(SKY NEWS) — A controversial floating nuclear power plant made by Russia has headed out for its first sea voyage.

The floating plant, the Akademik Lomonosov, was towed out of the St Petersburg shipyard where it was constructed on Saturday.

It is to be pulled through the Baltic Sea and around the Norwegian coast to Murmansk, a city of 300,000 people, where its reactors are to be loaded with nuclear fuel.