Russia Launches Floating Nuclear Power Plant to the Arctic
The $232 million nuclear plant started its journey over the weekend from St. Petersburg and will head to the Arctic to power the oil-industry town of Pevek.
A massive floating nuclear power plant is now on its way to an Arctic port, after Russia's state nuclear corporation Rosatom launched the nuclear plant over the weekend.Called the Akademik Lomonosov, the floating power plant is being towed at a creeping pace out of St. Petersburg, where it was built over the last nine years. It will eventually be brought northward, to Murmansk – where its two nuclear reactors will be loaded with nuclear fuel and started up this fall.
Russian officials say the Akademik Lomonosov is set to become the first series of floating nuclear power plants Russia plans to develop.The portable plant is not self-propelled and must be towed to the desired location. It is designed to provide energy to port cities and offshore gas and oil-extracting platforms.The floating nuclear power plant will be towed from St. Petersburg and around Norway to a Russian town called Murmansk to take on nuclear fuel. From Murmansk, the $232 million nuclear plant will head to the Arctic to power the oil-industry town of Pevek.
With two nuclear reactors, the nuclear plant will produce up to 70 MW[d] of electricity, enough to power a city of 100,000 inhabitants.Rosatom says the nuclear plant is designed with the great margin of safety that exceeds all possible threats and makes nuclear reactors 'invincible' for tsunamis and other natural disasters.Rosatom also added that the floating nuclear plant meets all the requirements of the International Atomic Energy Agency and do not pose any threats to the environment.Despite such reassurances, Greenpeace in Russia, said it collected more than 11,000 signatures against the plan to put nuclear fuel into the plant while it floated along St. Petersburg's shores. Nuclear expert Jan Haverkamp told Engadget that having nuclear reactors moving around the Arctic Ocean creates a obvious threat to a fragile environment which is already affected by climate change.
