Power of the atom

Rosenergoatom currently operates ten nuclear power plants with 33 reactors, and plans to increase the number of reactors to 59 by 2030.

To support this expansion, the company has started building a large data center next to the Kalinin nuclear power station in Udomlya - a facility that produces a total of 4000MW across four power blocks. Naturally, the new data center will feed on nuclear energy.

According to an earlier report in Vedomosti, management of Rosenergoatom had to negotiate changes to the rules governing power prices in order to directly connect the upcoming server farm and the power plant, enabling the utility company to offer preferential electricity rates on the site.

The first phase of the data center is expected to open in March 2017, with the second phase coming online in the summer of 2018. All of the building work will be carried out by local contractor CHD Engineering.

The cost of the project has been estimated at approximately 6.4 billion rubles ($975m) – excluding the cost of IT infrastructure.

Analysts have suggested that a large data center would be the perfect customer to could burn through any excess supply of energy the Kalinin power station could produce.

It would also present an attractive site for Rosenergoatom to consolidate its IT resources – the company previously talked about data center consolidation plans but revealed no details.