Amid Geopolitical Conflicts, Are Floating Nuclear Power Plants Safe?

Floating nuclear power plants promise an effective pathway to reducing greenhouse emission caused by the use of fossil fuels. This solution is made possible because of advances made in reducing the size (thereby making them transportable) of nuclear reactors and manufacturing under roof to modular (replicable) designs. Current trends of building such floating power plants in shipyard facilities and deploying them with little consideration for their security require a major shift in mindset. The risk of state terrorism is real. Major power plants deployed offshore warrant the highest form of strategic security. A floating nuclear power plant is easy to destroy. What destroyed the Nord Stream pipelines can likewise destroy a floating nuclear power plant. The difference is that the consequences could be a lot more serious. This paper offers a concept to protect floating nuclear power plants deployed at sea. To start off, a quick walk through about carbon dioxide and carbon capture and storage in the context of global warming is useful to better appreciate why we need nuclear energy in the first place.