For many years Russia has developed marine nuclear reactors to power their ice-breaker transport fleet. Taking advantage of this experience, there are recommendations for KLT-40 type nuclear energy floating complexes to supply electricity and heat to remote regions in the far north and east of Russia.

This reactor type is being developed by the Experimental Machine Building Bureau (OKBM) of the Russian Federation. It incorporates the nuclear reactor in a barge and can, therefore, be regarded as a ship reactor (IEA/OECD (NEA)/IAEA, 2002). The floating power unit (FPU) is assembled in a factory. Factory fabrication can be optimised by the delivery of two units, including the steam side plant.

The plant is a conventional pressure-vessel loop type reactor including hydraulic loops, pumps, steam generator and pressure vessel. It contains a number of safety features including diverse and redundant shut-down and passive decay heat removal systems. There is self-regulation of the power levels at all power levels because of negative temperature and void coefficients.

There are reduced volumes of low and medium level waste. All the waste obtained over the 12-year operating cycle is stored on the FPU. The outlet temperatures are similar to other current PWRs.