Russia plans up to five floating nuclear power plants for the wilderness in the northeast – News

Russian President Vladimir Putin has approved a proposal by Rosatom to build floating nuclear power plants to power a gold and copper mine on the remote northeast Pacific coast, according to a report by the RBC news agency.

The $ 2.3 billion proposal was made by the nuclear engineer in competition with another proposal from Novatek gas company, which is based on floating power plants that run on LNG.

The floating plants would supply the Baimskaya copper and gold mine in Chukotka, Russia’s easternmost province, with electricity.

The mine, owned by the Kazakh company KAZ Minerals, is believed to have contained copper ore for 25 years, making it one of the largest unused deposits in the world.

A $ 8 billion operation is currently underway to open an open pit mine with a 2027 deadline. However, the area’s economy is based on reindeer herding, whale hunting and fishing, with no roads and little energy infrastructure to support an industrial operation of this size.

According to RBC, the chairman of Rosatom’s board of directors, Sergei Kiriyenko, sent a letter to Rosinom setting out Rosatom’s plans.

Rosatom therefore planned to order five floating gensets with a total output of 500 MW from the Baltic shipyard. This would “have a significant socio-economic impact on the Russian economy” by strengthening the Russian nuclear and shipbuilding industries and creating a future export market for floating reactors with low power consumption.

It would also benefit from the lessons learned from the first floating reactor project, Akademik Lomonosov, which was developed over 14 years. This has already been sent to Chukotka, where it supplies the city of Pevek with electricity (see further literature).

Meanwhile, other companies are starting to appreciate the potential in the floating reactor market, like Danish start-up Seaborg Technologies, which is hoping to install its compact molten salt reactor on ships.

Image: The Akademik Lomonosov has already been sent to Chukotka (Rosatom)

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