Russian State Expert Examination Board (Glavgosexpertiza) has announced that the floating nuclear power plant  meets construction standards. The authority said on 9 December it had approved the project in Russia’s northernmost city of Pevek that is being funded by Rosenergoatom, the nuclear power plant operator subsidiary of Rosatom.  Currently moored at the Baltiysky Zavod shipyard in Saint Petersburg, Akademik Lomonosov houses two 35 MW KLT-40S nuclear reactors, similar to those used in Russia’s nuclear-powered ice breakers…

The plant is intended to replace the outgoing capacity of the Bilibino nuclear power plant in the Chukotka district. The first Bilibino unit is scheduled to be shut down in 2019 and the whole plant will be shut down in 2021.

Excerpts from First Floating Nuclear Power Plant Akademik Lomonosov, Nuclear News, Jan. 11, 2018

Environmental groups like Bellona are not convineced that the plant is safe.  According to Bellona,   in August 2017, Rosatom responded to pressure from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to delay fueling the plant with its uranium fuel until it had cleared its coast…It has now apparently been settled that the Akademik Lomonosov will be loaded at Atomflot, Russia’s nuclear icebreaker in Murmansk, by fuel that will arrive separately…The overall cost for the Academic Lomonosov, both the plant and infrastructure for its Far Eastern port, are expected to top $530 million – which is almost four times as expensive as it was projected to be in 2006.  In the end, that may weigh in on the cheap side. The costs of decommissioning the vessel have not yet been weighed, nor have the costs of cleaning up a nuclear accident on a stretch of land as remote as the Kamchatka Peninsula.

Excerpts from Bellona.org