Tue. Mar 19th, 2024

Under President Putin’s discretion, Russia has set out to scavenge for electricity and other energy sources near the Arctic Circle. This is precisely where Russia unveiled the world’s first ever floating nuclear power station, termed the ‘Chernobyl on Ice’ on 19th May 2018. The Akademik Lomonosov was inaugurated in a ceremony on a port at Murmansk, where it is set to be loaded with fuel for the first time, and left on its own to head to Eastern Siberia.

Named after the Academician Mikhail Lomonosov, the nuclear power-ship was built in St. Petersburg and had been transported to the port in Murmansk two days prior to its inauguration. The non-self-propelled Akademik Lomonosov is worth 6 billion Rubles (around 232 million USD), and consisted of an initial crew of 69. This barge houses within itself two modified KLT-40S type 35 megawatt nuclear reactors, which have been previously used only to power icebreaker ships. The Akademik Lomonosov was built by the state nuclear power firm Rosatom, and is 474 feet long and 98 feet wide, and weighs more than 21,000 tonnes.

The barge is scheduled to be towed sometime during the summer of 2019 to Pevek – a port town located in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, 350 kilometers north of the Arctic circle. The Akademik Lomonosov is expected to produce enough energy to provide electricity to at least 200,000 residents of a town, exceeding the 5,000 citizens of the most north-eastern town of Perek by a lot. The main objective of the Akademik Lomonosov is to power all of the oil rigs of Russia as they drill deeper into the Arctic to acquire more gas and electricity for the country.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *