Kovalchuk announced the creation of a new small nuclear power plant in Russia for Arctic exploration

Russia has created and is operating a fundamentally new small nuclear power plant necessary for the development of the Arctic, President of the National Research Center (NRC) "Kurchatov Institute" Mikhail Kovalchuk said on December 27. Mikhail Kovalchuk.

"We are not conducting research, but development, we have a fundamentally new small-capacity nuclear power plant "Elena" in operation. This station is a battery, it is a reactor that works absolutely safely without people," he told the Rossiya 24 TV channel.

According to Kovalchuk, we are talking about a self-regulating reactor, which is characterized by safety.

Such a station gives up to 1 MW of electricity and up to 14 MW of heat, which is the basis for the development of the Arctic, the Northern Sea Route and hard-to-reach remote areas, said the head of the "Kurchatov Institute".

Earlier, on December 24, Kovalchuk told Izvestia that Russia is the market leader in nuclear energy. He emphasized that in this area the country is moving forward and can only overtake competitors through new ideas.

Before that, on December 19, the SIC president called the creation of innovative nuclear power technologies for the Arctic and the Northern Sea Route one of the priority areas. He drew attention to the fact that without a developed coastal infrastructure, all other achievements will be ineffective, while special nature-like developments should be applied due to the fragile ecology.