World’s First Floating Nuke Plant - Lomonosov to Become Operational Soon

World’s only operational floating nuclear power plant may soon become a reality. Akademik Lomonosov, the floating nuclear power unit (FPU), has been moored in Murmansk where it was towed from Saint Petersburg to be loaded with fuel. It will also be the northernmost nuclear installation in the world. More importantly, it will replace a coal-fired power plant and an aging nuclear power plant Bilibino supplying over 50,000 people with electricity and reducing carbon footprint in the Arctic by huge volumes of CO2 emissions each year. Once loaded with fuel, Lomonosov will be towed to the town of Pevek in Chukotka (Russian Far East).

Interestingly, the sharp criticism by anti-nuclear groups notwithstanding, the floating nuclear power plant project has been hailed by many environmentalists and green groups as the only feasible way to reduce the Arctic’s dependency on coal, which in turn causes millions of tonnes of CO2 emissions and toxic pollution destroying the region’s fragile ecosystems.

The Arctic region is a vulnerable ecosystem. But its greatest vulnerability is to climate change. This power plant is going to replace an existing coal-fired power station and provide zero-carbon electricity generation for 50,000 people, said Bright New World Organization's executive director-Ben Heard. Mind you that there is otherwise absolutely no prospect of that energy coming from renewable sources in that location.

The power plant has got approval from the IAEA. There are decades of operational experiences for reactors in shipboard conditions. With scaled-up production, the potential to cut greenhouse gas emissions with this application is enormous. Who can deny the need for affordable, reliable, non-carbon energy by communities in far-flung areas? And many thing that this is a way of getting it to them.

Meanwhile, if Rosatom Director General Alexey Likhachev is to be believed, the company had successfully towed the power unit, not yet loaded with nuclear fuel, to Murmansk and were going to fully launch here this unique project. This could be made possible only due to active cooperation of many companies. There is no doubt that Akademic Lomonosov is an unparalleled piece of engineering by Russian scientists. Actually, it is a maiden reference project of its kind for mobile medium capacity range nuclear power units, a product we expect to be in growing demand in the coming years. There is already a great degree of interest from all island countries. And that’s understandable because it is very difficult to set up a developed centralized power transmission infrastructure in those countries for more reasons than one.