The building of the Lider nuclear-powered icebreaker fleet could radically alter international shipping and trade routes, Alexei Likhachev, general director of the Rosatom nuclear power company, has said in an interview with Reuters.

With the 120-megawatt icebreakers, the most powerful Arctic vessels ever built by far, Russia will be able to open up major shipping lanes across the ice-covered Arctic and provide trans-Arctic shipments at a high speed, Likhachev said in the interview that was republished on the state company’s website.

Must be competitive

According to Likhachev, three Lider vessels will be able to provide tankers with trans-Arctic voyages at a speed of 10-12 knots.

"They must move like a commuter train with a fixed time schedule," he said.

"There must be convoys that form and meet each other halfway and that are headed by the icebreakers, [and] if we do not make it with a speed of 18-20 kilometers per hour, the operational costs of the shipping companies will soon start to grow and they could drop out of the market," Likhachev said.

It all depends on icebreaker capacities — and the company leader is confident that the vessels will be built.

"There are risks, but we eye a confirmation that the Lider icebreaker project, on which year-round shipments depend, is progressing," Likhachev said in the interview.