Arktika class icebreaker

Class overview
Builders:	Saint Petersburg Baltic plant
Operators:	Murmansk Shipping Company
Succeeded by:	LK-60YA-class icebreaker (Project 22220)
Built:	1975–2007
Completed:	6
Active:	4
Retired:	2
General characteristics
Type:	Icebreaker
Displacement:	23,000 t
Length:	148 m (486 ft) to 159 m (522 ft)
Beam:	30 m (98 ft)
Decks:	12
Installed power:	Two OK-900 nuclear reactors (2 × 171 MW)
Propulsion:	Nuclear-turbo-electric Three shafts, 52 MW (combined)
Speed:	20.6 knots (38.2 km/h; 23.7 mph)
Endurance:	7.5 months
Complement:	138–200

The Arktika class is a Russian (former Soviet) class of nuclear-powered icebreakers. Formerly known as Project 10520 nuclear-powered icebreaker, they were the largest and most powerful icebreakers until 2016. 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 government-owned operator Atomflot. Of the ten civilian nuclear-powered vessels built by Russia (and the Soviet Union), six have been 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.

On July 3, 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 December 17, 1975, Moscow and Leningrad received radio messages informing them that sea trials had been completed successfully. The newest and largest nuclear icebreaker at the time was ready for the Arctic.

Arktika was the first surface ship to reach the North Pole, on August 17, 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.

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