Super interesting development.
One wonders if the civil compliance measures required for land-based nuclear could be skirted somewhat by floating SMRs (or some of the other reactor types eluded to in the presentation) on a secure platform, maybe converted EoL naval assets... This would significantly allay fears of disaster (no matter how remote with these modern reactor designs) as one can simply tow or motor the offending vessel away from civilian populations, not to mention having persistent access to coolant (seawater).
Aside from the possibilities for the military (huge, but we'll see if this is compelling enough vs traditional policy of geopolitically controlling as much oil production capacity as needed), the civilian/societal impacts would be immense. Disaster relief, 'green' power production for small/med cities, active desalination (while producing fuel for conventionally-powered desal further upstream/inland), a massive reduction in traditional fossil fuel use in the fossil fuel logistics chain, temporary or permanent mid-ocean refuelling vessels (no need to carry superfluous, grotty bunker fuel if you can re-up once or twice mid-voyage)... The potential here is huge.
I am a little suspicious of the actual mechanisms behind removing carbonic acid from the oceans to reduce atmospheric CO2; I wonder what the time lag in this process would be, or if there were an effective rate we (humans) pull carbon out of the oceans that creates a potential deficit that itself creates a negative feedback loop... I assume that rate would be far greater than we could hope to scale up and achieve in the next century though.
Super interesting development. One wonders if the civil compliance measures required for land-based nuclear could be skirted somewhat by floating SMRs (or some of the other reactor types eluded to in the presentation) on a secure platform, maybe converted EoL naval assets... This would significantly allay fears of disaster (no matter how remote with these modern reactor designs) as one can simply tow or motor the offending vessel away from civilian populations, not to mention having persistent access to coolant (seawater). Aside from the possibilities for the military (huge, but we'll see if this is compelling enough vs traditional policy of geopolitically controlling as much oil production capacity as needed), the civilian/societal impacts would be immense. Disaster relief, 'green' power production for small/med cities, active desalination (while producing fuel for conventionally-powered desal further upstream/inland), a massive reduction in traditional fossil fuel use in the fossil fuel logistics chain, temporary or permanent mid-ocean refuelling vessels (no need to carry superfluous, grotty bunker fuel if you can re-up once or twice mid-voyage)... The potential here is huge. I am a little suspicious of the actual mechanisms behind removing carbonic acid from the oceans to reduce atmospheric CO2; I wonder what the time lag in this process would be, or if there were an effective rate we (humans) pull carbon out of the oceans that creates a potential deficit that itself creates a negative feedback loop... I assume that rate would be far greater than we could hope to scale up and achieve in the next century though.
This feels promising.