Rosatomflot: Nuclear-powered icebreaker Arktika to start operating in 2019
© RIA Novosti. Ramil Sitdikov

Rosatomflot: Nuclear-powered icebreaker Arktika to start operating in 2019

The new Project 22220 multirole nuclear-powered icebreaker Arktika is scheduled to begin operations in late June 2019, Vyacheslav Ruksha, CEO of Rosatom subsidiary Rosatomflot, told participants in a meeting of the shipbuilding industry and marine technology committee at the Russian Union of Machine-Builders.

Currently, the Baltic Shipyard in St. Petersburg is building three Project 22220 nuclear-powered icebreakers, including the lead ship Arktika, the Sibir and the Ural, under a contract with Rosatomflot. They will become the largest and most powerful nuclear-powered icebreakers in the world, with a rated capacity of 60 megawatt.

There are plans to start operating the icebreakers Sibir and Ural in 2020 and 2021, Ruksha said.

Project 22220 nuclear-powered icebreakers will be able to escort Arctic convoys and to break through three-meter ice. The new ships will escort vessels delivering hydrocarbons from oil and gas fields in the Yamal and Gydan Peninsulas and the Kara Sea shelf to Asia Pacific markets. The double-draft icebreakers will operate in Arctic waters and polar-river isthmuses.

The Iceberg Central Design Bureau developed the Project 22220 icebreaker in 2009.

Each multirole Project 22220 nuclear-powered icebreaker will have the following specifications:

Length: 173.3 meters

Beam: 34 meters

Displacement: 33,500 metric tons

Crew: 75