Move over Karpowership: Russia's Rosatom touts nuclear barges to solve SA's energy crisis

As South Africa grapples with the question of whether floating gas power plants can curb load shedding, Russia's state-owned atomic energy company has jumped into the fray with a proposal for a fleet of floating small nuclear reactors. 

Ryan Collyer, the head of Rosatom Central and Southern Africa, told the National Press Club in Pretoria that he expected Russia's small modular reactors – already in use on ice breakers – to be commercially available within the next six years or so. 

Collyer, a South African who has worked at Rosatom for the past nine years, was speaking some six years after a landmark court ruling sunk a previous Rosatom plan to build a fleet of large nuclear power plants in South Africa.