Arktika-class icebreaker
Russian class of nuclear-powered icebreakers
The Arktika class is a Russian (formerly Soviet) class of nuclear-powered icebreakers. Also known by their Russian designations Project 10520 (first two ships) and Project 10521 (from third ship onwards), they were the world's largest and most powerful icebreakers until the 2016 launch of the first Project 22220 icebreaker, also named Arktika.
Ships of the Arktika class are owned by the federal government, but were operated by the Murmansk Shipping Company (MSCO) until 2008, when they were transferred to the fully state-owned corporation Atomflot. Of the ten civilian nuclear-powered vessels built by Russia or the Soviet Union, six were of this type.
They are used for escorting merchant ships in the Arctic Ocean north of Siberia as well as for scientific and recreational expeditions to the Arctic.
History
On 3 July 1971, construction began on a conceptual design of a larger nuclear icebreaker, dubbed Arktika, in the Baltic Shipyard in then Leningrad. Four years later on 17 December 1975, the first ship completed sea trials.
Arktika was the first surface ship to reach the North Pole, on 17 August 1977.
As the leading vessel in Russia's second nuclear icebreaker class, Arktika became the classification name for five icebreakers to follow: the Sibir in 1977, Rossiya in 1985, Sovetskiy Soyuz in 1989, the Yamal in 1992, and the 50 Let Pobedy in 2007.
The first of new class of nuclear icebreakers, Project 22220, was launched in 2016.
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