Nuclear icebreaker Vaygach sailing from Murmansk along the Norwegian coast to free ships caught in Baltic ice

An unseasonably harsh winter in the region of the Gulf of Finland has locked some 58 vessels in ice and necessitated the dispatching of the Russian nuclear powered icebreaker "Vaygach" from its home port in Murmansk to St. Petersburg in a move viewed warily by Norwegian environmentalists.

It is the first time in recent memory that a Russian nuclear powered icebreaker will be sent along the some 25,148-kilometre coastline from Murmansk and along the Norwegian coast as the Vaygach enters the waters of the Baltic Sea.

According to the website of Rosatomflot, the Vaygach left for St. Petersburg on February 19th, after being delayed while the Russian icebreaker company awaited permissions to sail through the narrows of the Danish belts.

All told, eight European states will have to give their nod to the nuclear powered vessel to sail through the tight and busy waterways of the Baltic.

Bellona is watching the progress of the Vaygach with a critical eye. Such passages of Russian nuclear icebreakers are exceedingly rare along Norway’s coast.

February has seen an inordinately extreme situation with ice in the Baltic Sea. According to the Federal Agency for Sea and River Transport, partial thaws, strong winds, and subsequent cold snaps in several areas have led to ice as thick as a metre.

Nuclear icebreakers a rare sight along Norwegian coast

Igor Kudrik, an expert on the Russian nuclear industry and maritime affairs indicated several occasions on which Russian nuclear icebreakers had passed through Norwegian waters. New ships passed along the Norwegian coast en route from the Baltic Shipyard in St. Petersburg to Murmansk. On another occasion in the early 1990s, a Russian nuclear icebreak visted the northern Norwegian port of Tromsø.

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Is it safe to use nuclear icebreakers in the Baltic ?

“The Gulf of Finland (on the Baltic near St. Petersburg) is shallow, and is congested with traffic. To use a nuclear powered ship in such a water body means to increase risks, adding to oil spill risks a radioactive risk,” said Nikitin, adding that “we would like to see the Baltic as a non-nuclear sea, like the Black Sea.”

Vladimir Blinov, spokesman Russia’s Atomflot nuclear icebreaker port in Murmansk, told RIA Novosti that Artic class icebreakers had never worked in the Baltic Region before. Oleg, Kudryavtsev, the chief state inspector for icebreaker operations in the administration of Big Port St. Petersburg, confirmed to the agency that the Vaygach is expected in the coming days. He noted that prior to this winter, Atomflot and the Rosmorport division of the Federal Agency for Sea and River Transport, had never had to work cooperatively.

Andrei Smirnov, deputy general director of icebreaker deployment at Atomflot, told Bellona Web in an interview that there is not talk of changing the Vaygach’s area of deployment, and that it would only be working in the Baltic region temporarily

“The preliminary announcements were two to three weeks,” he said.

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