In remote Russia, some houses being powered by ‘nuclear residential heating’

Some houses in the remotest regions of Russia are being powered not by gas, electricity or wood, but by something slightly more exotic: nuclear energy.

“Nuclear residential heating” remains exceedingly rare, but “companies in the United States, China and France” and elsewhere are exploring the technology, the Seattle Times reported this week. 

In Pevek, Russia—an extreme northern town in Russia located just several hundred miles from the Bering Strait and the Russian-Alaskan border—heat was being generated by a nuclear reactor placed on “a barge floating nearby in the Arctic Ocean.”

Officials have plans to expand the facilities in Pevek heated by the nuclear plant. Residents reportedly offered “no objections” to the new scheme, Deputy Mayor Maxim Zhurbin told the paper.

“We are using the peaceful atom,” he said.