The dynamic development of the NSR raises the issue of Arctic shipbuilding, Rosatom State Corporation CEO Alexey Likhachev said in a meeting of RF President Vladimir Putin with the Government.
“At present, 30 ships are operating, and another 33 are under construction. We continue building four floating nuclear power stations. I must say that interest in these floating stations continues to grow in both Russia and in the rest of the world,”. the Kremlin press office quotes him as saying
“The implementation of shippers’ investment plans will require an additional shipbuilding order. This order is on a completely different scale. I mentioned the five nuclear-powered icebreakers; now, we need to make a decision on starting another four conventionally-powered icebreakers this year. Overall, we will need up to 100 Arctic class ships, as well as at least 15 floating energy units. This many new ships is of course a challenge for the domestic shipbuilding industry,” Likhachev continued.
“The Ministry of Industry and Trade is working on this with us. First, this includes support and orders for the Zvezda Shipbuilding Complex, and expansion of the Baltic Shipyard’s production capacity with the possibility of using a new site in mid-term perspective,” he added.
“Second, we need to improve labour productivity and reduce the time for building ships by introducing the Rosatom production system. We have positive experience with this in cooperation with United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC) at the Krasnoye Sormovo Plant in Nizhny Novgorod. Now we are carrying out the same programme at the Baltic Shipyard, and we are ready to do all we can to extend this programme to all USC companies,” he concluded.
Photo: Kremlin press office