Rosatom Considers Building Floating Nuclear Power Unit Completion Base

en.Wedoany.com Reported - On September 1, Alexey Likhachev, Director General of Rosatom, stated that the company is considering building a new floating nuclear power unit completion facility near Murmansk. The project is still at the conceptual study stage, with preliminary investment estimates ranging in the tens of billions of rubles. The new facility is primarily intended to handle the subsequent construction and completion work of floating nuclear power units, in response to the company's anticipated growth in batch orders.

Likhachev stated that Rosatom expects to build dozens of floating nuclear power units in the future, though the specific order volume has not yet been fully calculated. The company's existing long-term shipbuilding partner, Baltic Shipyard, is simultaneously undertaking orders for Project 22220 nuclear-powered icebreakers and nuclear energy equipment. As orders in both categories increase, the existing facilities are unable to accommodate all potential construction tasks. The company is therefore considering establishing its own additional production capacity while continuing to maintain its cooperation model with existing shipbuilding partners.

The Murmansk option primarily takes into account the local operation of the nuclear-powered fleet and port conditions. Rosatom's subsidiary Atomflot is located there, with surrounding port infrastructure and direct access to the sea. The specific site, construction scale, production capacity, start date, and final investment plan for the project have not yet been determined, and the current estimate of tens of billions of rubles is only a preliminary figure.

Rosatom is currently implementing the floating nuclear power project for the Baimsky mining area in Chukotka, planning a total of four modern floating nuclear power units equipped with RITM-200S reactors, three of which will serve as primary units and one as backup, with a single-unit installed capacity of up to approximately 110 MW. Due to constraints in Russia's domestic shipbuilding capacity and construction timelines since 2022, some hulls of this batch are being built at Chinese shipyards.

In May of this year, Rosatom completed the manufacturing of the first RITM-200S reactor unit required for the first new floating nuclear power unit, PEB-106. The company is also developing floating nuclear power solutions for overseas markets using RITM-series reactors; the existing Akademik Lomonosov floating nuclear power plant has been in commercial operation in Pevek, Chukotka, since 2020.