'Chernobyl on Ice' makes maiden voyage into the Arctic
The world's first floating nuclear reactor power station, the Akademik Lomonosov, has set sail on its maiden voyage from the port of Murmansk, in northern Russia. The vessel is to bring energy to settlements and companies involved in the extraction of precious stones and hydrocarbons in the town of Pevek, in the Chukotka region, in the country's far northeast.
The vessel, painted in the red, white and blue of the Russian flag, is named after the 16th-century Russian polymath, writer and scientist Mikhail Lomonosov whose most notable discoveries include the composition of the atmosphere of Venus and the law of conversion of mass in chemical reactions. The crew will comprise of around 70 people and the project's estimated cost is around 30-billion rubles (€440-million).
Dubbed by critics as 'Chernobyl on Ice' and 'Floating Chernobyl', the 144 metre (472 feet) floating nuclear barge began its 5,000 km (3,106 miles) journey along the Arctic coast last Friday. Equipped with two nuclear reactors that are designed to generate energy for as many as 100,000 people in the region, the vessel will begin producing electricity and pumping it onshore shortly upon arrival following its 2-3 week journey.
The remote Chukotka region is home to around 2 million people living in small towns and villages that are often only accessible by plane or ship, weather depending. Despite its isolation, the area accounts for up to 20% of Russia's GDP due to its abundance of natural resources. As hydrocarbons in Western Siberia have begun to wane, Russia has begun a push into the Arctic and the Akademik Lomonosov is an important part of that push.
The Arctic region is also of huge geostrategic importance. It is estimated that the region may have as much as 13% of the world's oil reserves and 30% of the natural gas, as well as a host of other rare earth minerals. As Arctic ice melts, the region is becoming more accessible and Russia is looking to exploit the previously unreachable resources just off its 24,000 km (15,000 miles) Arctic coastline.
The project has been heavily criticised by environmentalists, who argue that a massive wave could lead to meltdowns and have an enormously detrimental effect in an otherwise relatively untouched region.
Rashid Alimov, the head of Greenpeace Russia's energy sector said that the project will be at risk in harsh weather. “Any nuclear power plant produces radioactive waste and can have an accident. Akademik Lomonosov is additionally vulnerable to storms,” he said.
The fears of a nuclear accident have only been exacerbated by the fire in July on the Losharik, a nuclear submarine in the Arctic Barents Sea, which took the lives of 14 high-ranking Russian naval officers. At the officers' funeral, a leading naval commander said that they had averted a "planetary catastrophe".
Earlier this month, there was an incident just outside the northern Russian town of Nyonoksa, in which seven people, including five nuclear scientists, were killed. Radiation in the area was 16 times higher than average. It is believed that the cause of the accident was a nuclear-powered missile test that went wrong.
Following both incidents, there was an attempted cover-up by Moscow.
Authorities in Russia, however, say that the claims made by critics about the dangers posed by the Akademik Lomonosov are baseless and that the threat of a nuclear disaster is massively reduced due to the underwater location of the reactor's active zone.
Rosatom, the company behind the Akademik Lomonosov, says that the "Chernobyl on Ice" nickname is inappropriate.
"It's totally not justified to compare these two projects," the Lomonosov's chief engineer for environmental protection, Vladimir Iriminku, told CNN. "These are baseless claims, just the way the reactors themselves operate work is different."
Akademik Lomonosov deputy director Dmitry Alekseenko said that the barge's operators had learned from the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011.
"This rig can't be torn out of moorings, even with a 9-point tsunami, and we've even considered that if it does go inland, there is a backup system that can keep the reactor cooling for 24 hours without an electricity supply," he said.
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