Norway Eyes 200-250 Mw Floating Nuclear Reactors to Power Industry

Posted4 months agoActive4 months ago

PaulHoule

12 points

14 comments

interestingengineering.comTechstory

skepticalmixed

Debate

60/100

Nuclear EnergySustainable PowerNorway Energy Policy

Key topics

Nuclear Energy

Sustainable Power

Norway Energy Policy

Norway is considering deploying 200-250 MW floating nuclear reactors to power its industry, sparking discussions about safety, cost, and the reactors' potential impact on the environment and energy market.

Snapshot generated from the HN discussion

Discussion Activity

Moderate engagement

First comment

Peak period

0-2h

Avg / period

Comment distribution14 data points

Loading chart...

Based on 14 loaded comments

Key moments

01Story posted
Sep 1, 2025 at 2:26 PM EDT
4 months ago
Step 01
02First comment
Sep 1, 2025 at 2:34 PM EDT
7m after posting
Step 02
03Peak activity
6 comments in 0-2h
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03
04Latest activity
Sep 2, 2025 at 1:06 PM EDT
4 months ago
Step 04

Generating AI Summary...

Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns

Discussion (14 comments)

Showing 14 comments

SilverElfin

4 months ago

2 replies

Russia built a floating reactor recently too. I wonder if it is too much of a risk though. Polluting fishing waters doesn’t sound good.

inejge

4 months ago

1 reply

Operating since 2019/2020:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademik_Lomonosov

It's in the far north, I'm not sure how much fishing is going on around there, or how a potential radiological leak would spread around.

whaleofatw2022

4 months ago

It looks like each of its two reactors are a good bit more powerful than what is in an Ohio Class Submarine, but far less than what's in a Gerald R Ford class Aircraft carrier. For whatever thats worth

phillipseamore

4 months ago

There are hundreds of nuclear reactors sailing around our oceans in ships and submarines and have been doing so for more than 70 years. Most estimates are above 400 total reactors though the actual count isn't really known since nearly all of these are military vessels.

magicalhippo

4 months ago

2 replies

Norway has had two small experimental nuclear reactors since the 50s or so, and they're getting decommissioned. Turns out that's expensive. Very expensive. Current estimates have ballooned to 56 billion NOK ($5.6b).

So what does SMR decommissioning look like?

At least this project has skipped the huge NIMBY issue by putting them on ships. And if anything goes wrong I'm sure nobody would mind glow-in-the-dark sushi...

FridayoLeary

4 months ago

2 replies

What makes is it so expensive?

_aavaa_

4 months ago

Small reactors miss out economies of scale that large reactors get access to. Halving the size of a pipe doesn’t halve the cost.

magicalhippo

4 months ago

In the case of our experimental reactors, a large part as I understand it is that they were fooling around in the 60s. Thus a lot of "meh just put it over there" scenarios and such, without much consideration of the consequences.

Another point is that Norway has no way to process the leftover materials, and currently nowhere to store the processed materials.

So we need to ship the highly radioactive stuff abroad, and build a storage facility for when it's processed.

PaulHouleAuthor

4 months ago

Decommissioning isn’t usually as bad as building reactors — it’s not unusual for decommissioning projects to come in under budget and early.

lysace

4 months ago

1 reply

> The floating plants are expected to supply electricity to nearby offshore platforms and feed power into the onshore grid.

Norwegian offshore platforms means it's related to fossil oil/gas extraction.

magicalhippo

4 months ago

1 reply

Indeed. There was a big push towards electrifying the offshore platforms and refineries using green hydro power. This was so our carbon budget didn't look so bad, as the actual end products are not counted.

However in recent years there's been strong pushback as people realized just how much power these platforms and refineries take, and what plugging them into our grid would do to electricity prices.

So this seems to be aimed at having your cake and eating it. We get "green" oil and gas, and no astronomical electricity prices.

lysace

4 months ago

In some relevant ways: Norway is Saudi Arabia but with a world class PR company. (I do wonder which one they use.)

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK

4 months ago

How safe are these reactors in the war that is coming?

rasz

4 months ago

North of Norway has ~5 euro/MWh power most of the year https://euenergy.live/country.php?a2=NO3 , nuclear cant beat that.

View full discussion on Hacker News

ID: 45095278Type: storyLast synced: 11/20/2025, 6:56:52 PM

Want the full context?

Jump to the original sources

Read the primary article or dive into the live Hacker News thread when you're ready.

Open link View on HN