Sceptics call it a “floating Chernobyl”: a floating nuclear power plant designed to supply electricity to oil platforms. A major threat to the entire Arctic ecosystem.
As if the nuclear incident that occurred last week at a Russian military base were not enough of a threat to the Arctic, a floating nuclear power plant has also entered the picture. It is called the Akademik Lomonosov, a floating nuclear facility built by the Russians. The plant comprises two KLT-40 reactors, with a combined output of 70 megawatts. It is the second floating nuclear power plant ever built in the world, after the American Sturgis installation.
The vessel is leaving today from Murmansk bound for Pevek (north-east Russia), and will be towed 5,000 kilometres to the Arctic, where it will enter service off the coast of Chukotka, in eastern Siberia, to supply power to a port town of 5,000 inhabitants and to the oil platforms in the area.
The vessel had set sail from the St Petersburg shipyard in 2018 and was towed to Murmansk, a seaport on the Kola Bay 32 km from the Barents Sea, where the two reactors were loaded with radioactive material.
The Akademik Lomonosov is 144.4 metres long, 30 metres wide and has a displacement of 21,500 tonnes. It houses two naval nuclear reactors, KLT-40 pressurised water reactors capable of supplying 70 MW of electricity or 200 MW of heat. An output comparable to that of a wind farm, but with an immeasurably greater environmental risk. The two reactors were built by Rosatom, the Russian state-owned nuclear energy company.
A nuclear power plant in the Arctic to supply electricity to oil platforms is about the worst thing one could imagine. Yet this is no science fiction film — it is reality. An extremely high risk for an ecosystem, such as that of the Arctic, already gravely threatened and thrown into crisis by climate change. For Norwegian environmentalists and Greenpeace, the project is dangerous and far too costly, so much so that they have nicknamed the plant the "floating Chernobyl."
Dale Klein, the former head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission under President George W. Bush, in an interview with The Verge, described the nickname as an "intimidation tactic." Nevertheless, Klein acknowledged that if anything were to go wrong, the Lomonosov disaster could be catastrophic, to the extent that one would need to "make sure this never happens."
On 8 August, a nuclear incident occurred at the Russian military base of Nenoksa, on the coast of the Barents Sea, approximately 500 kilometres from the border with Finland. The incident was caused by the explosion of a liquid-propellant jet engine of a missile, while military personnel were testing the isotopic power source of the brand-new 9M730 Burevestnik cruise missile, which NATO calls the SSC-X-9 Skyfall.
The Burevestnik is a missile that the Americans greatly fear. For some time, the world's major powers have been trying to surpass the technology that powers surface-to-air missiles, which still run on fuel, making them slow and inevitably predictable. A nuclear-powered engine, by contrast, would represent a complete overhaul of missile technology.
Reliable information about the incident is scarce because, as happened in the days of Chernobyl, the information available is minimal and fragmentary. It is known that on Monday the funerals were held for five researchers who had been working on the missile engine, but the declared death toll stands at seven, with no information available on two of the victims. There are also 15 injured currently hospitalised in Moscow.
Contradictory, too, are the reports of a supposed evacuation of Nenoksa, which was said to have been scheduled for Wednesday but apparently did not take place.