The building of the first ship is to begin on January 1, 2014. In a year the vessel is planned to be laid down on the stock. Floating out is scheduled for May 2017. After all due tests, in July 2019, the icebreaker is to be delivered to Atomflot, the port of Murmansk. The second vessel will begin to be built straight after the first one – it is planned to be laid down in November 2015 and floated out in a three years period. Atomflot will get the ship on December 25, 2020.
A Matter of Technique
Both vessels are of the 22 220 project with the power of 60 MW each. One of the main innovations in the design in comparison to the previous generations is the width. The maximum width of the LK-60 hull is as much as 34 meters, while the Arctica vessels, for example, can boast only 30. This way some larger tankers with the draught up to 70 000 tons could be piloted over the Northern Sea Route.
The new icebreakers will be dual draft, which means that they will be able to change their draft from 8,5 to 10,5 meters during operation. This makes the vessel more universal, capable of working both in rivers and in seas. LK-60 will be able to pass though an ice bulk up to 3 meters thick. Thus Atomflot could open the Northern Sea Route for a year-round commercial movement. The Arctica-type icebreakers, for instance, provide the Route navigation only for 7 months a year.
Baltic Front-Runner
The lead ship is already being built at the Baltic Shipyard, the company having been the only participant of the tender. Now the cutting for the vessel hull is in progress. The ship is to be delivered to Atomflot by the end of 2017. The plant is going to struggle for a right to build the first follow-on ships and is quite confident of its success. The company’s specialists don’t think that the Shipyard has any rivals in icebreakers building skills. The other possible LK-60 construction site is Sevmash, Severodvinsk, however at the moment the plant is extremely busy with some military orders. Russian Navy has just received the “Borei” 995 project “Yury Dolgoruky” SSBN, while the dockside trials of “Vladimir Monomach”, the other vessel of the series, have just started. “Alexander Nevsky” is also doing her trial trip. Besides the plant is getting ready for building “Knyaz Vladimir”, the forth ship of the series, so it hardly will be able to spare enough time and energy for another project.
Some foreign companies also might struggle for the right to build the atomic ships – Russia is known to have some good experience in cooperation with its western partners. For example, “The Vaigach” was built at the Wartsila Marine dockyard, with its atomic propulsion unit assembled at the Baltic Shipyard in Saint-Petersburg. The result of the tender will be announced at the end of February.
Good Tasks for Atomflot
According to scientists the Arctic possesses 13% of the world’s deposits of oil, 30% of natural gas and 20% of liquefied gas. However it is barely impossible to get them from the North Pole without the help of nuclear icebreakers. The expected annual volume of cargo traffic over the Northern Sea Route by 2020 is about 60 -70 million tons; that means, all the new vessels will find things to do. Atomflot says that due to their double draft, the new ships will be able to conduct pilotage of small fleet in the shallow waters of Enisey, Gulf of Ob and Western Arctic. “After the year 2020 Russia is going to have at least five mighty atomic icebreakers helping to solve economical problems of the country”, says Vyacheslav Ruksha, head of nuclear icebreaker fleet. “Those are atomic icebreakers of Russia that are to pilot the vessels, bringing hydrocarbon crude from the Yamal and Gydan Peninsulas deposits and the Kara Sea shelf to the Atlantic and Pacific oceans markets.
