China’s Wilson Heavy Industry shipyard held a keel-laying ceremony in August for the first of four barges that’ll eventually employ not one but two nuclear reactors. Once completed, the barge will become Russia’s second floating nuclear power plant.
The first, the Akademic Lomonosov, was commissioned in 2020 and was the world’s first floating nuclear power plant since the 1960s. It’s also currently the only floating atomic reactor and a key component in Russia’s plan to open a significant shipping lane through the Arctic.
But a shipping lane is only the beginning of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s plan for floating nuclear power plants. Last year, Rosatom, a Russian state nuclear energy corporation, presented Putin with a reported $2.3 billion proposal to build up to five floating nuclear reactors….