OREANDA-NEWS. Russian state corporation Rosatom reported that at the nuclear-powered icebreaker “Arctika” the reactor plant was started up. Physical start-up is reaching the minimum power level that is enough to control a nuclear chain reaction. The icebreaker has a compact and economical RITM-200 reactor unit consisting of two nuclear reactors with a thermal capacity of 175 megawatts each.

The representative of the company said that after the tests, the reactors will reach the energy level of power, and then the sea trials will start.

In July 2017, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that he did not see a problem in a small shift in the deadline for the commissioning of “Arctika”. Earlier President Vladimir Putin postponed it from 2017 to 2019 and ordered to take “personnel, organizational and managerial decisions due to the failure to meet the previously scheduled deadlines”.

The icebreaker “Arctika” was built by order of Rosatom at the Baltic Shipyard in Saint Petersburg. It is planned to be commissioned in 2020. This vessel is to become the largest and most powerful nuclear-powered icebreaker in the world. It can reach speeds of up to 22 knots (about 41 kilometers per hour) and navigate in the ice of up to 2.8 meters thick. The vessel is designed for service up to 40 years. “Arktika” can sail in the Arctic waters and in the mouths of polar rivers. It is expected that the icebreaker will lead the ships in the Barents Sea, the Pechora Sea and the Kara Sea, as well as in the mouth of the Yenisei and the Gulf of Ob in the North of Siberia.