Russia Signs an MOU with Guinea for Floating Nuclear Power Plant

On on the sidelines of the St Petersburg International Economic Forum on June 7, a memorandum of understanding was signed between Russia’s state owned nuclear power engineering firm Rosatom and the Republic of Guinea on developing floating nuclear power units (FPUs) for this West African nation. The agreement, according to Vladimir Aptekarev, Deputy Head of Rosatom’s Mechanical Engineering Division, ”involves joint work on developing a power supply solution both to industrial and domestic consumers in the Republic of Guinea, by deploying floating nuclear power units with RITM-200 reactors, which have already proven efficient”.

This reactor is Rosatom’s flagship SMR (small modular reactor) and currently powers the new large Project 22220 icebreakers. Rated at 55 megawatts, it supercedes the less powerful KLT-40s (38 MW), two of which supply power to the Akademik Lomonosov floating power plant. Moreover, a land-based nuclear power plant (NPP) with an RITM-200 reactor is currently being built near Ust-Kuyga in Yakutia in Russia’s Arctic north, with the aim of commissioning in 2028 when it will be the first SMR commissioned on the planet.

These reactors are ideal for producing electricity, process heat, and district heating in particularly remote locations, as well as for desalination purposes. Rosatom clearly intends to fill an order book with them in order to begin building them in series.

During Russian President Putin’s official visit to Uzbekistan on May 26, an agreement was signed for Rosatom to build an NPP with six RITM-200 reactors for a total of 330 MW in the Jizzakh region of Uzbekistan, with construction work due to begin as early as this summer.

The Russian nuclear giant has also designed a larger SMR, the VBER-300, which is undergoing final regulatory approval. It is also a pressurized water reactor whose design has been developed from marine reactors. Producing 300 MW, it could be deployed on land or on a floating NPP.

Also on the sidelines of SPIEF Rosatom Director General Alexey Likhachev and Burkina Faso’s Energy Minister Yacouba Zabre Gouba signed three Memorandums of understanding concerning cooperation on the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. It was agreed that a group of technical specialists from Rosatom will travel to the capital Ouagadougou this month to study where a nuclear power plant would be built and what capacity it would have.