Arktika-class icebreaker in the context of Atomflot

Nuclear marine propulsion is propulsion of a ship or submarine with heat provided by a nuclear reactor. The power plant heats water to produce steam for a turbine used to turn the ship's propeller through a gearbox or through an electric generator and motor. Nuclear propulsion is used primarily within naval warships such as nuclear submarines and supercarriers. A small number of experimental civil nuclear ships have been built.

Compared to oil- or coal-fuelled ships, nuclear propulsion offers the advantage of very long intervals of operation before refueling. All the fuel is contained within the nuclear reactor, so no cargo or supplies space is taken up by fuel, nor is space taken up by exhaust stacks or combustion air intakes. The low fuel cost is offset by high operating costs and investment in infrastructure, however, so nearly all nuclear-powered vessels are military.

50 Let Pobedy (Russian: 50 лет Победы; "50 Years of Victory", referring to the anniversary of victory of the Soviet Union in World War II) is a Russian Arktika-class nuclear-powered icebreaker. The ship was laid down in the Soviet Union in 1989, and construction was halted by the Russian government in 1994 following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Construction was restarted in 2003 and completed in 2007.

Yamal (Russian: Ямал) is a Russian Arktika-class nuclear-powered icebreaker operated by Atomflot (formerly by the Murmansk Shipping Company). She is named after the Yamal Peninsula in Northwest Siberia; the name means End of the Land in Nenets.

Laid down in Leningrad in 1986, and commissioned in October 1992, after the breakup of the Soviet Union, she filled her designed role of keeping shipping lanes open and also carried passengers on Arctic excursions. In July 1994 Yamal took an excursion to the North Pole, with the NSF (National Science Foundation – US), to celebrate the official maiden voyage. While at the exact North Pole (verified by GPS & Inmarsat satellite coordinates) the crew and passengers celebrated with a barbeque – the ambient temperature was −23 °C (−9 °F) (wind gusts were measured at −40 °C (−40 °F)). Because of the ship 90/90 coordinates the ship captain (Smirnov) organized a swimming party with Will Rountree (US) being recorded as the first person to ever swim there (21 July 1994) – water temperature was below freezing, ranging from 0 to −1.8 °C (32 to 29 °F). In 2007 Lewis Gordon Pugh swam a kilometer at the North Pole, having sailed there aboard Yamal.