Why Russia Built a Floating Nuclear Power Plant

The small nuclear power stations being built by Russia are actually former marine-use reactors placed in a differently configured context.   Not a bad idea since during the times when everyone in the neighboring city is angry at you;  one can alway pull up anchor and leave town.    I've worked at a total of four N-plants at two sites.    "Small" or conventionally sized;  nuclear plants always start out the same way.   A older gentleman at one of my previous work locations told me that whatever the technology;  nuclear plants always start out with the same degree of confidence and aspiration --- almost like the acquisition of a new,  small pet dinosaur in the neighborhood.   Everyone laughs as the tiny little dinosaur goes "Yap, Yap" as we give it a can of dog food.   But the fact is five years from time present our dinosaur [even at the small size of 200 or so megawatts]  will to have grown to the size of a large building and we are all trying to feed the thing with seventeen-hundred pounds of dog food a day or,  as we have now found out,  the thing is simply going to eat all of us.   The radioactive waste dump trucks are leaving with the "product of the day" two-abreast lined up for miles.   This is in fact what happened to the major world utilities when they decided to go in for a dime for nuclear power in the last century.   Mark Twain lost a tremendous amount of money trying to develop a moveable type machine  --- It was not until the 20th Century that movable type finally became a generalized reality with the invention of the LinoType Machine.    Sometimes technologies just take a lot longer.   A Nobel Prize physics laureate once said;  one can defy the laws of Nature,  for a time,  if one has enough money.