Vaygach (1989 icebreaker)

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. 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 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. ==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. 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. The nuclear power plant on board the icebreaker produces superheated steam, which is used to generate electricity for the propulsion motors and other shipboard consumers as well as heat to maintain operational capability at . Vaygach has two main turbogenerators aft of the reactor compartment consisting of Soviet-made steam turbines coupled to Siemens generators, each producing 18,400 kW of electricity at 3,000 rpm for the propulsion motors. In addition the ship has two auxiliary turbogenerators, manufactured in the Soviet Union, which produce 2,000 kW of electrical power for shipboard consumers. Vaygach has a nuclear-turbo-electric powertrain, in which steam produced by the nuclear reactor is converted first into electricity, which in turn rotates the propulsion motors coupled to the propellers. The ship has three shafts with Strömberg AC motors controlled by cycloconverters. The propulsion motors are coupled directly to four-bladed fixed pitch propellers rotating at 180 rpm. The ship can maintain a speed of in open water If the nuclear power can not be utilized, electricity can also be produced by three 16-cylinder Wärtsilä 16V22 medium-speed diesel engines coupled to 3,200 kVA Strömberg alternators. Two of the three generating sets, located ahead of the reactor compartment under the superstructure, can be used to provide approximately 4 MW of power for the propulsion motors while the third takes care of the auxiliary load. In case of emergency Vaygach also has two 200 kW emergency diesel generators of Soviet origin. ==See also==