Vladimir Shlyomin

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The potential of the small power engineering in Russia is estimated highly. Its high-valued promising customers include all inhabited localities along the North sea route: from Murmansk to Vladivostok. And the small power engineering embraces not only the shore but deep-inside territories as well.
As Yevgeny Kuzin, the general director of the company "Small Energy" JSC, believes, precisely geographical peculiarities of these towns and settlements make it necessary to look for untraditional ways of developing the energy infrastructure in the regions of the Far North and Far East. Construction ob ordinary power engineering sites is linked in this case to enormous capital investment, which have never been recouped. In Kuzin’s opinion, the optimal option is the small power engineering, i.e. installation of the ready-for-operation power-engineering unit, which is serviced by the shift-round-the-clock method and which leaves no radioactive materials behind when being put out of action. It has been almost 30 years that the Bilibinskaya nuclear plant has been operating under such a scheme fully providing Chukotka’s town of Bilibino with heat and electric power. This example has good prospects for floating NPPs.
The undoubted advantage of floating NPPs is their capability to be based in any coast region. They can be used to generate electric power, heat energy and desalinate sea water. By specialists’ estimates, the duration of operating such a Plant equals 15 years without oil refueling. Designers of floating NPPs do not insist whatever that these stations completely replace boiler-houses and heat stations using gas, coal or black oil, Today, a lot of attention is being done to considering to include them in operating electric power networks and systems of centralized heating. But in those places, where supplying organic fuel is difficult and where centralized systems of power supply are absent, NNPs will undoubtedly have an advantage áåññïîðíî, áóäóò èìåòü ïðåèìóùåñòâî.
By results of technical end economic developmental works, the towns of Pevek on Chukotka and Vilyuchinsk on Kamchatka were singled out as the most convenient to place NPPs of smaller capacity.

Projects

Chief specialist of the Atomenergoproject Josef Kryvitsky told in detail the story of small power engineering, problems of which the institute has been dealing with for already 10 years First, it started thing conceptually and later switched to practical work, including selecting suitable sites in the regions of the Far East and the Far North. "Territories were set up for placing reactor installations with different capacities, different types oriented on real autonomous energy users on territories of localized autonomous economic utilization", says Kryvitsky. In his word, from that moment the problem started getting a specific shape as an independent direction in developing the nuclear power industry.
Today, the Federal agency on nuclear energy has already a decision to build a head nuclear station of smaller capacity. It will include a floating power-generating unit with two rector installations KLT-40C designed to generate electric and heat energy. The station complex also contains hydro-technical structures that protect designed water area from natural and man-made impact as well shorelines sites that provide distribution of electric power and heat among consumers.
Technical design of the floating NPP I ready; about 20 Russian enterprises are involved in its implementation. The customer, Rosenergoatom, decided to go investing till all works are completed, including all necessary licenses are obtained. The plant will be constructed in the city of Severodvinsk in the Arkhagelsk region.

Security

The life cycle, including construction, operation, overhaul of the floating power-energetic unit and its utilization, personnel, is completely provided for by the infrastructure of Russia’s nuclear industry that is in operation now.
As chief engineer Oleg Samoilov notes, a floating NPP has a higher level of radiation protection. When operating in ordinary normal conditions it does not has any radiation impact on the environment. In Samoilov’s words, even the hardest accident damaging the reactor’ active zone will not require some measure to protect population in the area of 100 km around the plant.
However, designers themselves rule out any possibility of any accidents. Their position is supported by conclusions of independent Russian and international experts, including the Federal Office of medical and biological as well as extreme problems; Gosatomnadzor of Russia, Central Administration for fishery economic expertise and norms of protecting, reintroducing fishery stock and acclimatization, International Association of cooperation in equipment and technologies (ECTI) operating within the TACIS program. A floating energy block with KLT-40C reactor installations used a small NPP is recognized by specialists from the International Atomic Energy Agency as the most convenient for establishing a demonstrational nuclear desalination complex.
Besides, the project of a floating NPP is backed up by a positive assessment from the State ecological expertise, two independent public ecological expertise in Peveka and Severodvinsk as well as it is supported by deputies from a number of local legislatures.
It is quite natural that in this case, like in other projects with the use of nuclear sources, the public becomes suspicious and such an awareness is traditionally warmed up by the press. So much so that people know almost nothing about the small nuclear power engineering. As its initiators believe, the best way to get more supporters of the new direction is not only to discuss its reliability but also to explain its economic benefits from operating floating NPPs. It is a fact that they represent basically the only possibility to preserve energy tariffs at socially acceptable level in severe conditions of the North.

Commerce

According to the project, a floating energy block gets to the place of operation fully ready for work. It has everything, even business premises and living quarters for the personnel. A NPP is serviced 24-hour-a-day and shifts are changed every four months. Fuel load transfer and storage of used nuclear materials are completely done on the NPP board. One loading of fuel is enough for a NPP to work for 3 years. It lets save 360,000 tons of black oil or 600,000 tons of coal. A floating NPP is recouped in 9 years from the start of its construction. When there is a serial production of energy blocks, the cost of the second and subsequent ones will decrease 15 to 20% and that considerably increase NPP’s economic efficiency.
General director of the "Small Energy" JSC Yevgeny Kuzin notes the commercial attractiveness of floating NPPs for foreign consumers as well. The scheme is as follows: a floating energy block remains in the property of Russia, shift personnel is also Russian and only a finished product is fully owned by a client. A country, where such an energy block operates, does not need to set up an infrastructure, to ensure guarantees of non-proliferation of nuclear technologies and materials since as the cycle is finished, a floating NPP gets back to Russia for utilizing spent fuel. Having signed a long-term contract and having burdened himself with nothing else a customer gets a reliable sources of electric power, heat or fresh water.
Already today Indonesia and China are showing a heightened interest in the project of floating NPPs. The main condition for signing a contract with these countries is the availability of the working sample of a plant in Russia. The Chinese side is even ready to participate in constructing a head plant in Severodvinsk on terms of a tied credit with state guarantees.