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The Admiralty Shipyards are building a unique research vessel – North Pole LSP, ice-resistant self-propelled platform. Here is how the works in progress and why it has no similar vessels.
Admiralty Shipyards PR Department
The North Pole ice-resistant self-propelled platform is essentially an all-season research station with a scientific center function. It replaces the stations drifting on ice floes and has significant advantages over them, both in terms of safety and manageability. The platform will be able to accommodate additional scientific equipment, as well as provide it with power supply and full-fledged operation.
A research expedition of 34 people will be able to accommodate comfortably onboard the ship. They will conduct standard meteorological, actinometric (at the meteorological sites on the ice) and aerological observations (onboard), studies of ice cover and its dynamics (at the ice fields), studies of ice loads, deformation mechanics and ice destruction when affecting the industrial facility in order to improve methods for calculation of local and global ice loads on ships and other engineering structures, and develop and test systems for monitoring ice loads on industrial facilities. In addition to the living and working spaces of the North Pole LSP, the ship will also have a sauna, gym and swimming pool. The design of the station supposes operation at the temperatures up to -50°С and humidity of 85%.
The Admiralty Shipyards completed docking work on the North Pole LSP ice-resistant self-propelled platform in summer 2021. The platform reached the stage of mooring tests. The overall technical readiness of the ship by the end of July was over 80%. On 28 July, the ship departed from Luga dock. In total, it took almost more than a month to dock the platform. During this time, the propeller-rudder complex was mounted, the paintwork of the underwater part of the outer skin was restored, the anchor-mooring winches were installed and wired, and the anchor chains were installed. After leaving the dock, the ship will continue outfitting, installation, electrical work and its preparation for mooring trials. They are scheduled for September 2021.
The original construction deadline was pushed back to the end of 2022, as Roshydromet, the customer, adjusted its requirements for construction of the North Pole LSP. The Admiralty Shipyards are constantly working with the monitoring team of the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute to improve the tracing of ship systems and equipment.
The station is designed to operate at temperatures up to -50°C
Conquerors of ice
JSC Admiralty Shipyards has extensive experience of building ice-class vessels
In 1959, they built the world’s first nuclear-powered icebreaker Lenin, and in 1979, they built the research vessel Otto Schmidt. Since the beginning of the 2000-s the enterprise has launched a series of five ice-class tankers with 20,000 tons deadweight and the Arctic tankers Mikhail Ulyanov and Kirill Lavrov with 70,000 tons deadweight.
In 2012, the shipyard built a unique research vessel Akademik Treshnikov, intended to support operations of the Russian Antarctic expedition, i.e. delivery of cargoes and personnel rotation on Antarctic stations, research works and study of natural processes and phenomena in the ocean, removal of waste and garbage from the Antarctic. Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring (Rosgidromet) was also the customer. The ship has successfully proven herself to be one of the few in the world capable of performing such kind of works in the polar areas of the World Ocean.
