The world’s first nuclear-powered icebreaker, “Lenin” is being converted into a museum and a luxury hotel. The vessel arrived at the port of Murmansk on May 05 as her final destination for conversion into a museum. And the rebuilding is supposed to finish this summer.

N S Lenin, the Soviet icebreaker launched in 1957 was both the world’s first nuclear powered surface ship and the first nuclear powered civilian vessel. It took 3.5 years to build Lenin which was put into operation in 1959 and was officially decommissioned in 1989.

Lunch in Lenin

Long corridors full of light, single and double cabins with hot and cold water for the crew and a beautiful companion cabin, a club and a day room equipped with TV sets, a cinema, a library with a reading room and several dining rooms, a smoking room with an electric fire - that’s how the ‘Lenin’ nuclear-powered ice breaker looked when it was put into operation. Also, its air conditioning system was almost an unprecedented comfort in the country at the time. There were several medical rooms there with the most modern equipment of the era - a therapeutic room, a stomatologic room treating diseases of the mouth, an x-ray room, a physiotherapeutic room, an operating room, a room for medical procedures, a laboratory and a drugstore. The ’Lenin’ also had its own personal service shops - a shoemaker and a tailor, and also a hairdresser, a laundry, a sauna and a bakery.

In addition to the museum and hotel, the vessel will also have a restaurant, a sport and recreation center, a conference hall and a business center, web site Portnews.ru writes. The hotel will boast of rooms that spell luxury. The vessel will also room an exhibition on the history of Russia’s icebreaker fleet and an observation post where visitors can have a look at the reactor compartment.

Vyacheslav Ruksha, Director General of the federal state unitary enterprise ‘Atomflot’, has said that the ‘Lenin’ is “a memorial of global importance”, according to the Itar-Tass news agency. On December 3, 2009 both the icebreaker and Russia’s nuclear civil fleet will be celebrating half a century of service. Ruksha told the media that maintenance of the ship would cost about 30 million rubles per year (about $900,000).

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