The parties have already signed a relevant memorandum of understanding. Our specialists will build the first floating nuclear power plant (FNPP) “for themselves” and plan to start it up in 2018 in Russia. The 70-megawatt FNPP will base in Pevek, Chukotka. The plant will replace capacities of Bilibino NPP, which is being decommissioned. The floating plant is offered to supply power to large industrial enterprises, cities near sea ports, facilities for mining and processing oil and gas off-shore. It is based on a series power installation used at nuclear-propelled icebreakers proven over long years of operation in the Arctic.

China has been interested in the Russian floating plant technologies for a long time. In May, at the bilateral Russia-China scientific conference on the nuclear industry problems and prospects Chen Zhaobo, the Chairman of the Expert Group of the Chinese National Nuclear Corporation, stated that the country intended to cooperate with ROSATOM in developing FNPPs. “ROSATOM has experience and technologies to build such a power plant, which can produce energy off-shore,” he said. “China has islands far from the coast and is interested in building a floating nuclear generating station. It is necessary to create a joint project to build FNPP and implement it in China,” he said.

The signing of the memorandum can be considered the start of a large joint project. Rusatom Overseas CEO Dzhomart Aliev said at the signing ceremony: “Floating nuclear power plants possess a significant applied potential. A floating nuclear power plant can be self-propelled and non-self-propelled. Such plant can be connected to the coastal infrastructure or anchor near an electricity consumption center. Floating NPPs are capable of supplying reliable electricity not only to hardly accessible settlements, in Far North or Far East but also to large industrial facilities located nearly in any part of the aquatic area, such as oil platforms.”

Head of ROSATOM Sergey Kirienko recently said that the public corporation currently negotiates with the Chinese party on building reactors in the inland China. The dialogue on expansion of the cooperation in fast neutron reactors and closed nuclear fuel cycle technologies continues is under way. ROSATOM is ready for the cooperation with the Chinese party on projects in third countries. “I think our cooperation is of an integrated nature; we are satisfied with how it goes,” Kirienko notes.