TASS: Russia will build three next-generation Lider-class nuclear-powered icebreakers in 2023-2025, Vice-Premier Dmitry Rogozin said on Wednesday.
“Rosatom [state civilian nuclear power corporation] has now been instructed as part of private and state partnership to think over the algorithm of financing three icebreakers rather than one and then we will make navigable the entire Northern Sea Route. We will be able to lead whatever vessels for any customer by transit through the Northern Sea Route: caravans with goods from Asia to Europe and we will be able to export our hydrocarbons in the form of liquefied natural gas not only to Europe but also to Southeast Asia,” Rogozin said in an interview with Rossiya-24 TV Channel, describing the plans of developing Russia’s icebreaker fleet.
As the vice-premier said, the next-generation Lider-class icebreakers will be built in 2023, 2024 and 2025.
According to the vice-premier, such icebreakers can be built at the country’s state-of-the art shipyard Zvezda in the Primorye Region in the Russian Far East.
“In 2019, we will commission [the shipyard’s] dry dock. Just imagine the dimensions: 484 meters long and 114 meters wide. Two aircraft carriers can be built there at a time,” the vice-premier said, describing the new shipyard.
Simultaneously, shipbuilders in northwest Russia are building three current-generation icebreakers: the Arktika, the Ural and the Sibir, Rogozin said.
According to the vice-premier, these icebreakers will be commissioned for operation in 2019-2021 and “will help ensure an all-out escort [of vessels] through the ice from Yamal Peninsula towards the West.”
Russia is implementing these plans in order to develop the Arctic region, the vice-premier said.
“We need to enter the Arctic with new technologies and, first of all, this relates to the nuclear-powered icebreaker fleet,” Rogozin said.
