| Career | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Vaygach (Вайгач) |
| Namesake: | Vaygach Island |
| Owner: | Russian Federation[1] |
| Operator: | Atomflot (Rosatom) |
| Port of registry: | Murmansk, Russia[1] |
| Builder: | Wärtsilä, Helsinki New Shipyard, Finland Baltic Shipyard, Leningrad, Soviet Union |
| Yard number: | 475[1] |
| Completed: | 1 August 1990[1] |
| Identification: | IMO number: 8417493 Call sign: UBNY[1] |
| Status: | In service |
| General characteristics [1] | |
| Class and type: | Taymyr class nuclear icebreaker |
| Tonnage: | 20,791 GT 6,237 NT 3,550 DWT |
| Displacement: | 21,100 tons |
| Length: | LOA 149.70 m (491.1 ft) LBP 136.32 m (447.2 ft) |
| Beam: | 28.87 m (94.7 ft) |
| Draught: | 9.00 m (29.53 ft) |
| Depth: | 15.68 m (51.4 ft) |
| Ice class: | RMRS LL2 |
| Installed power: | KLT-40M nuclear reactor (171 MW)[2] 2 × GTA 6421-OM5 steam turbines (2 × 18,400 kW) |
| Propulsion: | Nuclear-turbo-electric; three shafts Three electric motors (3 × 12,000 kW) Three 4-bladed fixed-pitch propellers |
| Speed: | 20 kn (37 km/h; 23 mph) in open water 2 kn (3.7 km/h; 2.3 mph) in 2 m (6.6 ft) level ice[3] |
Vaygach (Russian: Вайгач) is a shallow-draft nuclear powered icebreaker. She was built in 1989 for the Soviet Union in Finland, at the Helsinki New Shipyard by Wärtsilä, by order of the Murmansk Shipping Co. Her sister ship is Taymyr.
The Vaygach was delivered to Russia for the installation of the reactor system. It has a KLT-40M nuclear-turbo-electric reactor giving up to 50,000 hp. This shallow-draft icebreaker is used mainly for clearing rivers, including their mouths and estuaries of ice and opening channels in order to make winter navigation possible.
On 15 December 2011, two crew members died and a third one was seriously injured in a fire onboard the 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 04:00 Moscow time, did not cause any damage to the ship's nuclear reactor.[4]