Russia to build floating nuclear power station

MOSCOW - Russia is to shrug off environmental concerns about 'floating Chernobyls' and press ahead with construction of the world's first floating nuclear power station.

The Kremlin has approved the project and a shipyard in the far north of Russia that usually turns out nuclear submarines will begin construction work next year.

Rosenergoatom, Russia's nuclear power agency, says it intends to build up to six floating power stations and that the first one will be ready in 2010. They will supply heat and electricity to far-flung corners of Russia's Far East and Far North where it is difficult and expensive to ship coal and oil.

Russia has made no secret of the fact that it would also like to sell the controversial mobile power units to other countries such as China and India. The power stations look rather like cross-Channel ferries with two reactors placed above a barge-like platform.

At a cost of 182m pounds each, they have a service life of forty years, require a crew of 69 people, and generate enough heat and electricity to power a medium-sized town.

Much of the technology used to design them was drawn from Russia's unique experience of building and operating nuclear-powered icebreakers.

The floating power stations can be 'dead anchored' in a quiet inlet or towed to other destinations. The first model will be moored in the White Sea off the town of Severodvinsk in Russia's northern Archangel region.

Sergey Obozov, a senior official at Rosenergoatom boasted that they would be "reliable as a Kalashnikov assault rifle which are a benchmark of safety."

Sergey Kiriyenko, the head of the agency, said he was also confident. "There will be no floating Chernobyl," he said, referring to the Soviet-era 1986 nuclear accident.

However environmentalists have warned that the concept is risky and that the power stations could sink in stormy weather. They have also argued that the units would make a prime terrorist target.

According to a report from the Norwegian-based Bellona Foundation the floating power stations are "a threat to the Arctic, the world's oceans, and the whole concept of non-proliferation."

- INDEPENDENT