Nuclear powered battle cruiser sails again for the first time since 1997

On August 18, the 251-meter-long battle cruiser was assisted by tugs out from the Sevmash shipyard in Severodvinsk in northern Russia.

The shipyard has not officially commented on the departure of the giant warship, but several social media channels from the region posted photos as the Admiral Nakhimov went out to the White Sea for the first time since 1999.

The Soviet built warship sailed for the Northern Fleet for the last time in 1997, and was towed to Severodvinsk in 1999 after being laid up in Severomorsk north of Murmansk for a two-year period.

The state-controlled information agency TASS on Monday confirmed that the nuclear-powered battle cruiser had set out for the first stage of tests. Later, the warship will sail north to the Barents Sea for sea trials that will last for several months before being officially deployed with the Navy for combat operation.

Decades of modernisation of the battle cruiser will eventually give the Northern Fleet a weapons platform packed with rockets, torpedoes, missiles and guns like no other of the surface warships in the Russian Navy.

Russia’s Defense Ministry has previously said that the warship will be armed with the Tsirkon hypersonic cruise missile. This missile can, if launched from a position in the Russian sector of the Barents Sea, fly over land and hit sea targets in the Norwegian Sea with very short warning notice for NATO forces.

Original plans said the battle cruiser would be ready for voyages with the Northern Fleet in 2018. Progress, however, was slow and the one plan after another for sea trials in White Sea were postponed. In 2022, it was said that relaunch should come in 2023, then followed by another announcement saying autumn 2024.

As part of the upgrade, fuel elements for the vessel's two nuclear reactors were changed. Reactor No. 1 was started in the end of December 2024, while reactor No. 2 went active in early February this year.

Although the uranium fuel is new and cooling pipes have been polished, the fundamental design of the two water-cooled reactors is the same as when the vessel was built in the mid-1980s.

The nuclear reactor plant has a thermal capacity of 300 MW, providing 140,000 horsepower (hp) output.

The Admiral Nakhimov will replace the Pyotr Velikiy, a vessel of the same class that since autumn 2022 has been laid up at a pier in Severomorsk. As previously reported by the Barents Observer, the Pyotr Velikiy is likely to be sent to scrap.