To many developing countries, energy transition means that they now have an opportunity to use energy, Ms. Bilbao y León stressed. “Nuclear energy has the potential to revolutionise their lives by making affordable and clean energy available to them 24 hours a day, every day,” she said. Ms. Bilbao y León added that NPPs and SNPPs in particular can generate not only electricity, but also thermal energy to meet the needs of the housing sector and industry, as well as to desalinate water and produce hydrogen, ammonia and synthetic fuels. Moreover, thanks to their lower capital intensity, SNPPs can find application in the developing countries that do not yet have large reactors.
The world’s first SNPP was the floating nuclear power plant (FNPP) Akademik Lomonosov, which was put into commercial operation in 2020 in the port of Pevek, Chukotka Autonomous District. Among onshore facilities, the first land-based SNPP is going to be ACP100, also known as LingLong One, which is being built in southern China’s Hainan Province. The reactor with a capacity of 125 megawatts (MW) will be connected to the grid in 2026 and will be able to generate 1 terawatt-hours of electricity per year, enough to provide 526,000 households with power.
Finally, Russia’s first onshore SNPP project will be implemented in Yakutia by 2028. The project will be based on the RITM-200N pressurised water reactor, an adapted version of reactors of the RITM-200 series, which are used to supply nuclear-powered icebreakers with electricity. The new SNPP will have a capacity of at least 55 MW and a service life of up to 60 years.
