Baltic Shipyard certified to build nuclear serial icebreakers LK-60
Baltic Shipyard has secured licenses from the Federal Service for Ecological, Technological and Nuclear Supervision of the Russian Federation for the construction of nuclear power plants for the first and second serial new-generation nuclear icebreakers LK-60 of Project 22220 powered by RITM-200 reactor facilities, the shipyard said Wednesday.
The licenses issued by Rostehnadzor (MT-02-102-2771 and GBV-02-102-2772) are valid till Jan. 1, 2022 and before Jan. 1, 2023, respectively.
Nuclear-powered icebreakers of 22220 project with new type of nuclear plants RITM-200 of 60MW were designed for Rosatom specifically for operation on the Arctic shelf. These ships will be the largest and most powerful of all icebreakers built in the world.
Baltic Shipyard in November 2013 will commence keel-laying and fabrication of the series flagship, under a contract worth RUB 37.9bn.
The Russian Government will allocate RUB 86.105bn for 2014-2020 to fund the construction of two high specification serial icebreakers of project 22220.
There are currently five nuclear-powered icebreakers operating on the Northern Sea Route. The vessels will reach the end of their service life and four of them are to be decommissioned at the beginning of 2021 and only one icebreaker "50 Years of Victory" will remain. So, the government decision will allow to have before the end of 2020 three (flagship and two serial) fully operational nuclear-powered icebreakers of 60 MW.
The bidding process for nuclear-powered icebreakers contract is scheduled to be held on September 27, 2013. The Baltic Shipyard is considered to be one of the potential winners.
The project 22220 LK-60 ship will be the largest and most powerful icebreaker in the world.
Ship’s general characteristics:
Length overall - 173.3 m;
Breadth - 34 m;
DWL draft - 10.5 m;
Minimum working draft - 8.55 m;
Displacement - 33.54 tonnes.
Two-reactor power plant, reactor RHYTHM-200, 175 MW.
The contract design was developed at CDB "Iceberg" in 2009. Ship design will enable the icebreaker to operate both in the Arctic waters and at the mouths of rivers. The icebreaker will be deployed in the western region of the Arctic: in the Barents Sea, Pechora and Kara seas, and on shallow-water stretches of the Yenisei and the Ob Bay.
The RITM-200 reactor facility consists of two reactors with thermal power of 170 MW each. This exceeds the KLT plant capacity used today in modern nuclear icebreakers (140-150 MW). At the same time, the RITM-200 plant is cost effective: it is lighter, smaller, less expensive and besides, space-saving.
Baltiysky Plant (Baltic Shipyard) is part of the state-owned United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC). The shipbuilder specializes in the construction of surface ships of rank 1st, ice-class vessels (icebreakers, multipurpose PSVs, maintenance ships) with powered by nuclear and diesel-electric plants, FNPPs, other marine floating facilities.
After insolvency announcement of the former shipbuilding firm the Corporation established another company under the new brand name “Baltiysky Plant-Shipbuilding”, to save workforce and competencies. The new entity took over the shipbuilding and engineering assets of the strategic enterprise.
The Baltic Shipyard-Shipbuilding’s newbuilds order book is now valued at about RUB 60bn. The largest order is a 60MW nuclear-powered icebreaker, 25MW diesel-electric icebreaker, a power plant unit of the world's first Floating Nuclear Thermal Power Plant (FNTPP). The company's turnover for 2012 amounted to nearly RUB 9 billion, net income was RUB 50 million.