ST. PETERSBURG, November 19. /TASS/. For the first time in the history of Russia and the Northern Sea Route, all eight nuclear icebreakers will embark on their missions along the Northern Sea Route (NSR) at a time, Rosatom's CEO Alexey Likhachev told reporters after a ceremony of laying the Stalingrad nuclear-powered icebreaker of Project 22220 in St. Petersburg.
"It will be for the first time in the history of this country, the history of the Northern Sea Route development, that from the beginning of December, all eight icebreakers will embark on their missions to work with both Russian and our foreign partners. In this sense, the nuclear icebreaking fleet is both unique and highly efficient," he said.
This year, he continued, the weather is harsher than it was in the past year. The ice formation has begun two weeks earlier and for various reasons it has complicated work of ships and icebreakers on NSR. Nevertheless, right now five icebreakers are in the water area, and all applications for icebreaking operations have been satisfied with a margin, he added.
Rosatom's icebreaking fleet is eight nuclear icebreakers: the 50 Let Pobedy, the Yamal, and universal nuclear icebreakers of Project 22220 - the Arktika, the Sibir, the Ural, the Yakutia, built at USC's Baltic Shipyard, as well as the Vaygach and the Taymyr icebreakers, which were built with participation of specialists from the Baltic Shipyard. Presently, the Baltic Shipyard continues working on building nuclear-powered icebreakers of Project 22220 - the Chukotka, the Leningrad, the Stalingrad, as well as on a multi-purpose nuclear service vessel of Project 22770 - the Vladimir Vorobyov.