Akademik Lomonosov is as of 2023 the only operational floating nuclear power plant.
A floating nuclear power plant is a floating power station that derives its energy from a nuclear reactor. Instead of a stationary complex on land, they consist of a floating structure such as an offshore platform, barge or conventional ship.
Since the reactors employed are smaller in size and power than most commercial land-based reactors, mostly derived from nuclear ship and submarine power plants, the power output is generally a fraction of a conventional nuclear power plant, usually around 100MWe, although some are planned to have as much as 800MWe.
The advantage of such power plants is their relative mobility and their ability to deliver in-situ electric power "on demand" even to remote regions, since they can be moved or towed to position with relative ease within large water bodies, and then docked with coastal facilities to transfer the produced power and heat to a land power grid. However, environmental groups are concerned that floating nuclear power plants are more exposed to accidents than onshore power stations and also pose a threat to marine habitats.[1]
In the 21st century, Russia has led in the practical development of floating nuclear power stations. On 14 September 2019, Russia’s first-floating nuclear power plant, Akademik Lomonosov, arrived to its permanent location in the Chukotka region.[2] It started operation on 19 December 2019.[3]
In 2022, the United States Department of Energy funded a three-year research study of offshore floating nuclear power generation.[4] In October 2022, NuScale Power and Canadian company Prodigy announced a joint project to bring a North American small modular reactor based floating plant to market.[5]
A nuclear power plant (NPP), also known as a nuclear power station (NPS), nuclear generating station (NGS) or atomic power station (APS) is a thermal power station in which the heat source is a nuclear reactor. As is typical of thermal power stations, heat is used to generate steam that drives a steam turbine connected to a generator that produces electricity. As of September 2023, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that there were 410 nuclear power reactors in operation in 32 countries around the world, and 57 nuclear power reactors under construction.
Nuclear marine propulsion is propulsion of a ship or submarine with heat provided by a nuclear reactor. The power plant heats water to produce steam for a turbine used to turn the ship's propeller through a gearbox or through an electric generator and motor. Nuclear propulsion is used primarily within naval warships such as nuclear submarines and supercarriers. A small number of experimental civil nuclear ships have been built.
The Army Nuclear Power Program (ANPP) was a program of the United States Army to develop small pressurized water and boiling water nuclear power reactors to generate electrical and space-heating energy primarily at remote, relatively inaccessible sites. The ANPP had several accomplishments, but ultimately it was considered to be "a solution in search of a problem." The U.S. Army Engineer Reactors Group managed this program and it was headquartered at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. The program began in 1954 as the Army Reactors Branch and had effectively terminated by about 1977, with the last class of NPP operators graduating in 1977. Work continued for some time thereafter either for decommissioning of the plants or placing them into SAFSTOR. The current development of small modular reactors has led to a renewed interest in military applications.
Rosatom, also known as Rosatom State Nuclear Energy Corporation, the State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom, or Rosatom State Corporation, is a Russian state corporation headquartered in Moscow that specializes in nuclear energy, nuclear non-energy goods and high-tech products. It was established in 2007 and comprises more than 350 enterprises, including scientific research organizations, a nuclear weapons complex, and the world's only nuclear icebreaker fleet.
Russia is one of the world's largest producers of nuclear energy. In 2020 total electricity generated in nuclear power plants in Russia was 215.746 TWh, 20.28% of all power generation. The installed gross capacity of Russian nuclear reactors is 29.4 GW in December 2020.
The KLT-40 family are nuclear fission reactors originating from OK-150 and OK-900 ship reactors. KLT-40 were developed to power the Taymyr-class icebreakers and the LASH carrier Sevmorput. They are pressurized water reactors (PWR) fueled by either 30–40% or 90% enriched uranium-235 fuel to produce 135 to 171 MW of thermal power.
Rosenergoatom is the Russian nuclear power station operations subsidiary of Atomenergoprom.
Floating nuclear power stations are vessels designed by Rosatom, the Russian state-owned nuclear energy corporation. They are self-contained, low-capacity, floating nuclear power plants. Rosatom plans to mass-produce the stations at shipbuilding facilities and then tow them to ports near locations that require electricity.
MH-1A was the first floating nuclear power station. Named Sturgis after General Samuel D. Sturgis, Jr., this pressurized water reactor built in a converted Liberty ship was part of a series of reactors in the US Army Nuclear Power Program, which aimed to develop small nuclear reactors to generate electrical and space-heating energy primarily at remote, relatively inaccessible sites. Its designation stood for mobile, high power. After its first criticality in 1967, MH-1A was towed to the Panama Canal Zone that it supplied with 10 MW of electricity. Its dismantling began in 2014 and was completed in March 2019.
The VBER-300 is a proposed Russian pressurized water reactor of 325-MWe generating capacity designed for remote locations. The exterior containment structure is 16 meters high and the working section, built with transportable modules, weighs 1300 tonnes. The external steam plant can have a 917 MW thermal-steam only capacity, or 325 MW steam-turbine-electrical capacity, or a mixture of capacities relating to the four primary steam loops.
The Bilibino Nuclear Power Plant is a power plant in Bilibino, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Russia. The plant is equipped with four EGP-6 reactors. The plant is the smallest and the second northernmost operating nuclear power plant in the world. Plans to begin a shutdown procedure of the plant in 2019 have been announced, and it will be replaced by the floating nuclear power station Akademik Lomonosov.
Akademik Lomonosov is a non-self-propelled power barge that operates as the first Russian floating nuclear power station. The ship was named after academician Mikhail Lomonosov. It is docked in the Pevek harbour, providing heat to the town and supplying electricity to the regional Chaun-Bilibino power system. It is the world’s northernmost nuclear power plant.
NuScale Power Corporation is a publicly traded American company that designs and markets small modular reactors (SMRs). It is headquartered in Portland, Oregon. A 50 MWe version of the design was certified by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in January 2023. The current scalable 77 MWe SMR VOYGR design was submitted for NRC review on January 1, 2023, and as of December 2023 was about a third complete.
Small modular reactors (SMRs) are a class of small nuclear fission reactors, designed to be built in a factory, shipped to operational sites for installation and then used to power buildings or other commercial operations. The term SMR refers to the size, capacity and modular construction. Reactor type and the nuclear processes may vary. Of the many SMR designs, the pressurized water reactor (PWR) is the most common. However, recently proposed SMR designs include: generation IV, thermal-neutron reactors, fast-neutron reactors, molten salt, and gas-cooled reactor models. Commercial SMRs have been designed to deliver an electrical power output as low as 5 MWe (electric) and up to 300 MWe per module. SMRs may also be designed purely for desalinization or facility heating rather than electricity. These SMRs are measured in megawatts thermal MWt. Many SMR designs rely on a modular system, allowing customers to simply add modules to achieve a desired electrical output.
A powership is a special purpose ship, on which a power plant is installed to serve as a power generation resource.
The EGP-6 is a Russian small nuclear reactor design. It is a scaled down version of the RBMK design. As the RBMK, the EGP-6 uses water for cooling and graphite as a neutron moderator. EGP is a Russian acronym but translated into English it stands for Power Heterogenous Loop reactor. It is the world's smallest running commercial nuclear reactor, however smaller reactors are currently in development. The EGP-6 reactors are the only reactors to be built on permafrost.
OKBM Afrikantov is a nuclear engineering company located in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. It is a subsidiary of Rosatom. The company is named after Igor Afrikantov.
The Thorcon nuclear reactor is a design of a molten salt reactor with a graphite moderator, proposed by the US-based Thorcon company. These nuclear reactors are designed as part of a floating power plant, to be manufactured on an assembly line in a shipyard, and to be delivered via barge to any ocean or major waterway shoreline, similar to the US's MH-1A from 1968 and the Russian Akademik Lomonosov operating since 2020. The reactors are to be delivered as a sealed unit and never opened on site. All reactor maintenance and fuel processing is done at an off-site location. As of 2022, no reactor of this type has been built. A prototype of 500 MW (TMSR-500) output should be activated in Indonesia by 2029.
A nuclear microreactor is a plug-and-play type of nuclear reactor which can be easily assembled and transported by road, rail or air. Microreactors are 100 to 1,000 times smaller than conventional nuclear reactors, and range in capacity from 1 to 20 megawatts, compared to 20 to 300 megawatts for small modular reactors (SMRs). Due to their size, they can be deployed to locations such as isolated military bases or communities affected by natural disasters. It can operate as part of the grid, independent of the grid, or as part of a small grid for electricity generation and heat treatment. They are designed to provide resilient, non-carbon emitting, and independent power in challenging environments. The nuclear fuel source for the majority of the designs is "High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium", or HALEU.
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