''Vaygach'' ( rus, Вайгач, p=vɐjˈɡatɕ) is a shallow-draught
nuclear-powered icebreaker
A nuclear-powered icebreaker is an icebreaker with an onboard nuclear power plant that produces power for the vessel's propulsion system. , Russia is the only country that builds and operates nuclear-powered icebreakers, having built a number of ...
. She was built in 1989 for the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
by
Wärtsilä Marine
Wärtsilä Marine ( fi, Wärtsilä Meriteollisuus; sv, Wärtsilä Marinindustri) was a Finnish shipbuilding company.
The company was created in 1987 in order to improve shipbuilding productivity by combining the Wärtsilä and Valmet yards un ...
Helsinki Shipyard in
Finland
Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...
by order of the
Murmansk Shipping Company
Murmansk Shipping Company (russian: Мурманское морское пароходство), often abbreviated as MSCO, is a Russian shipping company based in Murmansk (hence the name). One of the primary shipping companies operating in Ar ...
. Her sister ship is
''Taymyr''.
Career
2011 fire
On 15 December 2011, two crew members died and a third one was seriously injured in a fire on board ''Vaygach'' while the icebreaker was escorting merchant ships from
Dudinka
Dudinka (russian: Дуди́нка; Nenets: Тут'ын, ''Tutꜧyn'') is a town on the Yenisei River and the administrative center of Taymyrsky Dolgano-Nenetsky District of Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia. It used to be the administrative center of Ta ...
to
Murmansk
Murmansk (Russian: ''Мурманск'' lit. "Norwegian coast"; Finnish: ''Murmansk'', sometimes ''Muurmanski'', previously ''Muurmanni''; Norwegian: ''Norskekysten;'' Northern Sámi: ''Murmánska;'' Kildin Sámi: ''Мурман ланнҍ'') ...
. The fire, which started in one of the crew cabins presumably due to negligence and was extinguished by the crew by 04:00 Moscow time, did not cause any damage to the ship's nuclear reactor.
[Fire on board of nuclear icebreaker ''Vaygach'', two crew died](_blank)
Maritime Bulletin, 15 December 2011.
Design
General characteristics
While ''Vaygach'' is slightly smaller than the
''Arktika''-class nuclear icebreakers, with an overall length of nearly and beam of she is still among the largest polar icebreakers ever built. At the maximum draught of , ''Vaygach'' has a displacement of 21,000 tons.
However, she can also operate at a reduced draught of only .
''Vaygach'' has a traditional icebreaker hull with highly raked stem and sloping sides to reduce the ice loads in compressive ice fields and improve maneuverability. The special cold-resistant steel used in the hull was delivered by the Soviet Union. Although designed for a crew of slightly over 100, the large
superstructure of ''Vaygach'' contains accommodation and facilities for 138 personnel. In addition to messes and other social premises, there is a large auditorium that doubles as a recreational room and a
winter garden
A winter garden is a kind of garden maintained in wintertime.
History
The origin of the winter garden dates back to the 17th to 19th centuries where European nobility would construct large conservatories that would house tropical and subtro ...
that can be used to provide fresh vegetables for the crew during the
polar night
The polar night is a phenomenon where the nighttime lasts for more than 24 hours that occurs in the northernmost and southernmost regions of Earth. This occurs only inside the polar circles. The opposite phenomenon, the polar day, or midni ...
. In the aft, there is a helideck and a hangar for single
Kamov Ka-32
The Kamov Ka-27 (NATO reporting name 'Helix') is a military helicopter developed for the Soviet Navy, and currently in service in various countries including Russia, Ukraine, Vietnam, China, South Korea, and India. Variants include the Ka-29 a ...
helicopter. Being an escort icebreaker, ''Vaygach'' is equipped with a standard towing winch and a stern notch for close towing in difficult conditions.
''Vaygach'' is classified by the
Russian Maritime Register of Shipping with the Russian ice class LL2, which means that she is intended for icebreaking operations on Arctic coastal routes in level ice up to thick during winter and spring. The shallow draught of the icebreaker allows it to operate in rivers, estuaries and other locations where the water is not deep enough for bigger ''Arktika''-class icebreakers and the ice conditions are so severe that refueling of diesel-powered icebreakers would be difficult, even impossible.
When the ''Taymyr''-class icebreakers were designed, considerable effort was put into improving the safety of these nuclear-powered ships. The vessels were designed to operate in areas where there might be only of water beneath the keel, less than the thickness of the ice floes the icebreaking bow is pushing under the ship. The scenarios used for structural dimensioning of the reactor compartment and shielding included a 25,000-ton
SA-15 type arctic freighter striking the icebreaker amidships at . Furthermore, all critical systems are duplicated to improve reliability and allow the ship to maintain most of its operational capability after a collision.
Power and propulsion
''Vaygach'' is powered by a single
KLT-40M nuclear fission reactor
A nuclear reactor is a device used to initiate and control a fission nuclear chain reaction or nuclear fusion reactions. Nuclear reactors are used at nuclear power plants for electricity generation and in nuclear marine propulsion. Heat from n ...
located amidships with a thermal output of 171 MW.
The nuclear power plant on board the icebreaker produces
superheated steam, which is used to generate electricity for the propulsion motors and other shipboard consumers as well as heat to maintain operational capability at . ''Vaygach'' has two main turbogenerators aft of the reactor compartment consisting of Soviet-made
steam turbines coupled to
Siemens generators, each producing 18,400 kW of electricity at 3,000 rpm for the propulsion motors. In addition the ship has two auxiliary turbogenerators, manufactured in the Soviet Union, which produce 2,000 kW of electrical power for shipboard consumers.
[Atomivoimalla päin ahtojäitä. Navigator 4/88. Pages 32–37.]
''Vaygach'' has a nuclear-turbo-electric powertrain, in which steam produced by the nuclear reactor is converted first into electricity, which in turn rotates the propulsion motors coupled to the propellers. The ship has three shafts with Strömberg AC motors controlled by
cycloconverter
A cycloconverter (CCV) or a cycloinverter converts a constant amplitude, constant frequency AC waveform to another AC waveform of a lower frequency by synthesizing the output waveform from segments of the AC supply without an intermediate DC lin ...
s. The propulsion motors are coupled directly to four-bladed fixed pitch propellers rotating at 180 rpm. The ship can maintain a speed of in open water
and in level ice.
[Arctic Passion News 1/2013](_blank)
Aker Arctic.
If the nuclear power can not be utilized, electricity can also be produced by three
16-cylinder Wärtsilä 16V22 medium-speed
diesel engine
The diesel engine, named after Rudolf Diesel, is an internal combustion engine in which ignition of the fuel is caused by the elevated temperature of the air in the cylinder due to mechanical compression; thus, the diesel engine is a so-ca ...
s coupled to 3,200 kVA Strömberg alternators. Two of the three generating sets, located ahead of the reactor compartment under the superstructure, can be used to provide approximately 4 MW of power for the propulsion motors while the third takes care of the auxiliary load. In case of emergency ''Vaygach'' also has two 200 kW emergency diesel generators of Soviet origin.
''Vaygach'' and her sister ship are one of the last icebreakers equipped with
Wärtsilä Air Bubbling System (WABS). When pressurized air released from nozzles located below the waterline, it lubricates the hull and, by reducing friction between steel and ice, improves the ship's ability to operate in difficult ice conditions such as pressure ridges and reduces the risk of becoming stuck in ice.
See also
*
Arktika-class icebreaker
The ''Arktika'' class is a Russian (formerly Soviet) class of nuclear-powered icebreakers. Formerly known as ''Project 10520 nuclear-powered icebreaker'', they were the world's largest and most powerful icebreakers until the 2016 launch of the fir ...
References
External links
* https://web.archive.org/web/20071031041247/http://www.carc.org/pubs/v16no4/8.htm Soviet Arctic Marine Transportation (1988).
{{Nuclear surface ships
Icebreakers of the Soviet Union
Nuclear-powered icebreakers
Icebreakers of Russia
Ships built in Helsinki