The nuclear power plant of the future may be floating near Russia

MURMANSK, Russia (NYTIMES) - Along the shore of Kola Bay in the far northwest of Russia lie bases for the country's nuclear submarines and icebreakers. Low, rocky hills descend to an industrial waterfront of docks, cranes and railway tracks. Out on the bay, submarines have for decades stalked the azure waters, travelling between their port and the ocean depths.

Here, Russia is conducting an experiment with nuclear power, one that backers say is a leading-edge feat of engineering but critics call reckless.

The country is unveiling a floating nuclear power plant.

Tied to a wharf in the city of Murmansk, the Akademik Lomonosov rocks gently in the waves. The buoyant facility, made of two miniature reactors of a type used previously on submarines, is for now the only one of its kind.

Moscow, while leading the trend, is far from alone in seeing potential in floating nuclear plants.

Two state-backed companies in China are building such facilities, and US scientists have drawn up plans of their own.

Proponents say they are cheaper, greener and, perhaps counterintuitively, safer. They envision a future when nuclear power stations bob off the coasts of major cities around the world.

"They are light-years ahead of us," Jacopo Buongiorno, a professor of nuclear engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said of the Russian floating power program.

Rosatom, the Russian state nuclear company, has exported nuclear technology for years, selling plants in China, India and a host of developing nations.

But smaller reactors effectively placed on floats can be assembled more quickly, be put in a wider range of locations and respond more nimbly to fluctuating supply on power grids that increasingly rely on wind and solar.

The Russian design involves using submarine-style reactors loaded onto vessels, with a hatch near the bow to plug them into local electrical grids. The reactors will generate a combined 70 megawatts of electricity, or enough to power about 70,000 typical American homes.

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