News
Publish date: February 6, 2007
News
The St. Petersburg-based ship maker said the 50 Years of Victory icebreaker has been towed along the narrow Neva Riva to the St. Petersburg seaport and will undergo a series of tests to check its manoeuvrability and speed performance in the open sea.
"Experts will also test the ship’s navigation and communications systems, water-purification and anti-freezing equipment and other devices, whose performance cannot be checked near shore," the company’s press service said.
An upgrade of the Arktika-class icebreaker, the 159-meter (522-foot) long and 30-meter (100-foot) wide vessel, with deadweight of 25,000 metric tons, is designed to break through ice up to 2.8 meters deep (9.2 feet). It has a 138-man crew.
The Russian nuclear-powered icebreaker fleet, which is operated by the Murmansk Shipping Company, currently consists of five Arktika-class icebreakers (Arktika, Sibir, Rossiya, Sovetskiy Soyuz, and Yamal), and two Taymyr-class river icebreakers (Taymyr and Vaygach).
The icebreaker was launched in 1989 but could not be completed before 2006 due to the poor state financing.
Throughout the past year, our mission at the Bellona Environmental Transparency Center has focused on two key, but intertwined issues—nuclear and radiation safety as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine drags on, and the worldwide influence of Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear corporation, which itself is actively involved in the war and has participated in the occupation of a Ukrainian nuclear power plant.
At the beginning of the year, reports in the German and Russian press suggested an approximate 70% increase in uranium imports from Russia to Germany in 2024. But does this reflect broader European trends? It does not. Overall, imports of uranium and nuclear fuel from Russia to Western countries actually dropped sharply in 2024. Unlike the situation in Germany, this is already an established trend.
A Lingen, Germany plant could begin producing nuclear fuel in cooperation with a subsidiary of Rosatom, Russia's state nuclear corporation, which is directly involved in the war in Ukraine and occupying the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
In this news digest, we monitor events that impact the environment in the Russian Arctic. Our focus lies in identifying the factors that contribute to pollution and climate change.