The icebreaker was taken out of service in the 1992 following a technical error in the vessel’s steam generation system.
Built at the Baltic Yard in Sankt Petersburg, the “Sibir” belongs to the most powerful class of icebreaker, along with the “Arktika”, “Rossiya”, “Sovetskii Soyuz” and “Yamal”. The vessel was included in the icebreaker fleet in 1977.
Just few weeks ago, Russia’s nuclear power company Rosatom removed the reactor from the “Arktika” icebreaker.
From 1959 to 1992, a total of nine civilian nuclear-powered vessels were built in the Soviet Union. Of these, eight were icebreakers and one a container ship (the “Sevmorput”). In the period 1994-2007, the last of the country’s nuclear-powered icebreakers was built, the most powerful of them all – the “50 Years Victory”.
The Russian fleet of nuclear-powered icebreakers has for many years been administrated by the Murmansk Shipping Company. This fall however, the state nuclear power company Rosatom took over the management of the vessels. All the vessels have the Atomflot base outside Murmansk as their home port.
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The last day of a nuclear-powered icebreaker 2 October 2008
