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Russia to Start Building Floating Nuclear Power Plant in 2006

Posted on: Thursday, 12 January 2006, 21:00 CST

Text of report by Russian news agency ITAR-TASS

Moscow, 12 January: The practical implementation of the floating nuclear power plant project will start this year. "In 2006, the Rosenergoatom Russian state concern for the production of electric and heat energy at nuclear plants will start the practical implementation of the project of a pioneer floating nuclear heat and power plant of small capacity (NHPP of SC) in Severodvinsk," an ITAR- TASS correspondent was told today in Rosatom [Federal Agency for Atomic Energy].

"Before the New Year's eve, a directorate of floating nuclear power plants under construction was set up in Rosenergoatom, which is the concern's subsidiary and which will be overseeing the work to build the first NHPP," Rosatom noted. The former deputy presidential representative in the Volga Federal District, Sergey Obozov, has been appointed director of this department and deputy director- general of the concern.

Rosatom stressed that the project of the pioneer NHPP of small capacity based on a floating generating set (FGS) with KLT-40S reactor blocks "has been completed and is ready for practical implementation". The project will be implemented according to the federal targeted-development programme called "Energy-efficient economy for 2002-2005 and in long term up to 2010". It is planned to station standard models of the plant at platforms at the Vilyuchinsk closed administrative-territorial entity in Kamchatka Region, as well as in the town of Pivek in Chukotka Autonomous Area, Rosatom specified.

Rosatom explained that the plant's life cycle, including its construction, use, major repairs of the floating generating set, its recycling and training of personnel, "will be fully ensured by the current infrastructure of the Russian nuclear industry". The floating generating set will be built at a shipbuilding enterprise and will be commissioned fully ready for use. It will be serviced by way of shifts which will be changing every four months. Work needed to reload nuclear fuel and store spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste will be carried out on board the NHPP. The major repairs of the floating generating set will be carried out at a shipbuilding enterprise. Rosatom also specified that "the personnel will be trained at the navy training centre in Obninsk in Kaluga Region, where study rooms and a training machine have now been booked".

Rosatom noted that, apart from that, "the projects of reactor blocks for floating NPPs (FNPP) of 3 to 40 MW capacity for work in the conditions of the Extreme North, Kamchatka and Far East have been developed" at the Afrikantova experimental design office of mechanical engineering in Nizhniy Novgorod. The use of main technical solutions used in vessel and ship reactor blocks, whose aggregate service life exceeds 6,000 reactor-years, is the common feature of all the projects of floating NPPs. The cost of the building of a floating NPP with a capacity of 3 MW amounts to just 20m dollars. The service life of such floating NPPs is 50 years. Fuel is reloaded once every 10-12 years.

Rosatom noted that "the [degree of] enrichment of uranium in fuel for such floating NPPs is less than 20 per cent, which meets the IAEA's [International Atomic Energy Agency] requirements on non- proliferation and ensures the possibility of export use of such plants by Russia".

Source: BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union

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