Not since Soviet days has more nuclear-powered icebreakers been operating at the same time in Arctic waters, the Barents Observer reported in the beginning of 2023. Russia has over the last few years put three brand new icebreakers of the Project 22220 class into operation. Two more are under construction in St. Petersburg and a sixth vessel got funding with a goal to put it into service by 2030 as a transport- and maintenance ship for spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste removal from the country’s fleet of icebreakers.

This  new service ship (Project 22770) will be nearly 160 meters long and carry its own cranes to lift in and out containers with spent nuclear fuel or fresh uranium fuel from the icebreaker reactors, either at Rosatom’s service base in Murmansk or in open sea anywhere along the Northern Sea Route. Typically, the uranium fuel is used in icebreaker reactors for 3-4 years before being replaced. The spent fuel elements are then taken out of the reactors and loaded over to special casks to the service vessel where they are stored for a few years before being loaded on land at Atomflot in Murmansk and later transported by train to Mayak in the South Urals for reprocessing.

The vessel could also serve Russia’s floating nuclear power plants (FNPP), like the “Akademik Lomonosov” which today provides electricity to Pevek or to any of the new FNPPs planned for the Arctic.

Excerpts from Thomas Nilsen, Arctic nuclear waste ship gets funding, The Barents Observer, Jan 11, 2023