Russia is the birthplace of nuclear icebreakers. Only our country has the necessary resources to implement such large-scale projects. This was stated by the leading design engineer of the «Baltic Shipyard» Evgeny Aleksandrov during a lecture organized by the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation at VDNKh.
Building an icebreaker is very expensive — it requires a lot of time, money and effort from experienced engineers. Currently, only Russia has the necessary amount of resources to build such nuclear-powered ships. The Central Design Bureau «Iceberg» is the only enterprise that designs nuclear icebreakers. And further construction is already being carried out in the Far East and in St. Petersburg
The key task of nuclear icebreakers is to ensure navigation for other vessels on the Northern Sea Route — the shortest route between West and East. Thanks to domestic nuclear icebreakers, Russia is successfully developing the Far North, which opens access to the natural resources of the Arctic — oil and natural gas. Up to 80% of all Arctic hydrocarbons are concentrated in the Russian North.
Currently, Russian shipbuilders are creating serial nuclear icebreakers of projects 22220 («Arktika») and the lead nuclear icebreaker of project 10510 («Leader»). Most of the operating nuclear icebreakers were laid down and launched from the slipways of the «Baltic Shipyard» in St. Petersburg. Over the 160-year history of the enterprise, it has built about 600 ships and vessels. And it was there that the famous nuclear icebreaker — «50 Years of Victory» was built, on which the Olympic flame was delivered to the North Pole in 2013.
Domestic production is introducing new technologies to improve the construction of icebreakers. This summer, equipment was put into operation that provides technology for hardening large-sized propeller shafts for project 10510. And now the development vector is aimed at large-block construction. Very soon, new technologies will allow assembling nuclear icebreakers like Lego.
Evgeny Aleksandrov noted that the actively developing Arctic sphere needs new specialists:
Our efforts are aimed at training highly qualified personnel for production. We train engineers at enterprises, actively work with university students. We are interested in ensuring that personnel remain at our factories
It was previously reported that Rosatom will order the construction of four diesel icebreakers with a total cost of 120 billion rubles from shipbuilders.