Should we be worried about a floating nuclear power plant?

Russia launched its floating nuclear power plant, the Akademik Lomonosov from St. Petersburg and it will reach its destination in Siberia in about a year. The plant will travel across the Baltic Sea and pass the northern tip of Norway before stopping in Murmansk in northwest Russia, where the nuclear reactors are to be loaded with fuel.

The idea is for it to power a port town, oil rigs and a desalination plant. It will start its service from 2019. The plant is expected to provide up to 200,000 people with electricity. The Lomonosov is designed to produce power in remote regions of Russia’s extreme north and far east.

Environmentalists have slammed the sea-based plant, with Greenpeace calling it a “floating Chernobyl ” and a “nuclear Titanic”. They have also dubbed it a “Chernobyl on ice,” a reference to the 1986 nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl power plant in what was then Soviet-controlled Ukraine. It is considered to be the biggest nuclear disaster in all of human history. “The accident released a cloud of radioactive particles and gases,” ANS noted. By all accounts, Chernobyl is still radioactive and still very dangerous.

A floating nuclear reactor in the arctic ocean is a major threat to the environment and is not at all safe according to many nuclear experts. It can cause serious damage to the ocean and the marine life and the people living near coasts. And if this thing goes wrong the price will have to be paid by the generations yet to come.