Russian, Chinese Companies Sign Memorandum to Build Floating Nuclear Plants

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RIA Novosti, PUBLISHED 30.07.2014

Rusatom Overseas, a subsidiary of Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom, said in a statement Tuesday it had signed a memorandum on a project to build floating nuclear power plants with China’s CNNC New Energy.

“Floating power plants have a significant appliance potential. A floating NPP comes in two forms, a floating and a fixed one. A plant like this can be either plugged into the shore-based electrical grid or moored close to a power consumer,” Rusatom CEO Dzhomart Aliev said in the statement.

The memorandum was signed by Dzhomart Aliev and CNNC New Energy President Tianlin Qian. The companies are now going to set up a Russian-Chinese working group will to continue their work on the project, according to the official announcement.

The chief of Rusatom Overseas stressed that floating power plants offered an efficient solution to many energy problems in hard-to-reach places, including beyond the Arctic Circle, as well as to all sorts of offshore facilities, such as offshore oil rigs.

This comes after Russian and Chinese officials signed a major memorandum of understanding in March 2014 that laid groundwork for future energy cooperation between the two neighbor nations.

Rosatom’s CEO Sergei Kiriyenko told journalists earlier this year his company viewed the Asia-Pacific market as a priority for the Russian nuclear industry. Russia has started collaborating with the world’s IT giant IBM to improve software and technology at new nuclear plants, and continued looking towards Asia for more joint projects.

Topics: Floating NPP, Russia, China

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