Rosatom has chosen sites for five small nuclear power plants in the Arctic

State corporation “Rosatom» selected the five most promising sites for the construction of small nuclear power plants (LNPPs) in the Arctic. This was announced on August 25 by Semyon Musher, science adviser at Rusatom Overseas (a Rosatom structure), on the sidelines of the Technoprom forum.

“If we want to develop the Arctic, we need to install small stations there. We have created a joint working group with the leaders of the regions. There was a letter from the first deputy of our general director to the governors, so that we would choose places together with them. AND [мы] selected regions: Krasnoyarsk Territory, Yakutia, Chukotka. Only five points,” said Musher (quoted by TASS).

According to him, in Chukotka, a small nuclear power plant will be built next to the Sovinoye gold deposit in the Iultinsky district, in Yakutia – near the Agylkinskoye complex deposit in the Tomponsky district and the urban-type settlement (urban settlement) Batagay in the Verkhoyansky district. The fourth site is the Baikit township in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, as well as the Bolshevik Island deposit on the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago. At SPIEF-2023, the structure of Rosatom Atomredmetzoloto signed an agreement with the government of Chukotka on cooperation in the development of the Owl field. Agylkinsky field was put up for auction in August 2023.

The representative of the company explained that the settlements in the Arctic were chosen for the construction of nuclear power plants, taking into account the interests of the local population, administration and industrial enterprises.

According to Musher, the company plans to build small nuclear power plants based on the Shelf reactor plant with one 10 MW module. The construction of each such station in permafrost will take four years instead of three under normal conditions, he added.

The first ground-based low-power nuclear power plant with a Ritm-200 reactor plant and a total capacity of 55 MW is to be built by Rosatom in the village. Ust-Kuyga Ust-Yansky district of Yakutia. ASMM should be put into operation in 2028 to provide electricity to the Kuchus gold deposit (JV Seligdara and Rostec).

Abroad, Rosatom plans to build the first ASMM in Kyrgyzstan, the corporation’s general director Alexei Likhachev reported on June 8. The development of a preliminary feasibility study (pre-feasibility study) for a project in Kyrgyzstan, as well as in India and Myanmar, should be completed before the end of 2023, it was noted in the annual report of Atomenergoprom (consolidates civil projects of Rosatom). The station in Kyrgyzstan is planned to be built on the basis of the Ritm-200N reactor plant.

Sites for the construction of low-power nuclear power plants were identified back in Soviet times, now Rosatom is actually returning to the projects of that time, adjusted for current conditions, reminds Alexander Uvarov, editor-in-chief of the industry resource Atominfo.ru. According to him, ASMM is needed in regions where there is no centralized energy supply and where diesel fuel is supplied. In fact, this is the entire North and the Far East, he notes.

Russian ASMMs have a high export potential, adds Uvarov. African countries could become a market for them: they have money for this, since the construction of a small power plant is much cheaper than a large plant, he explains. In addition, the countries of the region may not be ready to build a large nuclear power plant in terms of demand and the state of energy networks, the expert adds.

At the end of July, Rosatom reported that Russia and Ethiopia would consider the possibility of building a small or large nuclear power plant on the territory of the last nuclear power plant. At the same time, Likhachev said that African countries were interested in Russian floating nuclear power plants.

Interest in the construction of small nuclear power plants is a global trend, says Kirill Rodionov, an expert at the Institute for the Development of Fuel and Energy Complex Technologies. According to him, the British Rolls-Royce created a “daughter” – Rolls-Royce SMR – for the design of small modular reactors (SMR), and the American NuScale in 2022 received a safety certificate for its SMR project. China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) plans to commission the world’s first ground-based ASCM ACP100 in 2026, he adds.

The advantages of small nuclear power plants are the reliability of power supply, Rodionov notes. “Nice ASMM, most likely, will be the power supply of remote areas, isolated from the general network,” he said. The disadvantage of nuclear power plants, in his opinion, is the higher capital costs per 1 kW of power. At the same time, Rodionov recalled that the specific capital costs for the construction of the nuclear power plant may be lower, since the reactor is delivered to the place of future operation in an assembled form.