Russia builds the world's largest and most powerful icebreaker

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the construction of the nuclear-powered icebreaker Leningrad at the Baltic Shipyard in Saint Petersburg.

President Putin at the groundbreaking ceremony for the Lenigrad shipyard. Photo: Moscow Times — President Putin at the groundbreaking ceremony for the Lenigrad shipyard. Photo: *Moscow Times*

Russian President Vladimir Putin attended the ceremony to lay the foundation stone for the fifth-generation nuclear icebreaker of Project 22220 at the Baltic Shipyard. Under the president's instructions, Rosatom Nuclear Energy Corporation CEO Alexey Likhachev, VTB CEO Andrey Kostin, Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matvienko and St. Petersburg Governor Alexander Beglov took screwdrivers and tightened the bolts on the first hull of the future icebreaker, Maritime Executive reported on January 28.

Mr Putin stressed that the new ship would allow more trade along the Northern Sea Route. The ship has been named Leningrad, changing from its original proposed name of Sakhalin. It is the second icebreaker to change its name from the Arctic region to the Soviet-era name of a Russian city.

The Leningrad nuclear icebreaker will be 173.3 m long and 34 m wide. The ship will be 52 m high with a design draft of 10.5 m and a minimum operational draft of 9.2 m. The ship's weight is 33,540 tonnes. The icebreaker is designed to operate for 40 years. The ship can accommodate a crew of 52 people. The ship is powered by two reactors, the main source of power is the RITM-200 reactor with a capacity of 60 MW.

Project 22220 icebreakers are the world's largest and most powerful icebreakers. Russia is working on Project 22220 to provide additional icebreaking capacity for the Northern Sea Route. Three icebreakers are already in service, and three more will join the fleet by 2030. The start of construction of Leningrad is a small step toward solving the problem of the shortage of icebreakers since last fall.

An Khang (According to Maritime Executive/TASS )

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