'Appears to have an "edge" to me:
And it's "classmate", "Yamal"'s appears to be well--used:
Seems odd that the prow has no “edge” to it at all. Instead, it is pretty much a hemisphere, which would indicate that rather than “cutting” and powering through the ice, and pushing it away to both sides, this thing will belly up on to the ice and break it down by sheer force of the vessel’s weight. I see no provision for pushing the broken ice to each side, so that a conventional ship would have a path to follow. I hope they TESTED the concept before spending all those rubles.
'Appears to have an "edge" to me:
And it's "classmate", "Yamal"'s appears to be well--used:
They build this way since 1950s and it proved the most efficient. Look at any nuclear breaker since Lenin class.
Our USCG Polar Class Icebreakers work on that exact concept, and the props are actually designed to mill the ice through them.
The dynamic is called ‘dolphining’. You dolphin up onto the ice, crush it under the load of the ship, and then mill the ice through the prop.
Normally, we’d use the fuel as the weight. You get to 60 percent fuel capacity and you are too light to dolphin, let alone back and ram.
The Russians went nuclear, because every nuclear asset produces plutonium, and plutonium is worth $5,000 a gram.