Rosatom ready to supply energy storage systems to rail sector

MOSCOW. Nov 3 (Interfax) - The Rosatom state corporation is ready to offer its domestically produced energy storage systems for railway transportation and hopes to implement an "atomic locomotive" project in the future, Rosatom head Alexei Likhachev said in a comment to the corporate publication Strana Rosatom.

"We are already ready to supply our energy storage systems. They are needed, of course, by electric propulsion in general, and by rail transport in particular," Likhachev said.

He recalled the idea of the Atomokhod project of the 1950s - "simply put, [it was] an atomic-powered train." The project's technological concept was ready in the 1980s, but it never reached a prototype stage. "I very much hope that in the coming decades we will return to the topic of the atomic locomotive," he said.

The company already is already cooperating with Russian Railways on a quantum project, Likhachev said. The parties are also working on attracting foreign partners to it, he said. As a result, Russian Railways and Rosatom were instructed to submit a roadmap for developing quantum technologies through 2036. "Cooperation in this, frankly speaking, highly scientific field will unite us for another decade," he said.

"We are also doing a serious project together related to digital services," he said, noting that it will be "one of the best digital projects."

"We must not forget that Rosatom is now, after all, also a logistics company. Our country is large, and we are strong in multimodal transportation, so this logistics contact at ports and at railway terminals, the contact between land and sea, the contact in container shipping - that is where our strength lies. And I am sure that our cooperation in logistics with Russian Railways will also be very complementary," Likhachev said.