Nikolay Khlopkin, member of Russian Academy of Sciences (Kurchatov Institute)

– On this day I would like to point out the great services of our nuclear icebreaking fleet

Day of Nuclear Icebreaking Fleet is being marked in Murmansk today, Dec 3. 49 years ago, on Dec 3, the world’s first nuclear icebreaker “Lenin” hoisted a national flag. Nine nuclear icebreakers of three generations and the world’s only nuclear powered lighter-aboard container carrier “Sevmorput” have been built in our country since then. Our nuclear icebreaking fleet is unique: no single country in the world has such capacities of work in icy area.

On this day I would like to point out the great services of our nuclear icebreaking fleet. Almost half a century ago “Lenin” icebreaker opened an era of peaceful use of nuclear energy in the sea. It had managed to break not only the Arctic ice but also the resistance of bureaucrats and skeptics, who said that we were building a ship that would not be able to navigate. Even though it was a pilot project, the ship was immediately sent to the most hard-to-pass sections of the Northern Sea Route and perfectly coped with all of its tasks.

Today, the fleet is facing even bigger tasks. And we expect that the demand for nuclear icebreakers will substantially grow as soon as “big oil” begins to come from the northern seas.

I am glad that our state has acknowledged the high geo-political and economic importance of the North. Today, Canada, The United States, Denmark, Norway and Russia are starting a real battle for the territories of the Arctic Ocean.  The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea says that each of the states may claim these territories if it proves that they are the continuation of its continental shelf, if it carries out economic activities over these territories, etc. For the moment, Russia is the only country in the world that is implementing economic projects and is mining natural resources in the Arctic region. We have claims to the territory between the meridian coinciding with our eastern border and the one passing through the Bering Strait. We have sent a special expedition to the North Pole in order to prove that the Lomonosov Range covers the area between the above meridians. Nuclear ships will help us to assert our positions in our North and the Arctic region.

I think that the placement of the nuclear icebreaking fleet under the management of Rosatom will contribute to the development of Atomflot and the implementation of the current tasks.