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Fire on nuclear powered Russian icebreaker

Emergency workers have put out a fire on the 'Sevmorput', a Soviet-era nuclear-powered cargo-icebreaker on Dec 24, 2023. The state company which runs the vessel said there had been no casualties and no threat to the security of the reactor. The fire broke out in one of the cabins of the ship, which is currently docked Murmansk. The fire, which at its peak covered an area of about 30 square meters, was put out with no casualties. There was no threat to crucial support systems or to the reactor plant, Atomflot, which runs Russia’s fleet of nuclear icebreakers and is a unit of the Rosatom state nuclear corporation, said.

Russian ship probed for pipeline damage

Finnish investigators on Oct 17, 2023, were looking into the container ship 'NewNew Polar Bear', the 'Sevmorput', as well as other vessels, present in the area when a Baltic Sea pipeline was damaged on Oct 8 due to an outside activity which could have been deliberate. The 'Sevmorput' had left Murmansk on Oct 1 and arrived in St. Petersburg on Oct 10. In addition to the movements of the ships, their backgrounds and previous activities are investigated, in cooperation with the authorities of other states. Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation had launched an investigation on specific vessels that sailed in the area during the gas pipeline incident on Oct 7. The two ships were then heading towards St. Petersburg. On Oct 11 and 13, they departed on a return voyage heading north towards the Europe-Asia shortcut via the Arctic. The 'Sevmorput' is sailing a subsidized voyage aimed at boosting cargo traffic between Russia’s Far Eastern regions and St. Petersburg. It is frequently used by the Northern Fleet and other military structures to bring arms stuff to Arctic bases and test sites.

Convoy heading for Barents Sea after months in ice

In Dec 2021 the ice breaker 'Arktika' sailed into the thick sea-ice of the Laptev Sea, and from there several thousand kilometres further east through the East Siberian Sea to the town of Pevek. It was the first voyage to east Arctic waters for the new icebreaker. On its tail the vessel had three ships, the 'Polar King', Inzhener Rubin' and the diesel-powered icebreaker 'Dikson'. In Pevek, the cargo ships unloaded their cargo, most of it construction materials to the Baymskaya copper mining project, whereupon they froze into the sea-ice of the local port. They remained captured until Feb 9, 2022, when the 'Arktika' arrived and started a several thousand kilometre long escort operation across the Northern Sea Route as a basis for the further planning of year-round convoys on the Northern Sea Route. On Feb 15, the convoy was slowly approaching the Vilkitsky Stait that separate the Laptev Sea and the Kara Sea. In addition to the 'Arktika' and the two cargo ships, the convoy included also nuclear- powered container ship 'Sevmorput', which in Nov 2021 had sailed the Russian Arctic route loaded with equipment and metal structures for the nuclear power plant currently under construction in Bangladesh and started its return towards Murmansk from Vladivostok on Jan 17, and the diesel-engined icebreaker 'Kapitan Dranitsyn'. The thickness of the sea-ice in many places exceed two meters. The convoy is expected to make it into the Barents Sea in late February.