needed, reducing the need for vast expansions of transmission networks. Reduce site construction, exploit abundant cooling water. Move or remove the plant when its work is done. Fifty-three years after NEi introduced readers to OPS’


remarkable floating giant, perhaps the idea was not sunk after all. It was merely waiting for the tide to turn. ■


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