See also: Arctic ship route may be safer with Anglo-Russian radio waves
Russia is launching the construction of new-generation
nuclear-powered icebreakers. The icebreaker of the LK-60Ya model, named
Arktika as a tribute to the prominent Soviet nuclear-powered icebreaker
of the same name, is due to begin sea trials in 2017. The ship will
prove effective for the deep-water areas of the Northern Sea Route and
the shallow waters of Russia’s Arctic shelf. Russia is due to build
three such icebreakers in the next decade.
Russia has been actively using the Northern Sea Route for
almost 80 years now, with ice-breakers ensuring naval and civilian ship
traffic across thick ice along the route. When the world’s first
nuclear-powered ice-breaker Lenin started active operation in 1960, she
turned over a new leaf in rescue ice operations on the Northern Sea
Route. Bigger and more powerful icebreakers of the Arktika class, such
as the 50 Years of Victory and the Yamal, have been playing the first
fiddle, as it were, since the 1970s. These icebreakers can reach any
point in the Arctic Ocean any time of the year. Smaller vessels, such as
the Taimyrand the Vaygach, are capable of performing out at sea and in
rivers’ offing.
Construction got under way at the Baltic shipyard in St.
Petersburg on November 5th of a new-generation LK-60Ya nuclear-powered
icebreaker of the 22220 project. The lead ship has been named as a
tribute to her prominent Soviet predecessor, the Arktika, or Arctic,
which was also the first ship of her project, as well as the first
surface ship to reach the North Pole.
The lead icebreaker of the project is due to start active
operation in 2018. She is 33 metres wider than the Arktika-class
ice-breakers, enabling her to pave the way through the ice for bigger
ships and at higher speeds. But a wider and proportionately longer hull
unexpectedly resulted in the reduction of the ship’s draft to 8.5
metres. This prompted the idea of building a two-shallow draft
icebreaker.
The
new-project icebreaker can vary her draft by using water ballast tanks
and operating both offshore and in shallow waters, such as the Dudinka
seaport, the Ob Bay etc. By increasing her draft by two or three metres,
she is effective out at sea in breaking heavy ice up to three metres
thick.
The new icebreaker will thus effectively replace both the
Arktikatype vessels and the shallow-draft craft of the Taimyr type. It
is held that three LK-60Ya icebreakers will be able to replace the four
currently operational vessels. But a still more powerful LK-110Ya
icebreaker is being designed (110 signifies the ship’s power plant
output in MW) to negotiate at least 3.5 metres thick ice and ensure
convoy navigation even in winter.
But Russia is also building a group of LK-25 diesel-powered
icebreakers that will provide support for nuclear-powered icebreakers
in ensuring navigation of major convoys and will prove helpful in the
river mouths that are shallow even for the two-shallow draft LK-60Ya
icebreakers. The LK-25s could likewise be used in the White Sea and the
Baltic Sea, which are ice-covered in winter.
Finally, minor LK-18 and LK-16 diesel-powered icebreakers
will prove effective at ice-covered ports from the Baltic Sea to the
Pacific Ocean. Contracts worth a total of 20.4 billion roubles have been
signed for the construction of four icebreakers with power plant output
of 25 MW, 18 MW, and two ships with a power plant of 16 MW. The
icebreakers are due to be built at the Baltic Shipyard in St.
Petersburg.
The new icebreakers are seen as increasingly important,
given that navigation of naval and civilian ships on the Northern Sea
Route is due to grow significantly in the next 10 years. Russia will
build over the period at least eight new icebreakers, but even that may
prove insufficient, for Russia has failed to build new icebreakers for
too many years.
Read more: http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2013_11_07/Russia-to-build-icebreakers-to-secure-its-Arctic-power-position-8762/?bottom=news
Read more: http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2013_11_07/Russia-to-build-icebreakers-to-secure-its-Arctic-power-position-8762/?bottom=news
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