KIEV, April 12. /TASS/. The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), which suffered the worst disaster in the history of the nuclear power industry in 1986, has opened for tourists. According to the NPP’s press service, apart from the industrial area where most facilities are located, including the Shelter Object covering the disaster-hit fourth reactor, tourists will also be able to take a tour of the previously inaccessible interior premises, particularly the third reactor’s control room.

Applications can be filed through the official website of the Chernobyl NPP. A basic package tour costing 2,700 hryvnias (around $100), includes a brief instruction, a guide’s services, a meal at the nuclear plant’s canteen and personal protective equipment. According to the guidelines, tourists must be 18 or over to qualify to visit the facility.

After the tour of the nuclear plant, visitors will be tested for radiation and get a certificate for the radiation dose they were exposed to.

The nuclear plant’s management does not rule out that the area open for tourists may be expanded in the future, in addition the duration of tours may increase to two or three days.

Chernobyl disaster

The disaster at the fourth reactor of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant occurred in the small hours of April 26, 1986. More than 200,000 square kilometers of land, first and foremost, in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, became contaminated.

Around 115,000 people were evacuated from the 30-kilometer-wide affected zone.

The subsequent clean-up operation involved more than 600,000 people, about ten percent of whom died, and 165,000 became disabled.

Thanks to the dedicated work of the disaster’s responders coming from all over the Soviet Union, a concrete structure covering the nuclear reactor No. 4 was installed - known as the Shelter Object - in November 1986.

In November 2016, an international consortium installed a new arch-shaped confinement. </s> A controversial mobile nuclear power plant, nicknamed the "floating Chernobyl", has just set sail from St. Petersburg and is making its way through the Baltic Sea.

It will be towed through Estonian, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian waters before landing in the small town of Murmansk in Russia, where it will be loaded up with nuclear fuel.

Akademik Lomonosov, as it's officially called, has two reactors and was intended to be loaded up and tested on St. Petersburg itself. However, it was moved to Mermansk after pressure from Green Peace Russia and other Baltic states. From Mermansk, the barge will travel east toward the Arctic before it settles on the coast of Chukotka and put into service in 2019. Here it will power a desalination plant, oil rig and a port town.

READ NEXT: What is nuclear energy?

The floating power plant is predicted to generate enough energy to power a town of 100,000 people, but as it embarks on its long journey, there are a fair few things that could go very wrong. For one, it doesn't have its own propeller’s, so needs to be towed to its destination. As Green Peace's Jan Haverkamp said in a statement: "The floating nuclear power plants will typically be put to use near coastlines and shallow water contrary to claims regarding safety, the flat-bottomed hull and the floating nuclear power plant's lack of self-propulsion makes it particularly vulnerable to tsunamis and cyclones."

READ NEXT: Explore Chernobyl before the meltdown in this VR experience

While state-controlled nuclear energy firm and owner of the Lomonosov, Rosatom, told the Independent that it is designed with a "great margin of safety," when you consider Russia doesn’t have the strongest track record when it comes to nuclear, it's hard not to be nervous about a "floating Chernobyl". The most disastrous nuclear accident, the Chernobyl explosion caused radioactive waste to spread over numerous countries and made parts of Ukraine completely uninhabitable.

With Russia already planning to launch a second floating power plant in 2019, and many other countries like China, Algeria, Malaysia and Argentina, reportedly in talks to hire one, we could soon see our waters populated with radioactive power plants.

Image: Shutterstock </s> Sign up for one of our email newsletters.

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — A floating nuclear power plant built in Russia has embarked on its first sea voyage so its reactors can be loaded with fuel.

The floating plant, the Akademik Lomonosov, was towed on Saturday out of the St. Petersburg shipyard where it was constructed.

It is to be pulled through the Baltic Sea and around the northern tip of Norway to Murmansk in northwest Russia, where the nuclear reactors are to be fueled.

The Lomonosov is to be put into service in 2019 in the Arctic off the coast of Chukotka in the far east, providing power for a port town and for oil rigs.

The project has been widely criticized by environmentalists. Greenpeace has dubbed it a “floating Chernobyl.” </s> ST. PETERSBURG, Russia -- A floating nuclear power plant built in Russia has embarked on its first sea voyage so its reactors can be loaded with fuel. The floating plant, the Akademik Lomonosov, was towed on Saturday out of the St. Petersburg shipyard where it was constructed. It is to be pulled through the Baltic Sea and around the northern tip of Norway to Murmansk in northwest Russia, where the nuclear reactors are to be fueled.

The Lomonosov is to be put into service in 2019 in the Arctic off the coast of Chukotka in the far east, providing power for a port town and for oil rigs.

The project has been widely criticized by environmentalists. Greenpeace has dubbed it a "floating Chernobyl."

"To test a nuclear reactor in a densely populated area like the centre of St. Petersburg is irresponsible to say the least," Jan Haverkamp, a nuclear expert at Greenpeace, said in a statement.

Haverkamp added: "However, moving the testing of this 'nuclear Titanic' away from the public eye will not make it less so: Nuclear reactors bobbing around the Arctic Ocean will pose a shockingly obvious threat to a fragile environment which is already under enormous pressure from climate change." </s> Russia Launches Floating Nuclear Power Plant; It's Headed To The Arctic

A massive floating nuclear power plant is now making its way toward its final destination at an Arctic port, after Russia's state nuclear corporation Rosatom launched the controversial craft over the weekend. It's the first nuclear power plant of its kind, Russian officials say.

Called the Akademik Lomonosov, the floating power plant is being towed at a creeping pace out of St. Petersburg, where it was built over the last nine years. It will eventually be brought northward, to Murmansk – where its two nuclear reactors will be loaded with nuclear fuel and started up this fall.

From there, the power plant will be pulled to a mooring berth in the Arctic port of Pevek, in far northeast Russia. There, it will be wired into the infrastructure so it can replace an existing nuclear power installment on land.

Critics of the plan include Greenpeace, which recently warned of a "Chernobyl on ice" if Russia's plans to create a fleet of floating nuclear power stations result in a catastrophe.

Russian officials say the mandate of the Akademik Lomonoso is to supply energy to remote industrial plants and port cities, and to offshore gas and oil platforms.

"The nuclear power plant has two KLT-40S reactor units that can generate up to 70 MW of electric energy and 50 Gcal/hr of heat energy during its normal operation," Rosatom said. "This is enough to keep the activity of the town populated with 100,000 people."

It will take more than a year for the power plant to reach its new home port. The original plan had called for fueling the floating plant before it began that journey, at the shipyard in central St. Petersburg – but that was scuttled last summer, after concerns were raised both in Russia and in countries along the power plant's route through the Baltic Sea and north to the Arctic.

Greenpeace in Russia, for instance, said it collected more than 11,000 signatures against the plan to put nuclear fuel into the plant while it floated along St. Petersburg's shores.

When Rosatom announced its change of plans last summer, Rashid Alimov, coordinator of the Greenpeace Russia anti-nuclear project said that the organization "still considers the very concept of a floating nuclear power plant too dangerous and a senseless technological solution."

Rosatom says it hopes the floating nuclear power plant will be online in 2019. It adds that the power plant "is designed with the great margin of safety that exceeds all possible threats and makes nuclear reactors invincible for tsunamis and other natural disasters."

The idea for an offshore nuclear power plant has also been floated in the U.S. – or more specifically, off of New Jersey's coast. That plan arose in 1969, when the Public Service Electric & Gas Co. of New Jersey wanted to put a nuclear plant in the Atlantic Ocean, some 11 miles northeast of Atlantic City.

To enact that plan, suppliers were lined up, and millions of dollars were spent; a mockup was even built. But popular resistance emerged against it, and as The New Yorker reported in 1975, "More than 50 construction & operating permits were required, & none yet issued." </s> Ukraine’s ecology minister has warned of the danger of a “second Chernobyl” if Russian-led separatists pursue plans to flood a coal mine where a small nuclear bomb was detonated in 1979.

Ostap Semerak called for international help to stop a potential “radiation catastrophe” as the United States also expressed concern over the mine and a key water facility in eastern Ukraine that has temporarily shut down after five workers were shot.

Soviet specialists conducted the underground explosion to free trapped gas at the YunKom mine in Yenakieve, 55km northeast of what is now the militant stronghold of Donetsk, and pumps have kept the blast zone relatively dry ever since.

Separatist officials insist that pumping and special monitoring are no longer necessary, however, citing local and Russian experts who say radioactivity levels in the mine are normal, and that flooding it would pose no threat of contamination to the Donbas region’s water table.

“What the militants are playing at is nothing other than terrorism and political blackmail,” Mr Semerak told members of the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

“Our joint task with international partners is to prevent a second Chernobyl in Donbas,” he said, referring to the atomic power station north of Kiev that exploded in April 1986, showering much of northern Europe with radiation.

Drinking water

Earlier this week US state department spokeswoman Heather Nauert wrote on Twitter: “Plans by Russian proxies to flood the abandoned YunKom coal mine... could threaten drinking water of thousands of Ukrainians in Russia-controlled eastern Ukraine. We urge Russia and its proxy authorities to act responsibly.”

Four years of fighting in Donbas have killed more than 10,300 people, displaced 1.6 million and ravaged an industrial region of mines, metal works and chemical plants, creating the potential for a long legacy of environmental problems.

In a 2017 report on the environmental impact of the war, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) said that YunKom “poses a singular threat”.

“Any present destabilisation of the mine via flooding could release up to 500 cubic metres of radiation-contaminated mine waters into the ground water table,” the OSCE said.

The conflict frequently disrupts water supplies through Soviet-built canals and pipes that criss-cross the front line, and which workers take considerable risks to maintain and repair after damage by shelling.

Under fire

The Donetsk water filtration plant, which sits right on the frontline, shut down again on Wednesday after five employees were wounded when their bus came under fire the previous day.

Hundreds of thousands of people in government and militia-held territory receive water from the plant, which is often struck by shells despite the presence there of chlorine and other hazardous chemicals.

“The chlorine is being washed out so it doesn’t stay in the pipes. They are halting the pumping station,” said Alexander Yevdokimov, acting head of the Donbas Water company. “It doesn’t mean we have shut it down forever, but we simply need security guarantees for our employees.”

Ms Nauert said the US urged “all forces to withdraw from positions around the Donetsk filtration station and other critical civilian infrastructure”. </s> Russia launched the world’s first floating nuclear power plant on Saturday. The 70-megawatt vessel, christened the Akademik Lomonosov, was towed away from St. Petersburg by two boats. It is currently coasting through the Baltic Sea to the town of Murmansk for fuel, and is then supposed to embark for the Arctic town of Pevek in 2019, according to a release from the state-run firm that built the rig.

Greenpeace has referred to the vessel as “Chernobyl on ice” and a “nuclear Titanic” bound for catastrophe. The environmental activist group’s nuclear expert Jan Haverkamp says one of the major concerns with the power plant is that it has a flat-bottomed hull—so that it can get close to the shoreline—and it has no self-propulsion, making it more vulnerable to storms.

Greenpeace ran a petition campaign that stopped Russia’s original plan to stock the power plant’s nuclear reactor in St. Petersberg, then send it straight to Pevek. The company that built the vessel, the Rosatom Corporation, decided to instead make an extensive pit stop in Murmansk, so that all the nuclear-related activity will take place in the Arctic, in less populated areas.

But that has done little to assuage the fears of Greenpeace. “Nuclear reactors bobbing around the Arctic Ocean will pose a shockingly obvious threat to a fragile environment which is already under enormous pressure from climate change,” Haverkamp said in a release.



Once the vessel gets to Pevek, it is intended to help power the port town, replacing the 44-year-old Bilibino power plant and the 70-year-old Chaunskaya Thermal Power Plant, according to the release from Rosatom.

Other countries have floated the idea of a natant nuclear plant—namely China and the US.

Construction on the floating power plant first began in 2007, but hit many snags along the way. Rosatom plans to begin building a second floating power plant next year. </s> An explosion at a nuclear power plant in northern France on Thursday caused minor injuries but took place outside the plant's nuclear zone and posed no risk of contamination, the authorities said.

"It is a significant technical event but it is not a nuclear accident," senior local official Olivier Marmion told AFP following the blast at the Flamanville plant 25 kilometres (15 miles) west of Cherbourg.

The cause of the explosion at the power station, which has been in operation since the 1980s, was not immediately known.

Marmion said five people had reported feeling unwell but that there were no serious injuries, adding that rescue services were at the site.

One of the plant's two reactors was shut down after the explosion and the incident was declared over at 1100 GMT, the authorities said. </s> Akademik Lomonosov, the world's first "floating" nuclear power plant (FNPP) for installation in remote areas, has headed out on its first sea voyage from this Baltic shipyard here, Russian state-run atomic energy corporation Rosatom said on Saturday.

A statement said the FNPP was towed out of the St. Petersburg shipyard where it was constructed for travel to its final destination to the port of Pevek in Russia's extreme northeastern region of Chukotka.

It is to be towed through the Baltic Sea and around the northern tip of Norway to Murmansk, where its reactors will be loaded with nuclear fuel, said Rosatom, who are the equipment suppliers and consultants for the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project in Tamil Nadu.

"Akademik Lomonosov will replace Pevek's aging Bilibino Nuclear Power Plant and Chaunsk coal-fired power plant, saving about 50,000 tons of CO2 emissions per year compared to the current levels. Upon its connection to the grid, Akademik Lomonosov will become the northernmost nuclear installation in the world," it said.

The Lomonosov is expected to be put into service in early 2019.

"It is a significant milestone for our project as well as for the world nuclear industry. Floating nuclear power plants will enable electricity and heat supply to the most remote regions boosting growth and sustainable development," Rosatom Director (Construction and Operation of Floating Nuclear Thermal Power Plants) Vitaly Trutnev said in a statement.

An FNPP is basically a mobile, low-capacity reactor unit operable in remote areas isolated from the main power distribution system, or in places hard to access by land. They are designed to maintain both uninterruptible power and plentiful desalinated water supply in remote areas.

The FNPP has a capacity of 70MW and is equipped with two reactors of 35MW each.

Rosatom said that an FNPP's operational life span is 40 years, with the possibility of being extended up to 50 years.
The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant opens its doors to tourism.