“Demand will only increase”: the head of Rosatom talks about the export potential of small nuclear power plants and the company’s projects in the Arctic

— Rosatom Week at Expo 2020

— I would like to start by thanking the government and the hospitable people of the United Arab Emirates.

This is not the first time we are deploying our projects here: it is very comfortable to work in the UAE, we feel at home.

And of course, we see great interest in the Russian exhibition and nuclear technologies.

The discussion that took place within the framework of the "atomic week" showed that nuclear energy is part of the answer to the global challenges facing humanity today.

We are by no means trying to present it as the only alternative or achieve its monopoly in the energy sector of certain countries and regions.

Nuclear solutions are only part of the energy transition, but it is an integral, necessary part of the modern global agenda.

First of all, we are talking about reducing the greenhouse effect, the carbon footprint.

All nuclear power plants operating in the world in total save about 2 billion tons of CO2 emissions per year.

For understanding: all the forests of the planet annually absorb a little more than 2.5 billion tons of CO2.

That is, nuclear energy can be called a kind of additional “lung” of the planet, comparable in its benefits to the forests of the entire globe.

Similar calculations can be made for individual countries.

Unfortunately, Germany, when withdrawing its nuclear power from circulation, has sharply increased CO2 emissions.

According to this indicator, Germany is now significantly behind France, in which more than 70% of electricity is traditionally generated at nuclear power plants.

Comparing the policies of these two countries, we can say for sure that nuclear generation is one of the effective solutions to the problem of greenhouse gas emissions.

In addition, nuclear technologies allow solving other issues of sustainable development.

First, nuclear power plants are energy sources with a very long life cycle.

The estimated service life of our modern unit is 60 years, with the possibility of a two-fold extension up to 100 years.

This means that you can predict the amount of electricity generated for an entire region for almost 100 years.

And in accordance with these forecasts, plan the development of the social sphere, industrial infrastructure, and so on.

It is a very sustainable source of energy that is not affected by the weather and other natural phenomena.

• Baraka Nuclear Power Plant in the UAE

• AP

• © WAM

Of course, the development of nuclear energy requires serious capital investments.

However, given the lifetime of nuclear power plants, nuclear power is quite inexpensive.

Investments are returned quite quickly due to stable supplies of electricity, and the share of the cost of fuel in the total price of nuclear generation is extremely low - a few percent.

This means that even huge jumps in uranium prices will not affect the final price of electricity.

Of course, the situation is completely different with fossil fuels and hydrocarbons.

In addition, nuclear energy can serve as an impetus for the development of society, education, culture, production, and new technologies.

Where new nuclear competencies are created, the gross domestic product increases, the number of educated people grows, and many international projects arise.

The UAE is an example of one of the most successful projects in this area: two units of the new nuclear power plant are already connected to the grid, two more are almost ready for commissioning.

Rosatom is participating in this project, we are supplying a uranium product, and we are also negotiating with the United Arab Emirates Atomic Energy Corporation (ENEC) to expand this cooperation. 

— There

is a lot of interest in the

- Three years

ago, the President of the Russian Federation made a very serious and very wise decision: Rosatom was entrusted with the function of a single infrastructure operator of the Northern Sea Route.

And we have been implementing it since 2019.

This includes icebreaking assistance, the construction of new icebreakers, the deepening and improvement of shipping channels, and the creation of port infrastructure.

• Fragment of an interview with RT of the head of Rosatom Alexei Likhachev

As you know, using the Northern Sea Route saves up to two weeks of travel from Southeast Asia to the European market.

Consequently, the investment in the operation of ships is saved, as well as their CO2 emissions into the atmosphere are reduced.

Not to mention that the nuclear icebreakers we use don't produce emissions at all.

Now we are expanding the range of our icebreakers, building new, most advanced, most powerful ships.

We treat the Arctic zone and its nature very carefully.

And of course, we offer special solutions in terms of the energy supply of the region.

So, in the city of Pevek in Chukotka, a floating nuclear power plant is already operating.

We are making four more such floating units for the Baimskoye mining deposit, which is also located in Chukotka.

We will provide electricity to the gold deposit in Yakutia at the expense of a mobile nuclear power plant.

A number of other technical solutions, including those in the Murmansk Region and on the Kola Peninsula, are being implemented using nuclear technologies.

The use of technologies with zero, with minimal CO2 emissions, saving the Arctic is the number one task in the implementation of the projects of the Northern Sea Route.

We are very pleased that one of the reputable companies in the UAE, DP World, is involved in this project with us.

We very much hope to carry out with our colleagues a large project to organize container transit through the Northern Sea Route.

This will not only reduce the load on the already operating sea routes, but will also save money for all participants in freight traffic and, accordingly, consumers.

• Beloyarsk NPP

• Flickr

• © Rosatom State Corporation

“There is also worldwide interest in small modular reactors capable of producing low-carbon electricity.

Could you tell us about the future of this technology and where it can be used?

- Small nuclear reactors are one of the main achievements of the first Soviet Union, and now the Russian Federation.

It was in the USSR that the first industrial nuclear power plant was created, as well as the first nuclear icebreaker.

It is on icebreakers that the very small reactors you are talking about are used.

We have vast experience in their use, since the middle of the last century.

Today, permanently operating icebreakers - workhorses - use low-power nuclear engines.

The icebreakers of the new line, which are replacing them, are equipped with the RITM-200 nuclear reactor with a capacity of 60 MW.

And the large icebreaker “Leader” currently under construction, the most powerful in the history of mankind, will have a small reactor “RITM-400”.

This is a modernized development of Rosatom.

We also made an experimental model - a floating nuclear power plant "Akademik Lomonosov", with two units of 35 MW each.

It can be adjusted to the coastline, power the network - and provide electricity without creating infrastructure on land. 

Based on this decision, a new line of floating power unit with more powerful, 60-megawatt reactors has already been obtained.

There is a similar solution in the ground, stationary configuration.

Companies involved in the development of deposits in remote northern regions, in Yakutia, in Chukotka, need large amounts of electricity.

A few years ago, two investors - the Baimsky Mining and Processing Plant and the Kyuchus gold deposit - held a competition among electricity suppliers.

And although Russia is well endowed with oil, gas, and hydro resources, both investors chose small nuclear power plants as the source of energy for their projects.

Great interest in such stations is also observed abroad.

In particular, our partners from the UAE Atomic Energy Corporation asked us questions about the parameters of these stations, about the conditions under which we can make such deliveries.

We discussed everything and decided to create a joint working group to study the possibility of using small nuclear power plants in the UAE.

• Nuclear-powered icebreaker of project 22220 "Siberia"

• RIA News

• © Pavel Lvov

Interest is also shown by countries where there are no large transmission networks, where for some reason it is not possible to quickly transmit electricity. In this case, it is possible to place not one large nuclear unit, but several small ones in order to distribute them throughout the country. There is an interest in such projects among countries with a large coastline, states consisting of islands, such as the Philippines. In this case, it is possible to build floating nuclear power plants that will circulate between the islands and provide them with nuclear electricity. We now have a whole line of such stations with a capacity of 8-10 to 300 MW, they also vary in type of placement.

I think that the demand for small nuclear power plants will only increase.

They have already proven themselves very well, primarily in the propulsion systems of nuclear icebreakers.

But we continue to work on them, constantly improving their quality.