1. FLOAT INC. Presents
Concept for a system of Offshore Security Ports
as adopted by the
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)
Livermore, CA 94550
Operated by Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC, for the
Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
3. The Portunus Project
In May 2002, Float Inc. proposed a port security strategy
titled "Beyond the Horizon" and published a white paper
which was distributed to most of the agencies that are
involved in homeland security. Although the Department of
Homeland Security was not yet established, the idea received
much favorable response.
The exploration by LLNL of off-shore ports, dubbed the
Portunus project, grew out of a report called “Beyond the
Horizon” authored in 2002 by the staff of the San Diego
company, Float Incorporated.
4. The Portunus Project
Future U.S. ports could be located in the ocean, 20 to 40 miles
from shore, under the proposed Portunus project. The off-
shore port concept would allow cargo to be inspected far away
from cities as one way to increase homeland security.
Float Inc. concept for a system of Offshore Security Ports has
been adopted by the Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory as the leading means to frustrate terrorist attack on
the CONUS via maritime traffic.
Each offshore floating Security Port will facilitate the complete
automated inspection of every cargo container offloaded from
trans-oceanic carriers before they are transferred to coastwise
shipping or local seaport delivery.
5. The Portunus Project
The floating platform for the Security Port design is Float Inc.’s
Pneumatically Stabilized Platform (PSP):
with a horizontal surface estimated at some 400 acres (±162 hectares)
8,000 feet (2.4 km) overall span
and providing 36,000 linear feet (10,972 linear meters) of protected,
calm water dockage segregated equally between arriving and departing
shipping.
Inspection is applied between the two zones in their connecting
surface transport. In addition to operational efficiency benefits, the
Security Port is to be largely self powered by “Rho-Cee” wave
energy converters and wind turbines arrayed along its windward
faces.
Read more: www.floatinc.org/SecurityPort.aspx
Float Inc LinkedIn & Slideshare presentation:
1. Float Inc and Portunus offshore port concept project http://lnkd.in/dMUnfkD
6. The Portunus Project
Dr. Neal A. Brown, Vice-President of technology for Float
Incorporated, patent owner of one of the technologies to be
evaluated, said floating off-shore ports could be about 400
acres in size and built with reinforced, pre-stressed concrete.
The off-shore ports would cost about $15 million per acre,
weigh millions of tons and consist of modules that would be
1,000 feet long and about 200 feet wide, said Brown, who
taught naval architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and the University of New Orleans. The ports
would be moored to the ocean floor.
7. The Portunus Project
“Off-shore ports would not only achieve much more security,
but they would also help provide an economy of shipping,”
Brown said. “The port business is all about real estate. In
some cases, containers are moved several times inside a port
before they are loaded onto trains or trucks. None have
enough real estate.”
“With off-shore ports, there is a potential benefit to the U.S.
economy because U.S. supply chain logistics can be
improved”, said Hank Glauser of the Physical and Life
Sciences Directorate and the principal investigator for Global
Security’s Portunus off-shore port project.
8. The Portunus Project
On June 8, 2010, three of the nation’s top 10 business schools:
Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Business
UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business
and Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business
— presented economic analyses of the off-shore port concept
during a day-long session at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in San
Francisco.
The economic feasibility studies were presented to a panel of
government experts, who then interviewed the business school
teams and recommended a path forward for the off-shore port
concept.
9. The Portunus Project
The panel recommended that the top priority at this time
should be a proposal on the technical feasibility of the off-
shore port concept.
The technical feasibility study would include computer
simulations, engineering research and small-scale wave testing
of the proposed platform. It would focus on structural
integrity, platform stability, wave attenuation, buoyancy
limitations and other key engineering issues facing the design,
deployment and operations of an off-shore port.
10. The Portunus Project
In their presentation, Northwestern’s Kellogg School of
Business students recommended building six off-shore
megaports located -
Seattle, Washington
Oakland, California
Los Angeles-Long Beach, California
Gulf of Mexico zone
State of Georgia
State of New York.
It was estimated that the six ports would cost about $60 billion
to build, with an annual economic and tariff benefit of about
$5.3 billion per year and a payback period of 23 years,
according to the Kellogg School of Business team.
11. The Portunus Project
The panel of government experts thought the Kellogg team’s
tariff income would be lower than expected, but added that
the value of WMD avoidance would be much higher than the
team’s $730 million estimate, probably running into the
hundreds of billions of dollars, significantly shortening the
payback period.
Under the Kellogg School’s plan, a phased-in approach would
bring megaports on line from west to east. Experience from
initial megaports would be applied to new ones, and there was
an expectation that shippers would attempt to divert cargo
from the new megaports during the implementation process
unless a government mandate was in place.
12. The Portunus Project
The best operational model for Portunus, in the view of the
Tuck School, would be to have a public-private partnership
for constructing the estimated $10 billion off-shore ports. The
federal government would raise the financing and private firms
would do the construction.
“The panel members were impressed by the presentations and
appreciative of the Laboratory’s efforts,” Glauser said.
“They found the business school analyses to be very
educational.”
“They also decided that there was a significant and positive
case to be made for the economic feasibility of the Portunus
concept.”
