OREANDA-NEWS. As RIA Novosti reports, construction of the fourth serial Russian nuclear-powered icebreaker Chukotka, project 22220, began on Wednesday at the famous Baltic Shipyard in St. Petersburg. The customer of the shipbuilding project is the Russian state corporation "Rosatom".

According to the shipyard, the name of the new icebreaker continues the glorious tradition of naming Rosatomflot ships. According to this principle, the names for the icebreaker ships are chosen from the famous geographical names of various objects along the Northern Sea Route of Russia or, as a variant, they repeat the names of the outstanding nuclear-powered icebreakers of the Arctic type of Soviet time.

As the head of Rosatom Alexei Likhachev said at the opening ceremony of the constraction of the icebreaker, the name of this icebreaker series sounds like music for nuclear scientists who are mastering the Northern Sea Route. He added that the management of the shipyard is going to fullfil the extremely serious tasks next year - the release of Siberia, the first serial long-waited icebreaker.

In October, the world's most powerful lead universal nuclear-powered icebreaker Arktika, project 22220, built at the Baltic Shipyard, was handed over to Rosatom and officially became part of the Russian nuclear fleet. Currently, Baltzavod is building three serial nuclear-powered ships of project 22220 - Siberia, Ural, and the Yakutia icebreaker, which was laid down in May this year.

Nuclear-powered ships of project 22220 are needed to ensure Russian leadership in the Arctic, they will be able to conduct caravans of ships, breaking through ice up to three meters thick. These icebreakers will provide pilotage of vessels with hydrocarbons from the fields of the Yamal and Gydan peninsulas and from the shelf of the Kara Sea to the markets of the Asia-Pacific region.