Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the construction of a nuclear-powered icebreaker named Leningrad at the Baltic Shipyard in Saint Petersburg.
President Putin at the groundbreaking ceremony for the Leningrad icebreaker. (Photo: Moscow Times).
President Vladimir Putin attended the groundbreaking ceremony for the fifth-generation nuclear icebreaker of Project 22220, held at the Baltic Shipyard. According to reports from Maritime Executive on January 28, under the president’s direction, the director of the State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom, Alexey Likhachev, VTB director Andrey Kostin, Federation Council spokesperson Valentina Matvienko, and St. Petersburg governor Alexander Beglov all participated in tightening the first hull segment of the future icebreaker.
Putin emphasized that the new vessel will facilitate increased shipping along the Northern Sea Route. The ship has been named Leningrad, changing from its originally proposed name Sakhalin. This is the second icebreaker whose name has been changed from a geographical region in the Arctic to the name of a Russian city from the Soviet era.
The Leningrad nuclear icebreaker will be 173.3 meters long and 34 meters wide. The vessel will have a height of 52 meters, with a design draft of 10.5 meters and a minimum operational draft of 9.2 meters. The weight of the ship is 33,540 tons. This icebreaker is designed to operate for 40 years and can accommodate a crew of 52. It will operate using two reactors, with the main power source coming from the RITM-200 reactor, which has a capacity of 60 MW.
The icebreaker of Project 22220 is the largest and most powerful icebreaker in the world. Russia is implementing Project 22220 to enhance icebreaking capabilities along the Northern Sea Route. Three icebreakers are already in operation, and three more will join the fleet by 2030. The groundbreaking of the Leningrad marks a small step toward addressing the shortage of icebreakers since last autumn.
