Securing the radiological safety of people and the environment at all stages of the life cycle of floating nuclear heat-and-power plants

Abstract

A floating nuclear heat-and-power plant utilizes atomic energy to supply heat and electricity in remote coastal territories. The danger for people and the environment together with cost-effectiveness will be the decisive factors in choosing such a plant as a source of energy. Validation is given for the need to develop the concept of human and environmental safety security for future, serially produced, floating nuclear heatand-power plants.A floating nuclear heat-and-power plant is an object utilizing atomic energy for the purpose of supplying electricity and heat in remote coastal territories. The basic question here is how to supply electricity and heat to enterprises and settlements in regions of the Far North that are not serviced by the unified power system and require autonomous sources of energy.The closest analogues of such a plant are icebreakers with an onboard nuclear-power facility which have been operating in the Arctic Ocean for decades. They operate at considerable distances from densely populated areas. Prolonged stopovers and technical servicing, including refueling and repairs, occur on a territory with a specialized enterprise under conditions where workers and the population are protected during normal operation and anticipated accidents by the design of the nuclear power facility and in the case of unanticipated accidents by a coastal infrastructure. The proximity of the proposed sites for floating nuclear heat-and-power plants to densely populated areas and their simultaneous separation from the domestic infrastructure and centers of emergency and technical support make it less likely that the response to an accident will be quick and adequate and place restrictions on the operating regime. These limitations and the technical solutions which they engender comprise a concept for securing radiological safety for people and the environment at all stages of the life cycle of floating nuclear heat-and-power plants. The present article analyzes the prerequisites for securing radiological safety for workers, the public, and the environment during plant operation that comprise the basis for this concept.General Description of a Floating Nuclear Heat-and-Power Plant. The economics, safety, and construction of floating nuclear heat-and-power plants were discussed at a conference in Nizhnii Novgorod in 2008. Attention was centered on the first domestic floating plant Akademik Lomonosov, which is under construction, and the prospects for the development of this direction of low-capacity nuclear power. Successful development requires the plants to be competitive, which