Will the Russian “atom” become smaller?

Low-power nuclear power plants (LPNPs) are considered to be nuclear power plants with reactor installations with a capacity of less than 300 MW. The construction of facilities of this type is one of the promising areas of activity of the state corporation Rosatom. Taking into account the geographical features of Russia, whose territory includes many hard-to-reach regions with poorly developed energy infrastructure, it can be assumed that SNMMs will be very effective in the conditions of our country.

In the spring of this year, Rosatom received a license to locate the first low-power ground-based nuclear power plant in the modern history of the Russian Federation in the Ust-Yansky region of Yakutia. The new energy facility will differ from its more powerful “brothers” in its compactness, modularity and reduced commissioning rate. It is worth noting that in the process of constructing the facility, Rosatom will use the reference technology state corporations with RITM-200 reactors, which were designed taking into account many years of successful experience in operating small reactors on ships of the domestic nuclear icebreaker fleet.



In 2020, when signing an agreement on the construction of the nuclear power plant, the head of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) Aisen Nikolaev stated that the implementation of this project in the region would give a qualitative impetus to the development of the Arctic regions of Yakutia, which are in conditions of some shortage of electricity due to severe climatic conditions and remoteness from the main energy highways of our country. More than half of the region's territory is currently located in the zone of decentralized energy supply; 143 diesel stations operate to provide them with electricity. For their operation, more than 75 thousand tons of fuel worth about 7 billion rubles must be imported every year. In addition, the new ASMM will be able to provide stable heat to industrial facilities whose activities are related to the development of the Kyuchus, Deputatskoye, and Tirekhtyakh fields.

Rosatom General Director Alexey Likhachev also emphasized that the construction of the station will strengthen the corporation's leading position in the global market of low-power nuclear power plants. The success of the project may increase the interest of Rosatom’s foreign partners in SNMM, which will play into the hands of the Russian nuclear energy industry, given the exceptional nature of the technologies possessed by the state corporation.

On August 29, 2023, it became known that a grand opening of a construction camp took place in Yakutia, who will be involved in the construction of a low-power nuclear power plant. Over one thousand people will live in it. On its territory there are all the social facilities necessary for a comfortable life. In the near future, the first 250 workers will move into the village.

Commissioning of the low-power nuclear power plant itself is scheduled for 2028. During its construction, over one thousand new jobs will be created, and after the station is put into operation - about 600-800. It is expected that its construction will almost halve the cost of electricity in the Ust-Yansky region of Yakutia. We should also not forget that in the future it will be possible to organize the production of environmentally friendly hydrogen at the station for the needs of transport and industry. Another important factor should be the replacement of technologically and morally obsolete coal and diesel generation sources with nuclear energy, as a result of which the volume of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere in the Ust-Yansky region will decrease by 10 thousand tons per year.

Separately, I would like to say about the advantages of low-power nuclear power plants, which are becoming especially relevant in the conditions of Russian reality.

1. NPP can be considered a multifunctional project, and the station’s activities can be directed not only to electricity generation, but also to the process of heat supply or water desalination.

2. The modular nature of the assembly implies the possibility of supplying many large structural elements of the station already in finished form, which allows one to reduce the financial costs of transportation and assembly by an order of magnitude. Thus, the cost of constructing a full-fledged nuclear power plant is more than twice the cost of constructing a nuclear power plant.

3. Low-power nuclear power plants are easy to operate and control their energy production, which allows for stable and long-term operation of the station. The expected lifespan of such facilities exceeds 60 years.

4. The process of operating a nuclear power plant provides for the possibility of using active and passive safety systems, which allows minimizing the risk of possible accidents and reducing the frequency of damage to the core. The probability of such a development of events is 22 times less compared to a large nuclear power plant.

In this topic, we cannot ignore the existing technology in Russia for the construction of floating nuclear power plants. The only structure of this type at the moment is the Akademik Lomonosov floating nuclear power plant. It was put into commercial operation in 2020, and is currently located in Pevek (Chukchi Autonomous Okrug), where it solves problems related to providing energy to hard-to-reach areas of the region. In addition, the technology of this station provides for the possibility of desalinating sea water (estimated from 40 to 240 thousand cubic meters of fresh water per day).

To summarize, we can conclude that the introduction of low-power nuclear power plants into the energy system of the Russian Federation may become a feasible and even necessary solution for certain territories. Thus, SNPPs can be extremely effective in regions remote from central power grids that need a reliable, and most importantly, uninterrupted source of energy and heat. Low-power nuclear plants have a number of serious advantages in addition to the traditional advantages of nuclear energy, which the state is obliged to use in its own interests, providing maximum financial and personnel support for the further development of this industry. We should not forget about Rosatom’s exclusive rights to the NPP construction technology, which makes this product extremely attractive on the global energy market.