New milestone: Russia’s first floating nuclear power plant

15-2-2013 — /europawire.eu/ — The installation of two 300-tonne tanks has taken the project to build Russia’s first floating nuclear power plant a step further towards completion.

The tanks, which provide a shielded housing for the reactor vessels and their cooling circuits, were manufactured by Baltiysky Zavod shipyard, which is constructing the plant for Rosenergoatom. They were lowered into the reactor compartment of the Akademik Lomonosov over two days in an operation made complicated by ice on the Neva river. Baltiysky Zavod general director Alexander Voznesensky described the installation of the tanks as a milestone in the project.

Akademik Lomonosov is Rosenergoatom’s first-of-a-kind floating nuclear power plant and will contain two 35 MWe KLT-40S nuclear reactors. The vessel’s keel was laid in April 2007 at Sevmash in Severodvinsk, but the project was subsequently transferred to the Baltiysky Zavod. The 21,500 tonne hull was launched in 2010, although construction work was frozen in mid-2011 amid bankruptcy proceedings against the shipyard. The company was subsequently acquired by state-owned United Shipbuilding Corporation and Rosenergoatom signed a new contract with Baltiysky Zavod shipyard for the completion of the first floating nuclear power plant in December 2012. It is now scheduled for commissioning in 2016.

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