Lying on Russia’s Northern Sea Route however typically inaccessible by land, the far-northeastern city of Pevek is a tricky place to reside in, however because of a novel floating nuclear energy plant experiment, it is present process an “atomic boom.”
The desolate city lies on the shore of the East Siberian Sea in Russia’s Chukotka, the nation’s most north-eastern area. RT’s correspondent crew visited the city, which just lately turned home to Akademik Lomonosov – the world’s first and solely floating nuclear energy plant.
“One of the first things that strike you in Pevek is that there are no trees. Just…nothing…. The land here is so frozen nothing grows on it and that makes the landscape bleak and, sadly, boring. So to liven things up, coloring buildings in orange or pink is probably not the worst idea,” RT’s Konstantin Rozhkov observes.
Once a busy port on the Northern Sea Route, Pevek nearly became a ghost city after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The city’s inhabitants decreased nearly threefold, with some 4,500 folks presently living there. Many buildings in Pevek lay deserted, with nature taking its toll on the man-made buildings.
Pevek lies within the permafrost zone, with probably the most excessive climate situations being a standard incidence there. Heavy snow and very robust winds actually blow folks out of their steps.
For heating, locals have been relying predominantly on coal, however it’s hoped that the brand new nuclear energy plant will finally be succesful to offer all the warmth vital for the city. Commissioned again in May 2020, Akademik Lomonosov started offering heating to the situation final summer time.
“People here are hopeful that switching to atomic energy will also reduce Pevek’s reliance on coal, which remains its main source of power,” Rozhkov says.
The plant’s operators say that Akademik Lomonosov is a particularly strong design, capable of stay intact even in probably the most excessive situations, akin to being hit by a tsunami – which isn’t the most probably incidence within the northern seas.
“Stress tests were carried out here, which showed that even if a tsunami would rip off our mooring and we would be thrown ashore, we would still be safe and no radioactivity would be released,” a specialist on the energy plant, Kirill Toropov, informed RT.
Earlier this month, the facility plant was visited by an impartial crew of ecologists, who measured radiation ranges within the city and across the station. The readings turned out to be nominal, not going past naturally-occurring ranges – with the city itself really having barely greater readings than the station had.
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