The largest and most powerful icebreaker in the world June 16th, 2016

Now let's start with the story...

The nuclear-powered icebreaker Arktika went down in history as the first surface ship to reach the North Pole. The nuclear-powered ship "Arktika" (from 1982 to 1986 was called "Leonid Brezhnev") is the lead ship of the project 10520 series. The laying of the vessel took place on July 3, 1971 at the Baltic Shipyard in Leningrad. More than 400 associations and enterprises, research and design organizations, including the Experimental Design Bureau of Mechanical Engineering named after V.I. I. I. Afrikantova and Research Institute atomic energy them. Kurchatov.

The icebreaker was launched in December 1972, and in April 1975 the ship was put into operation.


The nuclear-powered ship "Arktika" was intended for escorting ships in the Arctic Ocean with the performance various kinds icebreaking work. The length of the ship was 148 meters, width - 30 meters, side height - about 17 meters. The power of the nuclear steam generating plant exceeded 55 megawatts. Due to its technical performance, the nuclear-powered ship could break through ice 5 meters thick, and in clear water reach speeds of up to 18 knots.

The first trip of the icebreaker Arktika to the North Pole took place in 1977. It was a large-scale experimental project, in which scientists had to not only reach the geographic point of the North Pole, but also conduct a series of studies and observations, as well as test the capabilities of the Arktika and the stability of the vessel in a constant collision with ice. More than 200 people took part in the expedition.

On August 9, 1977, the nuclear-powered ship left the port of Murmansk, heading for the Novaya Zemlya archipelago. In the Laptev Sea, the icebreaker turned north.

And on August 17, 1977, at 4 am Moscow time, the nuclear-powered icebreaker, having overcome the thick ice cover of the Central Polar Basin, for the first time in the world reached the geographic point of the North Pole in active navigation. For 7 days and 8 hours, the nuclear-powered ship covered 2528 miles. The age-old dream of sailors and polar explorers of many generations has come true. The crew and members of the expedition celebrated this event with a solemn ceremony of raising State flag USSR on a ten-meter steel mast mounted on ice. During the 15 hours that the nuclear-powered ship spent on top of the Earth, scientists completed a set of studies and observations. Before leaving the Pole, the sailors lowered into the waters of the Arctic Ocean a commemorative metal plate with the image State Emblem USSR and with the inscription "USSR. 60 years of October, a / l "Arktika", latitude 90 ° -N, 1977.

This icebreaker has high sides, four decks and two platforms, a forecastle and a five-tier superstructure, and three four-blade fixed-pitch propellers are used as propulsors. The nuclear steam generating plant is located in a special compartment in the middle part of the icebreaker. The hull of the icebreaker is made of high-strength alloyed steel. In places subject to the greatest impact of ice loads, the hull is reinforced with an ice belt. The icebreaker has trim and roll systems. Towing operations are provided by a stern electric towing winch. A helicopter is based on the icebreaker for conducting ice reconnaissance. Control and management technical means power plants are carried out automatically, without constant watch in engine rooms, propeller motor rooms, power plants and switchboards.

Control over the operation and control of the power plant is carried out from the central control post, additional control of the propeller motors is brought to the wheelhouse and aft post. The wheelhouse is the ship's control center. On a nuclear-powered ship, it is located on top floor add-ons, from where a greater overview opens. The wheelhouse is stretched across the vessel - from side to side by 25 meters, its width is about 5 meters. Large rectangular portholes are located almost entirely on the front and side walls. Inside the cabin, only the most necessary. Near the sides and in the middle there are three identical consoles, on which there are control knobs for the movement of the vessel, indicators for the operation of the three propellers of the icebreaker and the position of the rudder, heading indicators and other sensors, as well as buttons for filling and draining ballast tanks and a huge typhon button for sound signal. Near the control panel of the left side there is a navigation table, near the central one - a steering wheel, at the starboard side panel - a hydrological table; near the navigational and hydrological tables, pedestals of all-round radars were installed.


In early June 1975, the nuclear-powered icebreaker Admiral Makarov navigated the Northern Sea Route to the east. In October 1976, the icebreaker "Ermak" with the dry cargo ship "Kapitan Myshevsky", as well as the icebreaker "Leningrad" with the transport "Chelyuskin" pulled out of the ice captivity. The captain of the Arctic called those days " finest hour"new nuclear-powered ship.

Arktika was decommissioned in 2008.

On July 31, 2012, the nuclear-powered icebreaker Arktika, the first ship to reach the North Pole, was excluded from the Register of Ships.

According to the information voiced by representatives of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise "Rosatomflot" to the press, the total cost of dismantling the a/l "Arktika" is estimated at 1.3-2 billion rubles, with the allocation of funds under the federal target program. Recently, there was a wide campaign to convince the management of refusing to be scrapped and the possibility of modernizing this icebreaker.

And now we come closer to the topic of our post.


In November 2013, at the same Baltic Shipyard in St. Petersburg, the ceremony of laying the lead nuclear icebreaker of project 22220 took place. In honor of its predecessor, the nuclear-powered icebreaker was named Arktika. The universal two-draught nuclear icebreaker LK-60Ya will become the largest and most powerful in the world.

According to the project, the length of the vessel will be more than 173 meters, width - 34 meters, draft at the design waterline - 10.5 meters, displacement - 33.54 thousand tons. It will become the largest and most powerful (60 MW) nuclear-powered icebreaker in the world. The nuclear-powered ship will be equipped with a two-reactor power plant with the main source of steam from the RITM-200 reactor plant with a capacity of 175 MW.


On June 16, the lead nuclear icebreaker Arktika of project 22220 was launched at the Baltic Shipyard," the company said in a statement quoted by RIA Novosti.

Thus, the designers went through one of the most milestones in ship building. The Arktika will become the lead ship of Project 22220 and will give rise to a group of nuclear-powered icebreakers needed to explore the Arctic and strengthen Russia's presence in the region.

First, the rector of the Nikolo-Bogoyavlensky Naval Cathedral conducted the baptism of the atomic icebreaker. Then the speaker of the Federation Council Valentina Matvienko, following the traditions of shipbuilders, broke a bottle of champagne on the hull of the nuclear-powered ship.

“It is difficult to overestimate what has been done by our scientists, designers, shipbuilders. There is a feeling of pride in our country, the people who created such a ship,” said Matvienko. She recalled that Russia is the only country that has its own nuclear-powered icebreaker fleet, which will allow active implementation of projects in the Arctic.

"We go to the quality new level development of this richest region," she stressed.

"Seven feet under the keel to you, the great "Arktika"!" - added the speaker of the Federation Council.

In turn, the presidential envoy for the North-Western Federal District Vladimir Bulavin noted that Russia is building new ships, despite the difficult economic situation.

"If you like, this is our answer to the challenges and threats of our time," Bulavin said.

Director General of the state corporation "Rosatom" Sergei Kiriyenko, in turn, called the launch of the new icebreaker a great victory for both the designers and the staff of the Baltic Shipyard. According to Kiriyenko, Arktika opens up "fundamentally new opportunities both in the field of ensuring the defense capability of our country and in solving economic problems."

Project 22220 vessels will be able to conduct convoys of ships in arctic conditions, breaking through ice up to three meters thick. The new ships will provide escort for ships carrying hydrocarbons from the fields of the Yamal and Gydan Peninsulas, the shelf Kara Sea to the markets of the Asia-Pacific region. The dual draft design allows the vessel to be used both in arctic waters and in the mouths of polar rivers.

Under a contract with FSUE "Atomflot", the Baltic Shipyard will build three nuclear-powered icebreakers of project 22220. On May 26 last year, the first serial icebreaker of this project, Siberia, was laid down. This autumn, it is planned to begin construction of the second Ural icebreaker.

The contract for the construction of the lead nuclear icebreaker of project 22220 between FSUE Atomflot and BZS was signed in August 2012. Its cost is 37 billion rubles. The contract for the construction of two serial nuclear icebreakers of project 22220 was signed between BZS and the state corporation Rosatom in May 2014, the contract value was 84.4 billion rubles.

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The Yamal nuclear-powered icebreaker is one of ten Arktika-class icebreakers, whose construction began in 1986, back in Soviet times. The construction of the icebreaker "Yamal" was completed in 1992, but already at that time the need for its use to ensure navigation along the Northern Sea Route disappeared. Therefore, the owners of this vessel, weighing 23,455 tons and 150 meters long, converted it into a ship with 50 tourist cabins and capable of delivering tourists to the North Pole.

The "heart" of the icebreaker "Yamal" are two sealed water-cooled reactors OK-900A, which contain 245 fuel rods with enriched uranium. Full load nuclear fuel is about 500 kilograms, this reserve is enough for the continuous operation of the icebreaker for 5 years. Each nuclear reactor weighs about 160 tons and is located in a sealed compartment, shielded from the rest of the ship's structure by layers of steel, water and high-density concrete. Around the reactor compartment and throughout the ship, there are 86 sensors that measure radiation levels.

Steam power reactor reactors generate superheated steam high pressure, which rotates turbines that drive 12 electric generators. Energy from the generators is supplied to the electric motors that rotate the blades of the icebreaker's three propellers. The engine power of each propeller is 25 thousand Horse power or 55.3 MW. Using this power, the Yamal icebreaker can move through ice 2.3 meters thick at a speed of 3 knots. Despite the fact that the maximum thickness of ice through which an icebreaker can pass is 5 meters, cases of overcoming ice hummocks with a thickness of 9 meters have been recorded.

The hull of the Yamal icebreaker is a double hull coated with a special polymer material that reduces friction. The thickness of the upper layer of the hull in the place of ice cutting is 48 millimeters, and in other places - 30 millimeters. The water ballast system, located between the two layers of the icebreaker's hull, allows you to concentrate additional weight in the front of the vessel, which acts as an additional ram. If the power of the icebreaker is not enough to cut through the ice, then an air bubble system is connected, which ejects 24 cubic meters of air per second under the ice surface and breaks it from below.

The design of the reactor cooling system of the nuclear icebreaker "Yamal" is designed for the use of sea water with maximum temperature at 10 degrees Celsius. Therefore, this icebreaker and others like it will never be able to leave the northern seas and go to more southern latitudes.


Icebreaker Yamal, one of the newest Russian Arctic vessels, breaks through hummocks

Hundreds of people swarm on the snow-covered surface of the frozen river. From a distance, what was going on there could be mistaken for a strange holiday or a wall-to-wall fist fight. However, approaching and looking closely, the observer would notice that in the movements of people there is an orderliness inherent in joint work. Several dozen men were chiseling a furrow in the ice with their picks, and then, joining hundreds of others, they harnessed themselves to an unusual mechanism - a long, twenty meters, pointed box, loaded in the back with cast-iron ingots. The projectile, nicknamed the ice sleigh, crawled onto the ice, pushed through it and crushed the broken blocks under itself, leaving behind a long polynya more than two meters wide crossing the river.

So in the times of Peter the Great, ice ferries were built, which were sometimes also equipped with cannons. Their nuclei crushed the ice along the ferry.

The Russian winter, which lasts nine months a year in the northern regions, spurred the inquisitive mind to look for unusual ways of sailing. And the fact that our country faces the Arctic Ocean, which is the shortest road from the European part of the country to the wealth of Eastern Siberia and Far East, forced to go through the ice at the risk of life.

In pursuit of profit

Maritime business, brought under Peter I from Holland and England, brought many new words into the Russian language. However, Russia also enriched foreign languages a marine term: after all, both the German Eisbreher and the English icebreaker are tracing papers from the Russian word "icebreaker". And we owe this to the Kronstadt mayor Mikhail Britnev.

It is clear that the Russian breeder, who kept a small fleet on the St. Petersburg-Oranienbaum-Kronstadt line, was driven not by linguistic interest and not by pure ambition. The path to Kronstadt runs along Gulf of Finland covered with ice 120 days a year. In winter, they got there through the frozen sea on sledges, but as long as the ice was thin, the communication almost ceased.

An inquisitive businessman, familiar with the experience of the inhabitants of the Russian North - the Pomors, who have been sailing the Arctic seas on their wooden boats for more than five hundred years, decided to learn from their experience. The contours of the hull of the Pomeranian Kochi formed in the bow sharp corner around 20-30 degrees. So Britnev also ordered the bow of his 60-horsepower steamship Pilot to be redone in the same way. And on April 25, 1864, much earlier than the usual start of navigation, the Pilot, breaking the melted ice, passed from Kronstadt to Oranienbaum, bringing its owner a considerable additional income. Like the ancient "ice sleigh", the ship climbed onto the ice field and broke it with its weight. Later, the shipowner adapted his other steamship, the Boy, for ice navigation. Both ships served in St. Petersburg waters for about 25 years, having worked out the way to navigate ice fields, which is still used today by all icebreakers, including state-of-the-art nuclear ones.

In 1871, when unprecedented frosts fettered European northern ports, Hamburg industrialists turned to Britnev, and he sold them drawings of a converted Pilot for 300 rubles. According to these drawings, the first foreign icebreaker Eisbreher I was built, and the design of the ship was widely used in the world.

It was the success of the Britnev idea that gave the famous Russian naval commander and oceanologist Admiral Makarov the idea of ​​​​building the first Ermak line icebreaker, which played a serious role in the development of the Arctic.

"Nut" among the ice

In his public lecture in 1897, "To the North Pole - ahead," Admiral Makarov stated: "No nation is interested in icebreakers, as much as Russia. Nature has frozen our seas with ice, but technology is now providing enormous means, and it must be admitted that at present the ice cover no longer presents an insurmountable obstacle to navigation.

A year later, the Yermak was launched in Newcastle, England. It was built according to the terms of reference developed under the guidance of Stepan Makarov himself and the famous Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev, who supported his risky project.

Indeed, as tests have shown, "an insurmountable obstacle" northern ice had no idea, and yet it was not easy to deal with them.

Archimedes, of course, was right when he asserted that a buoyant force equal to the weight of the liquid displaced by it acts on a body immersed in a liquid. However, in the ice, the ship is also subjected to monstrous lateral pressure, which can crush it like a shell. Therefore, the section of the icebreaker's hull is made in the form of a barrel or a nut, and the waterline should be below the widest part. Then the ice squeezing the icebreaker, no matter how hard they try, will push it out and will not be able to crush it. Naturally, increased requirements for strength and unsinkability are applied to icebreakers. If you look under the thickened skin compared to a conventional ship, you can see a system of reinforced beams: stringers, frames ... - and the entire hull of the icebreaker is divided by watertight bulkheads into several sealed compartments. In the waterline area, the skin is reinforced with an additional strip - the so-called ice belt. And to overcome the frictional resistance of the hull on the ice, a pneumatic washer device is used, which pumps air bubbles through small holes in the board.

The bevel of the hull contours in the bow, used by the inventor of the icebreaker Britnev, is still used today. Moreover, not only the stem (“nose” of the ship) is sharpened, but also the sternpost, since it is necessary to move in the ice in the “shuttle” way - “back and forth”. It is interesting that initially the Ermak icebreaker had two propellers - in front and behind. Admiral Makarov spied on such a scheme from American small icebreakers that sailed along the Great Lakes. However, the very first collision with the Arctic ice showed that the front propeller in high latitudes is no help, and the icebreaker was remade.

In attack and defense

The action of an icebreaker is by no means limited to a simple crushing of ice, although, of course, the larger part is on top of the ice field, the longer the lever arm and the higher the efficiency of work. Important, as was said, is the shape of the "nose", and the emphasis (thrust force) of the propellers, and the inertial properties of the ship operating in raids.

Icebreaker could be compared to military unit, having the means and tactics for both defense and offensive. For the offensive, each icebreaker is equipped with a trim system. In a few words, it can be described as two tanks - bow and stern - alternately filled with outboard water. On the first icebreakers, the tanks were connected by a pipe, later each of them was equipped with its own pump.

Having climbed onto the ice field, the icebreaker fills the bow tanks with water and gives additional dynamics to the movement from top to bottom. The alternating filling of the tanks causes it to swing vigorously from bow to stern, as a splitter does when it gets stuck in a log. By pumping out water from the bow tanks and filling the stern tanks, the icebreaker quickly returns to clean water to repeat the attack.

The same system ensures the rocking of the vessel from side to side: additional tanks are located on both sides.

Naturally, all these actions require an energy saturation that is unusual for any other ship. It is not surprising that for a long time the icebreakers could not perform any other marine work - neither cargo nor passenger - except for escorting ships: the entire interior of these "armored safes" was occupied by the engine and fuel supply. Just the main marine specialty of the icebreaker is due to the shape of its hull: it is made wide so that the channel remaining behind it is convenient for the passage of slave ships. The length of the vessel, for better maneuverability, is being tried to be reduced.

The first icebreakers were steam-powered, with coal-fired boilers, and steam plants. Coal, which filled almost all the free space in the hold, was usually enough for thirty days. It happened that in the middle of the route, the icebreaker commander informed the caravan that he was stopping the wiring and leaving for the port to replenish fuel supplies.

The next generation were diesel icebreakers, power plants which rotated the rotors of electric generators. The current was supplied to the electric motors that set in motion the propeller shaft with the propeller.

But to conquer arctic ice more and more power was required, and diesel icebreakers were replaced by nuclear icebreakers, whose reactors drive steam generators, steam turbines power generators, and electric motors power propeller shafts. In the holds of nuclear-powered ships, the place of fuel was taken by powerful radiation protection systems.

On the edge

One hundred and forty years of the history of icebreakers have changed a lot in their design, most of all their power has increased. If the power of the Ermak engines was 9.5 thousand hp, then the diesel-electric icebreaker Moskva, which went to sea about half a century later, was twice as powerful - 22 thousand hp. Modern nuclear-powered icebreakers of the Taimyr type already harness 50,000 "horses".

Due to the difficulties of their maritime profession, the power of the icebreakers' propulsion systems per ton of displacement is six times higher than that of ocean liners. But even nuclear icebreakers remained qualitatively the same - armored boxes filled with herds of "horses". The business of icebreakers is to break through the ice for the caravans of ordinary tankers and transporters following them. This principle of organizing transportation can be compared with the movement of barges behind a tugboat. However, in Lately more and more self-propelled barges are in demand, and marine engineers began to think about how to teach transport ships to walk independently in ice.

The idea is not new: back in the 60s of the XIX century, the first Russian iron warship - the armored gunboat "Experience" was tried to be converted according to the project of engineer Euler into the original icebreaker. The “experience” was given a bow ram, several cranes were installed on board for dropping 20-40-pound weights, and “shots” were arranged in the underwater part - poles with explosives mounted on them. However, the "Experience" did not stand the test and was again converted into a gunboat, called the "Mina".

Later, attempts were made to cut the ice with cutters or melt it, but they did not justify themselves (although the nuclear icebreakers Arktika and Sibir use auxiliary devices heating the bow of the hull). And then it was decided to try to change not just the way of breaking ice, but the icebreaker itself, making it not a “cleaver”, but a “blade”. To do this, it was planned to turn the ship into a “catamaran”, two hulls of which would be located one above the other: all cargoes would be placed in the lower, underwater part, and the power plants in the surface, and both parts would be connected with narrow “knives”, inside which would be placed coming from the hull into the body of the loading and unloading pipes. Whether such a transport icebreaker will appear is unknown, but the fact that the Russian icebreaker fleet should continue to develop is beyond doubt: the expanses of the Arctic will always beckon with their riches.

In essence, a nuclear icebreaker is a steamship. The nuclear reactor heats water, which turns into steam, which spins turbines that excite generators that generate electricity, which goes to electric motors that turn 3 propellers.

The thickness of the hull in places where the ice breaks is 5 centimeters, but the strength of the hull is given not so much by the thickness of the skin, but by the number and location of the frames. The icebreaker has a double bottom, so that in the event of a hole, water will not enter the ship.

The nuclear icebreaker "50 Let Pobedy" has two nuclear reactors with a capacity of 170 megawatts each. The power of these two installations is enough to supply electricity to a city with a population of 2 million people.

Nuclear reactors are reliably protected from accidents and external shocks. The icebreaker can withstand a direct hit in the reactor passenger aircraft or a collision with the same icebreaker at speeds up to 10 km/h.

Reactors are filled with new fuel every 5 years!

We had a short tour of the engine room of the icebreaker, photos of which are under the cut. Plus, I will show where we ate, what we ate, how the rest of the interior of the icebreaker rested ...

The tour began in the office of the chief engineer. He briefly spoke about the structure of the icebreaker and where we would go during the tour. Since the group was mostly foreigners, everything was translated first into English, and then into Japanese:

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2 turbines, each of which simultaneously rotates 3 generators, produce alternating current. In the background, the yellow boxes are the rectifiers. Since the propulsion motors are powered by direct current, it must be rectified:

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Rectifiers:

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Electric motors that rotate the propellers. This place is very noisy and is located 9 meters below the waterline. The total draft of the icebreaker is 11 meters:

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The steering machine looks very impressive. On the bridge, the helmsman turns a small steering wheel with his finger, and here huge pistons turn the steering wheel astern:

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And this is the top of the steering wheel. He himself is in the water. The icebreaker is much more maneuverable than conventional ships:

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Desalination plants:

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They produce 120 tons per day fresh water:

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Water can be tasted directly from the distiller. I drank - plain distilled water:

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Auxiliary boilers:

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The ship provides a lot of degrees of protection against emergency situations. One of them is extinguishing fires with carbon dioxide:

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Purely in Russian - oil drips from under the gasket. Instead of replacing the gasket, they just hung the jar. Believe it or not, it's the same at my house. About a year ago, a heated towel rail leaked, so I still haven’t replaced it, but I just pour out a bucket of water once a week:

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Wheelhouse:

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The icebreaker is operated by 3 people. The watch lasts 4 hours, that is, each shift carries a watch, for example, from 4 pm to 8 pm and from 4 am to 8 am, the next from 8 pm to midnight and from 8 am to noon, etc. Only 3 shifts.

The watch consists of a helmsman who directly turns the helm, a Watch Chief who gives commands to the sailor where to turn the rudder and is responsible for the entire ship and an officer on duty who makes entries in the logbook, marks the position of the ship on the map and helps the Watch Chief.

The senior watch usually stood in the left wing of the bridge, where all the equipment necessary for navigation was installed. The three large levers in the middle are the machine telegraph handles that control the speed of the propellers. Each of them has 41 positions - 20 forward, 20 back and stop:

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Steering sailor. Pay attention to the size of the steering wheel:

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Radio room. From here I sent photos:

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On the icebreaker great amount ladders, including several representative:

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Corridors and doors to cabins. The cabins themselves I already :

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The bar where we whiled away the sunny white nights:

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Library. I don’t know what books are usually there, because for our cruise the books were brought from Canada and they were all in English:

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Icebreaker lobby and reception window:

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Mailbox. I wanted to send myself a postcard from the North Pole, but I forgot:

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Swimming pool and saunas:

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During my trip to Murmansk, like everyone else, I visited the nuclear icebreaker Lenin. Therefore, I will describe this vehicle in my multi-photo manner :-)))


Icebreaker Lenin is a three-screw vessel. By architectural type, it is a smooth-deck vessel with moderate sheer, four continuous decks, an elongated superstructure and two masts. In the aft part of the boat deck there is a runway and a hangar for a helicopter. Chimney absent.

unusual big sizes mainmasts are due to its use for ventilation of the steam generator plant.

The use of atomic energy determined the features of the internal arrangement of the power, residential and service premises of the ship. The hull of the icebreaker is divided by the main transverse watertight bulkheads into twelve compartments.

Two longitudinal bulkheads running from the second bottom to the upper deck form compartments along the sides, in which mainly ballast, fuel and other tanks are located, above the lower deck - various storerooms, service rooms and crew cabins.

The hull of the icebreaker Lenin is significantly different in design from other Russian-built icebreakers. The bottom, sides, inner decks, platforms and the upper deck at the extremities are built according to the transverse system, and the upper deck in the middle part - along the longitudinal system.

Spacing size 800 mm. Intermediate frames are installed along the entire length of the vessel from the second bottom to the living deck. A set of bow and stern ends is fan-shaped; the frames in these areas are located normally to the skin.

The outer skin in the area of ​​the ice belt and the adjacent belts above and below it are made of high-strength steel. The thickness of the ice belt is 36 mm in the middle part, 52 mm in the bow and 44 mm in the aft end.

The stem and stern of the icebreaker are cast-welded. The total weight of the stem is 30 tons, and the stern stem is 86 tons. The icebreaker's rudder is welded and has a sheathing made of sheet steel 40 mm thick. The area of ​​the rudder blade is 18.5 m2. Stock forged from alloy steel with a diameter of 550 mm.

The icebreaker crew is accommodated in single and double cabins. For residential, cultural and community and medical premises on the icebreaker used water heating with air conditioning.

Steam heating in the engine room and auxiliary rooms. A powerful automatic refrigeration unit and a large number of provisional storerooms.

The cargo facilities on the icebreaker are: in the bow - two cargo booms with electric winches with a lifting capacity of 1.5 tf,

in the middle part - a crane with a lifting capacity of 12 tf for servicing the compartment of a nuclear installation;

in the stern - two cranes with a lifting capacity of 3 tf.

The icebreaker is equipped with three dead anchors (one of them is spare) with swivel legs weighing 6 tons each, a stop anchor weighing 2 tons and four ice anchors (two 150 kg each and two 100 kg each). The anchor anchors are retracted into the hawse flush with the skin. Cast anchor chains of caliber 67 mm have a length of 325 m.

In the stern there is a cutout for towing ships close, which is equipped with fenders and rubber-lined fenders. An automatic double-drum towing winch with a pulling force of 40 tf on the main drum and 25 tf on the auxiliary one is installed at the aft end.

The electro-hydraulic steering machine shifts the rudder from side to side in 30 seconds at a vessel speed of 18 knots and one of the two installed pumps is operating. The unsinkability of the icebreaker is ensured by the simultaneous flooding of the two main watertight compartments.

The icebreaker has two lifeboats for 58 people each, two motor lifeboats for 40 people each, two six-oared yawls, a crew boat and a tugboat. The launching and recovery of lifeboats and boats is carried out with the help of rolling davits.

The power plant of the icebreaker operates according to the following scheme. The heat released in the reactor is used to produce superheated steam in steam generators. The steam is directed to the main turbine generators, from which electricity is supplied to the propulsion motors.

The armatures of the propulsion motors are connected to the propeller shafts. The steam generators are powered by feed pumps operating in parallel, so that in the event of an emergency shutdown of one of the pumps, the remaining pumps automatically increase productivity to required level. They control the entire power plant of the icebreaker from one post.

The biological protection of the nuclear plant guarantees the protection of the icebreaker crew from the effects of radioactive radiation, which are controlled by a special dosimetric system. The control panel of this system is located in the radiation control post.

The main turbine generators are located in two compartments: bow and stern. Each compartment has two active-reactive turbines with a capacity of 11,000 hp each. Each turbine is connected through a gearbox to two double-armor DC generators with a continuous power of 11,500 hp. at a rated voltage of 600 V.

Turbine-generator units feed three propeller two-anchor DC electric motors: the middle one and two onboard ones. The middle engine receives 50% of the power generated by the turbogenerators, while the onboard engines receive 25% each. The power of the medium electric motor is 19,600 hp, and the onboard motors are 9,800 hp each. The propeller shafts of the icebreaker are made of alloyed steel. Middle shaft diameter 740 mm, length 9.2 m, weight 26.8 t; side shaft diameter 712 mm, length 18.4 m, weight 45 tons.

Propellers are four-bladed, with removable blades. The weight of the middle propeller is 27.8 tons, the side propeller is 22.5 tons.

The icebreaker has bow and stern power stations. Three turbogenerators are installed in the bow, two turbogenerators and one backup diesel generator with a capacity of 1000 kW each are installed in the stern. Each turbogenerator consists of an active type condensing steam turbine and an alternating current generator. In addition, the ship has two emergency diesel generators.

The nuclear-powered icebreaker project was developed at TsKB-15 (now Iceberg) in 1953-1955 (project No. 92) after the decision to build a nuclear icebreaker was made on November 20, 1953 by the Council of Ministers of the USSR. The chief designer was V. I. Neganov. The nuclear plant was designed under the guidance of I. I. Afrikantov. Hull steel grades AK-27 and AK-28 (almost "stainless steel") was specially developed at the Prometheus Institute for icebreakers.

The ship was laid down in 1956 at the shipyard named after. A. Marty in Leningrad. Chief builder - V. I. Chervyakov.

Launched on December 5, 1957. On September 12, 1959, already from the shipyard of the Admiralty Plant, he went to sea trials under the command of P. A. Ponomarev

December 3, 1959 handed over to the Ministry navy. Since 1960, part of the Murmansk Shipping Company.

It had good ice penetration. In the first 6 years of operation alone, the icebreaker traveled over 82,000 nautical miles and independently navigated more than 400 ships.

The icebreaker "Lenin" worked for 30 years and in 1989 was decommissioned and put into eternal parking in Murmansk.

Now let's move inside. The entrance is free, and at the entrance a group of students of a local sailor has already developed.

The nuclear-powered ship stands at the pontoon berth of the Murmansk seaport.

Moored nearby "Klavdiya Elanskaya"

It provides local transportation.

The atomic icebreaker "Rossiya" is visible in the distance, if I'm not mistaken.

On the other side, such yachts are moored.

Monuments on the opposite bank of the bay.

Time 12 o'clock: forward...

We pass from the ladder to the board.

In the following parts, we will see what is inside it and take a closer look at the wheelhouse.