Counting more than eighty in total, new businesses are taking an increasingly larger share of Rosatom’s activities. For a year, this column has dealt with many of its new businesses. This issue, the last in 2024, offers you a summary.
Clean energy
Rosatom is involved with almost every major type of clean generation technologies. Apart from baseload nuclear power (including all the latest SMR projects), these include wind, hydrogen, biofuel, solar and hydro power solutions.
Rosatom builds wind farms on its own, with the key components of wind turbines — nacelles, their internals and blades — being produced by the subsidiaries of the Russian nuclear corporation. In Russia alone, Rosatom plans to commission about 1.7 GW of wind capacity by 2027.
However, its renewable energy projects are not confined to the domestic country only and extend abroad. Here is an example of just a single country: in Kyrgyzstan, Rosatom is building a hydro power plant near Leylek and has signed an agreement for the construction of a 30 MW hydro power plant on the Chandalash River in the Jalal-Abad Region. A project has been launched to build a 100 MW wind farm near Lake Issyk-Kul. All in all, dozens of power plants are expected to be built under the two agreements signed earlier this year at Atomexpo, including 1 GW of wind capacity and 400 MW of hydroelectric capacity.
Rosatom is also working on the construction of biogas plants in Russia and Kazakhstan. Turning animal and food waste into energy and fertilizers, such plants exemplify a circular economy approach.
Energy storage systems
Electricity needs to be stored, not only generated. Rosatom is establishing an end-to-end supply chain to manufacture electricity storage systems for the transportation and electric power industries. The chain starts with lithium, and Rosatom is building a mine at the Kolmozerskoye lithium deposit in Russia and participating in the development of lithium salt flats in Bolivia. Rosatom is also constructing two gigafactories in the Kaliningrad and Moscow regions. These will be integrated production sites for lithium-ion batteries with an annual capacity 4 gigawatt-hours each. The batteries from the two factories will be installed in Russian electric cars. One of them, appropriately branded as Atom, is being developed with input from Rosatom.
Environmental solutions
Rosatom has vast experience in the management of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and radioactive waste (RW). The nuclear corporation builds and upgrades infrastructure facilities for SNF and RW processing, storage and disposal, and manages legacy facilities. As a recent example, the last removable core section of the liquid-metal cooled reactor, which used to be installed in nuclear submarines, was taken away from the naval base Gremikha.
The Russian nuclear corporation uses its end-of-lifecycle management competencies to deliver environmental protection and legacy management projects. For example, a number of legacy programs have been completed or are still running in Tajikistan (rehabilitation of the Taboshar uranium mining site and tailing dumps in the Sughd region of the country) and in Kyrgyzstan (rehabilitation of tailing dumps at the Kajy-Say, Taldy-Bulak, Tuyuksu and Dalniy mines). In Belarus, Rosatom is working on a technology and a pilot decontamination plant to rehabilitate a pesticide dump site near the town of Gorodok, Belarus.
New materials
In developing new materials and their applications, Rosatom focuses on three areas: composite materials, additive manufacturing, and rare-earth elements (REE).
As for composite materials, Rosatom has set up and is now improving the end-to-end production of carbon composites, from crude oil to finished products. These materials are used to manufacture gas centrifuges for uranium enrichment, vehicle parts, sports equipment, building and road structures, wind turbine blades, and so on.
Additive manufacturing materials developed and produced by Rosatom comprise several types of metal powders for 3D printers, which are also manufactured in-house. The company also provides 3D printing services. Rosatom has introduced 3D printed parts into the nuclear fuel production process. For example, an impeller made by additive manufacturing is used in a pump involved in the UF6 sublimation process at the Siberian Chemical Plant.
As for rare-earth materials, Rosatom is building an integrated production chain reaching from ore to magnets. It is planned to launch a facility for the separation of mixed REE concentrates into individual compounds, and a magnet factory.
Cargo traffic on the Northern Sea Route
The Northern Sea Route (NSR) is conceived as a maritime trade route that would ensure year-round cargo transportation. To achieve this goal, Rosatom as the NSR operator establishes contacts with partner countries, particularly China. In November, the first meeting of the Russia-China NSR Cooperation Sub-Commission was held in Saint Petersburg. Earlier, an agreement was concluded with the Chinese company NewNew Shipping Line to establish a joint venture for the construction of cargo ships. In partnership with the same company, Rosatom launched Arctic Express 1, a container transportation service between the ports of the two countries. Other countries are also interested in this cargo route.
The traffic on the Northern Sea Route is ensured by seven nuclear-powered icebreakers. Russia’s unparalleled nuclear fleet is growing as Chukotka, a Project 22220 nuclear icebreaker, was floated out in November and the same-series Yakutia is expected to be commissioned soon. Another Project 22220 icebreaker Leningrad and a Project 10510 icebreaker Rossiya are under construction. Along with being the most powerful vessels, nuclear icebreakers have virtually no impact on the environment as they generate no harmful emissions.
Nuclear medicine
Offering the widest range of radioisotopes, Rosatom is the world’s Top 5 supplier of source materials for the production of radiopharmaceuticals. Among its customers are over 170 companies from 50 countries.
Rosatom is also building Europe’s largest radiopharmaceuticals factory in Obninsk, Russia. The factory will produce both the most in-demand substances and innovative radiopharmaceuticals based on carrier-added and non-carrier-added lutetium 177, actinium 225, thorium 227 and other isotopes intended for the treatment of inoperable metastatic forms of malignant neoplasms.
Technologies
Rosatom is involved with the development of advanced solutions in robotics, digital services, quantum computers, and much more.
The Russian nuclear corporation has over 60 digital products in its portfolio, including robotic process automation (RPA), low-code programming, and optical character recognition (OCR) solutions.
Rosatom also provides digital automation solutions for nuclear construction projects. Analytical simulators supplied to nuclear stations abroad are among Rosatom’s flagship products.
In addition, Rosatom is engaged in the development of emerging digital technologies, such as Big Data, Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, and others. Rosatom is also a leading Russian developer of digital solutions for smart cities, community management, transport, housing and utilities, and energy industry. The footprint of its projects covers over 200 cities in Russia and the CIS.
Russian nuclear companies use robotic systems, and robotic applications will definitely expand in the near future.
No less important are quantum technologies, a very specific area of focus. Rosatom acts as a coordinator for the Quantum Computing Roadmap being implemented since 2020 as part of the Digital Technologies federal project. In 2024, Rosatom researchers and their colleagues built a 50 qubit trapped-ion quantum computer. R&D efforts in this field are continuing.
In conclusion
Naturally, it is impossible to describe every new business in a short article. What should be stressed is that Rosatom, when looking for a new business area, is guided by many criteria, but the most important of them are sustainable development goals, such as affordable and clean energy, good health and well-being, responsible consumption and production, and climate action.
