Russia Launches Floating Nuclear Power Plant In Remote Arctic Region

Russia has officially launched the world’s first and only floating nuclear power plant.

Akademic Lomonosov, which was constructed by Russian state atomic energy company Rosatom, was fully commissioned in Pevek, in the extremely remote Chukotka region of Russia’s Far East.

“We can consider the floating nuclear power plant construction project successfully completed,” said Andrei Petrov, director of Rosenergoatom, a subsidiary of Rosatom. “It officially becomes the 11th nuclear power plant in Russia and the northernmost one in the world.”

Earlier, Russia’s technical, nuclear and environmental watchdog Rostechnadzor verified the plant’s compliance with all requirements with respect to health, environmental, fire, building requirements and state standards.

Rosprirodnadzor, the executive authority in environmental management, also approved the plant’s launch.

Akademik Lomonosov has a service life of 40 years and a power capacity of 70 megawatts. The plant is 460 feet long, 98 feet wide and weighs 21,500 tons.

The floating nuclear power plant also features two KLT-40S reactors each with 35 megawatts in electric power.

Prior to its full commercial launch, in December 2019, Akademic Lomonosov generated more than 47.3 million kilowatt-hours of electricity to the local area.

Akademic Lomonosov will initially provide 20% of the local region’s energy demand – but is expected to become the dominant energy source for the whole Chukotka region after all four units of the aging Bilibino nuclear power plant shuts down.

Akademik Lomonosov will be the first of a new array of mobile transportable low power units that will be located in the Far North and the Far East and form an important infrastructural element in the country’s Northern Sea Route development program. The intent of this scheme is to provide power to industries located in remote regions.

The existing Bilibino nuclear plant will be decommissioned in stages and the new energy supply program for Chukotka should be fully operational by 2023.

The Bilibino plant was originally commissioned in the mid-1970s.

Rosatom is already engaged in building a second- generation floating nuclear plant, which will be smaller than Akademic Lomonosov.

While Rosatom has asserted that its floating nuclear power plant was designed with a “great margin of safety” and that it can withstand “all possible threats,” environmentalist groups have condemned the project as too dangerous.

Greenpeace has called the plant a “floating Chernobyl” and a “nuclear Titanic.”

Jan Haverkamp, a nuclear energy and energy policy consultant with Greenpeace Central and Eastern Europe, said the plant is a “catastrophe waiting to happen.”

“Nuclear reactors bobbing around the Arctic Ocean pose a shockingly obvious threat to this wild and fragile environment,” he wrote. “This plant’s flat-bottomed hull makes it particularly vulnerable to tsunamis and cyclones. A large wave can pitch the power station onto the coast. It also can’t move by itself. If it comes loose from its moorings, it can’t move away from a threat (an iceberg or a foreign vessel, for example) increasing the risk of a deadly incident. A collision could damage its vital functions and lead to a loss of power and damage its cooling function, and that could lead to a release of radioactive substances into the environment. There are so many things that could go wrong here: it could flood, or sink, or run aground. All of these scenarios could potentially lead to radioactive substances being leaked into the environment.”

Haverkamp further warned that a damaged reactor could contaminate much of the marine wildlife in the near vicinity. “That means that fish stocks could be contaminated for years to come,” he said. “A radioactive Arctic is not a pretty scenario. The areas around Fukushima and Chernobyl are already difficult to clean up; imagine the polar night, deep sub-zero temperatures and Arctic storms.”

Bellona Foundation an environmental campaign group, also noted that the plant’s remote location makes it even more dangerous – since “rescue operations in the event of an accident would be complicated by distance.”

The thought of a nuclear power plant as vulnerable to tsunamis as the Akademik Lomonosov “strikes an anxious chord among environmentalists,” Bellona added. “It would be difficult, if not impossible, to abate the consequences of a nuclear accident in the harsh environment of the Arctic,” the group added.