At an estimated construction cost of 180 million US dollars, and an average pay-off period of eight years, the floating power plant is designed to produce 70 megawatts of electricity (and 140 GCal of thermal energy) – sufficient to supply a population of 50 000.

Mr Asmolov said: “The issue of providing India, on leasing terms, with small nuclear power plants based on floating platforms, and which could be used for electricity or potable-water production, is being discussed,” adding, such cooperation “doesn’t contravene nucleartechnology transfer limitations on the international level”.
Mr Asmolov was in India to attend a session of the Kundankulam nuclear power plant’s Russian-Indian coordinating committee and to discuss cooperation on other possible nuclearenergy projects. He also visited the Kundankulam site, and reported that construction is on schedule – with unit-1 to be commissioned in 2007 and unit-2 in 2008. The Indians also expressed interest in expanding the scale of their partnership with Russia at Kundankulam – and the possibility of increasing the number of units from two to four or even six [see also Business News No. 11.2, 20th February 2003].
Minatom said that in general “the countries of Southeast Asia show great interest” in the floating NPP project. Such a plant, it said, “could be transported via the northern sea route to Indonesia, for example” and be returned the same way once the contract expires. Russia has been discussing the idea of exporting floating nuclear plants for several years, including with China as recently as last September [see News No. 420, 9th November 1998 and News No. 277, 23rd September 2003].
Source: Rosenergoatom / Nuclear Society of Russia (NSR)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------