Vaygach () is a shallow-draught nuclear-powered icebreaker. She was built in 1989 for the Soviet Union by Wärtsilä Marine Helsinki Shipyard in Finland by order of the Murmansk Shipping Company and its KL-40 reactor was installed at the Baltic Shipyard in St. Petersburg. Her sister ship is Taymyr.
Career
Vaygach is a shallow-draught nuclear-powered icebreaker of Project 10580 Taimyr. It is named after the early 20th century hydrographic icebreaker of the same name. Vaygach was built in Finland in 1989 and its KL-40 reactor was installed at the Baltic Shipyard in St. Petersburg. Entered service in July 1990.
Vaygach underwent work on its steam generator No. 3 in February of 2003 as a defect in steam generator was found.
On 15 December 2011, two crew members died and a third one was seriously injured in a fire on board Vaygach while the icebreaker was escorting merchant ships from Dudinka to Murmansk. The fire, which started in one of the crew cabins presumably due to negligence and was extinguished by the crew by 03:58 am Moscow time, did not cause any damage to the ship's nuclear reactor. The two killed were 32-year-old machinist Pavel Bazhukov, and 55-year-old ship instrumentation and control foreman Valery Morozov. Technician Alexander Shevchenko sustained burns to his upper respiratory tract
On 25 December 2015, Vaygach completed the fastest transit of the Northern Sea Route. It took just days to complete the trip. It left from the Siberian side of the Bering Strait on December 17, covering more than 2,200 nautical miles before reaching its destination in the White Sea on December 25.
On 31 March 2016, Vaygach received a 200,000-hour engineered lifespan extension on its reactor machine-building enterprise of the state corporation Rosatom JSC Afrikantov OKBM, meaning the vessel could continue running until 2023 as the country builds its next generation of nuclear icebreaking vessels,
In 2018, the reactor on the Vaygach nuclear icebreaker steamed past what many thought a near impossible barrier, reaching 177,205 hours of operating time – beating the record set by the Arktika nuclear icebreaker, whose reactor had run for one hour less when it was retired in 2008. That’s 7,383 and a half straight days, or just over 20 years.
The event was widely reported in Russia’s official press, which elevated what had until then been an unremarkable Arctic workhorse to heroic status.
In 2019, Nornickel and Gazprom Neft signed a 10 year long lease agreement with Rosatom for exclusive rights to apply the Taymyr and Vaygach until the end of the vessels’ service lives. Both ships are due to be taken out of service in 2029 at the latest.
Design
General characteristics
While Vaygach is slightly smaller than the Arktika-class nuclear icebreakers, with an overall length of nearly and beam of she is still among the largest polar icebreakers ever built. At the maximum draught of , Vaygach has a displacement of 21,000 tons. However, she can also operate at a reduced draught of only .
Vaygach has a traditional icebreaker hull with highly raked stem and sloping sides to reduce the ice loads in compressive ice fields and improve maneuverability. The special cold-resistant steel used in the hull was delivered by the Soviet Union. Although designed for a crew of slightly over 100, the large superstructure of Vaygach contains accommodation and facilities for 138 personnel. In addition to messes and other social premises, there is a large auditorium that doubles as a recreational room and a winter garden that can be used to provide fresh vegetables for the crew during the polar night. In the aft, there is a helideck and a hangar for single Kamov Ka-32 helicopter. Being an escort icebreaker, Vaygach is equipped with a standard towing winch and a stern notch for close towing in difficult conditions.
Vaygach is classified by the Russian Maritime Register of Shipping with the Russian ice class LL2, which means that she is intended for icebreaking operations on Arctic coastal routes in level ice up to thick during winter and spring. The shallow draught of the icebreaker allows it to operate in rivers, estuaries and other locations where the water is not deep enough for bigger Arktika-class icebreakers and the ice conditions are so severe that refueling of diesel-powered icebreakers would be difficult, even impossible.