Russia says its sea-based nuclear power plant is safe. Critics call it a ‘Floating Chernobyl’

If a Russian state-owned company has its way, remote regions of the world will soon see giant, floating nuclear reactors pumping power to port cities and drilling platforms in a real-life version of the Soviet reversal joke: In Russia, 70-megawatt nuclear reactor comes to you.

The reactor in question is called Akademic Lomonosov. Once the barge is wired into the electrical grid in the Arctic town of Pevek in 2019, it will be the world’s northernmost nuclear reactor, capable of powering a town of 100,000 people with what its manufacturer, Rosatom, calls “a great margin of safety” that is “invincible for tsunamis and natural disaster.”

But environmental groups have other names for the barge: “Nuclear Titanic” is one. Another is “Floating Chernobyl.”

Critics say that pretty much the worst thing you can do to a nuclear reactor is expose it to the high waves and fierce winds of the Arctic Ocean. Jan Haverkamp, a nuclear expert for Greenpeace Central and Eastern Europe, called it a “shockingly obvious threat to a fragile environment.”

The world will see who is right sometime next year.

The Lomonosov, named after an 18th-century Russian scientist and poet, was towed out of the St Petersburg shipyard on Saturday for its meandering, year-long journey.