In a move with chilling implications for the international competition for Arctic sea routes and minerals, Russia is building more nuclear-powered icebreakers.
Three more next-generation Lider-class vessels will be constructed in 2023 to 2025, vice-premier Dmitry Rogozin told Russian media [3]. Three more nuclear-powered icebreakers are already under construction.
“Rosatom [state civilian nuclear power corporation] has now been instructed as part of private and state partnership to think over the algorithm of financing three icebreakers rather than one and then we will make navigable the entire Northern Sea Route,” Rogozin said in an interview with Russian television.
The three icebreakers will join three current-generation icebreakers—the Arktika,Ural and Sibir—scheduled to be commissioned in 2019–2021, “will help ensure an all-out escort [of vessels] through the ice from Yamal Peninsula towards the West.”
