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Northern Sea Route data processing center to be built at Kola NPP by 2023

The center’s capacity is planned at 1MWt

MURMANSK, April 4. /TASS/. The Arktika data processing center will be built on the territory of the Kola nuclear power plant by 2023. It will be a base for digital platforms and services for the Northern Sea Route, for the Russian Federation’s Arctic zone, including the Murmansk Region, the power plant’s PR and information department said.

"The data processing center at the Kola NPP will be a basic infrastructure for new busy digital platforms and services for the Northern Sea Route and the Arctic zone, to provide logistics, ‘smart city’ services management, tourism support and other major development directions in the region," the release quoted Rosenergoatom’s Deputy Director General Sergei Migalin as saying. Rosenergoatom is a part of Rosatom’s electric energy division.

The center’s capacity is planned at 1MWt. During 2022, the project authors will prepare all the paperwork and will launch equipment production. Constructors will work on the sites and networks. The center is due to be commissioned in 2023.

The data processing center will consist of modules; the number of mainframes is 24, or optional 48. "The prepared set of equipment will be delivered by railway to be further installed on the site," Rosenergoatom’s representative said.

In 2021, the Russian government issued an order to build a data processing center in the polar region, and the Kola NPP was specified as a promising platform for a data center. This decision is explained by the low electricity costs and the climate conditions in the Murmansk Region - low temperatures save about 40% of the exploitation expenses, specifically the cost of cooling systems.

About the data center and the Kola NPP

The Arktika data processing center is a part of the program to organize a geo-distributed and catastrophe resistant network of data centers and Rosatom’s infrastructures. Three data centers have been working in Russia - in the Tver Region, in St. Petersburg and in Moscow. Another seven sites for data centers throughout Russia will appear shortly.

The Kola Nuclear Power Plant is 200 km south of Murmansk, on Lake Imandra. There are four power units with a VVER type reactor (a pressurized water reactor (PWR)) with a capacity of 440 MW each.