I have devoted several blog posts recently to the idea of floating nuclear reactors. The Russians have been working on construction of their first floating reactor on a barge and recently scientists at MIT have proposed putting nuclear reactors on floating oil drilling rigs. The Russians want to tow their reactor barges to the Arctic, remote areas near the coast or coastal cities to supply power. The MIT floating rigs are primarily intended to be anchored miles offshore to supply power to cities. As with many nuclear projects, the construction of the first Russian floating reactors has gone way over the original estimates.
The Akademik Lomonosov (AL) is Russia's first floating power plant. It is referred to as a floating nuclear co-generation plant (FNCP) because it will supply both heat and electricity to remote locations. It consists of two thirty five megawatt reactors that will also generate one hundred and fifty megawatts of heat on top of a barge that is four hundred and seventy feet long and about a hundred feet wide. These FNCPs are being designed to have a forty year operational life-span. They will only need to be fueled every ten years.
Originally, the 2006 estimated cost of the AL was about one hundred seventy million dollars which was going to be provided by the construction and utility companies involved in the project. Construction began in 2007 with an expected completion date in 2010. Now the final cost is estimated to be seven hundred million dollars, an increase of more that 300% in just 8 years. The Russian government has had to step in to provide additional funds.
As is also the case with many nuclear construction projects, the AL is behind schedule. It is supposed to be delivered to Vilyuchinsk in the Kamchatka region in the Russian Far East in late 2016. They are working to "guarantee energy and social stability" of Kamchatka by 2019. Five of these are intended for use by Gazprom for offshore oil and gas field development in the Russian Arctic. Dudinka on the Tyamyr Peninsula and Preveik on the Chukchi Peninsula are also going to receive FNSPs. Russia has announced that fifteen countries are interested in floating reactors like the AL including China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Namibia, Cape Verde and Argentina.
Despite the claim that construction of the FNSPs in shipyards will reduce costs and insure higher quality and reliability a 2004 book by a variety of Russian nuclear scientists and engineers has concluded that there is no way to protect these FNSPs from terrorist attacks and that safe operation cannot be guaranteed. "The only question is how serious the emergency and its consequences." The book also concludes that this type of power station is uneconomical. Given the 300% increase in cost for the AL and the lagging schedule for completion and delivery, it would seem that the authors of the book have a solid basis for their claims with respect to FNSPs. Despite the attempts by the global nuclear industry to revive the fading dream of nuclear power, the new floating reactors do not appear to be helping as much as they had hoped.
Academician Lomonosov:
