Sergei Kiriyenko, head of the state atomic agency Rosatom, said that floating nuclear power stations "open a new era and create new prospects for modernizing the power energy infrastructure of some of the more distant and isolated regions of Russia."
     The vessel carrying the plant is scheduled to start operating in late 2012, according to officials.
     "Floating stations will facilitate the process of locating and developing natural resources, especially in the Far North of Russia and in the Arctic seas," Kiriyenko told reporters at the launch ceremony. "The floating nuclear power plants make a genuine leap forward from building and running costly electric power lines and maintaining electric power stations."
     He said that the plant would be "absolutely safe," adding that the Russian government expects a keen interest in such projects from foreign customers. China and India in particular have expressed enthusiasm, officials say.

A Russian-made nuclear-powered Alfa class submarine, which could go 45 m.p.h. underwater.

 MOSCOW — When the Soviet Union introduced its Alfa class submarine — at the time, the world's fastest — the subs were the bane of American sailors. Now, the reactors that powered those submarines are being marketed as the next innovation in green power.
     Environmentalists say the technology is outdated and potentially dangerous, and marketing it as green energy is an abuse of nuclear power's good green name.
     The Russians are not alone in pushing the idea that the next generation of nuclear reactors should have more in common with the small power plants on submarines than the sprawling installations of today.
     The kinds of marine reactors the Russians are promoting, though, also happen to create a byproduct — used fuel — that no one knows how to handle. Right now, that spent fuel is being stored at naval yards in the Russian Arctic.
     In most nuclear facilities, the used fuel, which is highly radioactive, is removed from the reactor and stored in a pool of water. But in the Soviet submarine model currently advanced by a Moscow company, the spent fuel ends up frozen along with the reactor and stored away. No engineering solution has been devised yet to decontaminate the fuel.
     In fact, the technology caused a number of mechanical accidents when it was used in Soviet submarines from the 1970s until the early 1990s.
     Kirill Danilenko, the director of the Russian company, Akme Engineering, said that the technology could be made safe, with no greater risk of meltdown than that at a larger nuclear plant. His vision is that small reactors will become so common that utilities can connect them and “build power plants like Lego sets.”
     The promise of miniature reactors powering homes, offices and schools is still years from being realized. The first Russian design, a pontoon-mounted reactor intended to be floated into harbors in energy-hungry developing countries, is already being built. But most promoters expect small reactors to come online at the end of this decade.
     The plans are going ahead in Russia and elsewhere in the face of criticism that a diffuse nuclear infrastructure — the idea that many midsize cities, for example, could have their own small reactor — is inherently risky.
     But once the science is perfected, such reactors are potentially far cheaper to build for every unit of electricity generated than traditional nuclear power plants.
     This is no small matter as capital expenses are the largest cost for nuclear power, making it more competitive with coal.
     Around the world, much of the nuclear industry is embracing the tried-and-true economics of serial production. In serial production, reactor cores, like Ford cars, would be rolled off an assembly line, then shipped to the site of a plant. They could be used separately or as modules for a more powerful generator. This would be possible, however, only if a reactor were small enough to fit on a railroad car.
     American companies are promoting nine designs for small reactors, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, a trade group in Washington. The International Atomic Energy Agency, the Vienna group overseeing civilian nuclear power, has estimated global demand for small nuclear reactors could reach 500 to 1,000 reactors by 2040.
     The category is defined as reactors making less than 300 megawatts of electricity, or the amount needed to power 300,000 American homes. That is roughly a quarter of the energy output of big reactors.