Maiden voyage of new icebreaker Yakutia goes to ice-locked oil terminal
The powerful vessel escorted a cargo ship to Sever Bay, the site where Rosneft is building its remote new oil terminal.
"This was the first regular voyage of the icebreaker since its entry into service," ship operator Rosatomflot informs.
Sea-ice in the area was about one meter thick and the vessel excellently coped with the task, the company emphasises.
The Yakutia is Russia's 4th icebreaker of the Arktika class. The flag-raising ceremony took place at the Baltic Yard in St. Petersburg in late December 2025 and it arrived in Murmansk in mid-April. It subsequently set course for the Yenisey Bay.
On April 18, the icebreaker started escort of the Grigory Shelikhov, a cargo ship loaded with oil industry equipment, and few days later arrived in Sever Bay.
The ice-locked bay on the northern end of the Taymyr Peninsula is site for Rosneft's building of a major new oil terminal. Shipping to the remote waters have been going on through all of winter. According to Rosatomflot, the Arktika in late February became the first nuclear-powered icebreaker to escort a ship to the Sever Bay.
Until then, only conventional icebreaker had served the new terminal. Among them is the world's biggest conventional icebreaker, the Viktor Chernomyrdin, which has been in Sever Bay through most of the winter.
The Yakutiya is powered by two RITM-200 reactors and is part of Rosatomflot's fleet of nuclear-powered icebreakers. It has three sister vessels of the same class; the Arktika, the Sibir and the Ural. All of them have been busy through the winter with ship escorts in the Kara Sea, the Gulf of Ob and Gulf of Yenisey.
