Construction of worker camps and a new road to the site is under way in Yakutia (Russian Republic of Sakha) for the small modular reactor (SMR) project, with nuclear utility Rosenergoatom officially designated as the operating organisation by parent company Rosatom.
The low-capacity NPP (ASMM – Atomnoi Stantsii Maloi Moshnosti) is a water-cooled RITM-200N 55 MWe reactor that has been adapted from the RITM-200 series used to power Russia’s latest fleet of nuclear-powered icebreakers. It will be built near Ust-Kuyga in Yakutia with commissioning scheduled for 2028. Compared with traditional power plants, the Yakutia ASMM will be much more compact, thus enabling a shorter construction time.
Nuclear regulator Rostekhnadzor granted the construction licence in April 2023. In an update on progress Rosatom said “preparatory work … is proceeding at full tilt: the building of the first construction camp for 250 persons has been completed; the first stage of construction for a second camp for 683 persons has started and is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2024”. Construction of a new 12 kilometre stretch of road linking Ust-Kuyga and the SMR site has started.
Some 9,500 tonnes of cargo is scheduled to be delivered in the next few months during the period of the temporary winter road operation. Extraction of local materials (macrofragmental soil and rubble in Pridorozhny open quarry) has been started. Besides, erection of several production and technical infrastructure and construction base facilities, grading and levelling at the construction site, the start of ASMM construction and installation are also planned for the current year.
Russia’s Arctic zone lacks electricity. However, the development of the region is designated a strategic national priority but development is impossible without local power generation. As construction of large power plants is not economically feasible, Rosatom decided to use small-scale generation projects in these regions.
The floating NPP, Akademik Lomonosov, which has been operating in Pevek, Chukotka since 2020 is already supplying power to replace output from the ageing Bilibino NPP and for the Baimskaya ore zone development projects.
Rosatom and the Government of the Republic of Sakha concluded an agreement in 2019 for the ASMM project to supply electricity for development of the Kyuchus gold deposit and other mineral deposits in Yakutia. Rostechnadzor issued the relevant licence in April 2023 public hearings have been held in Ust-Kuyga on the preliminary environmental impact assessment materials for the ASMM construction.
The Yakutia development is Rosatom’s flagship project for its land-based SMR plans. Rosenergoatom acts as the technical customer and operating organisation; Rusatom Overseas JSC is the developer; OKBM Afrikantov State Specialised Design Institute and other organisations are co-contractors. Rosatom is planning other low-capacity projects and estimates the global market for ASMMs with the capacity of 50-300 MWe to be 10 GWe, and for plants with a capacity of up to 10 MWe to be 6 GWe. Rosatom aims to occupy up to 20% of this market by 2030.
