Rosatom has completed the economic justification for the first land-based small modular reactor (SMR) with a Shelf-M reactor. According to "Strana Rosatom" magazine, engineering surveys have begun at the future construction site, and nuclear fuel has undergone a full cycle of endurance tests.

The reactor is a compact monoblock, 11 meters long and weighing 370 tons, which is assembled at the factory and delivered to the installation site as a whole. It is capable of producing 10 MW of electrical and 35 MW of thermal power for 60 years with one fuel reload every eight years.

The key feature of the design is its passive cooling capability: in the event of external power loss, the reactor independently removes residual heat, without requiring diesel generators or other external energy sources. This task was successfully solved at approximately 30% of nominal power without operator intervention.

The plant will be built at the Sovinoye gold deposit in the Chaunsky district of the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug. Construction is planned for 2027, physical start-up for 2030, and commercial operation for 2032. According to Rosatom head Alexey Likhachev, such power units are the only economically viable solution for remote areas where extending grids or building a large NPP is impractical.

The fuel is uranium dioxide in a silumin matrix, similar to that used in nuclear icebreakers. This solution has already proven its reliability in harsh Arctic conditions. Shelf-M effectively scales icebreaker technologies for land-based applications, creating a new market for microreactors for mining and industrial clusters completely isolated from the unified energy system.