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Russia Builds Floating Nuclear Power Plants

The Russian Federation’s first floating nuclear power plant “should be operational by 2016,” Baltiskii Zavod shipyard General Director Aleksandr Voznesenskii told reporters earlier this month at the 6th International Naval Show in St. Petersburg, where the shipbuilding complex is located.

According to Voznesenskii, the “Academician Lomonosov” FNPP will be the first vessel belonging to the new line of floating nuclear power plants that can provide energy, heat and water to remote and arid areas of the country. Mass production of similar floating nuclear power plants is scheduled for the near future.

The “Academician Lomonosov’s” technology is based on the USSR’s construction of nuclear-powered icebreakers.

The Russian media is speculating that the floating nuclear power plants will first be used in remote areas of the northeastern Arctic Russia and the Far East, as these regions currently suffer from a lack of energy, slowing their development.

Additionally, the floating nuclear power plants can provide water desalination services capable of supplying up to 240,000 cubic meters of fresh water per day.

The “Academician Lomonosov” will be sent to Vilyuchinsk, Kamchatka for operational testing. Rosatom then aims to construct seven more FNPPs by 2015, with four of them likely to be located on the northern coast of Siberia’s Yakutia.