Bellona nuclear digest. March 2024
A survey of events in the field of nuclear and radiation safety relating to Russia and Ukraine.
News
Publish date: February 3, 2000
Written by: Igor Kudrik
News
A new nuclear powered icebreaker called “50 Year Victory Anniversary” (named after the victory in the Second World War) might join Russia’s civilian nuclear fleet in the Arctic in three years, Business St. Petersburg news agency reported.
The construction of the ninth Russian nuclear icebreaker was launched back in 1989 at the Baltic shipyard in St. Petersburg and was due to enter service in 1994. Due to scarce funding, and a reduction of cargo shipments in the Arctic regions of Siberia, the construction has been virtually frozen the past years. “50 Year Victory Anniversary” has two reactors of KLT-40 design.
This year, the Russian government has pledged to earmark around $3.5 million annually to complete the construction of the vessel. But the manager of the shipyard, Oleg Shulyakovsky, says it is still not enough. According Mr. Shulyakovsky, around $25 million is required annually to complete the icebreaker in three years. Otherwise, as some sceptics put it, the name of the icebreaker would have to be changed to “80 Year Victory Anniversary.”
Russia has 8 nuclear powered icebreakers and one nuclear lighter ship – all of them stationed at the Atomflot base in Murmansk and operated by Murmansk Shipping Company. The first nuclear powered icebreaker Lenin was taken out of service in 1989 and will be converted into a museum if funding is at place.
A survey of events in the field of nuclear and radiation safety relating to Russia and Ukraine.
Russian president Vladimir Putin has told the United Nations atomic energy watchdog that Russia plans to restart Ukraine’s embattled Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, currently occupied by Russian troops and technicians, fueling worries about a serious nuclear accident on the front lines of a grinding military conflict.
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Recent attacks on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant "mark the beginning of a new and gravely dangerous front of the war," the UN atomic agency's director general said last week.