[5] On 15 December 2011, two crew members died and a third one was seriously injured in a fire on board Vaygach while the icebreaker was escorting merchant ships from Dudinka to Murmansk.

Technician Alexander Shevchenko sustained burns to his upper respiratory tract [6][5] On 25 December 2015, Vaygach completed the fastest transit of the Northern Sea Route.

[4] In 2019, Nornickel and Gazprom Neft signed a 10 year long lease agreement with Rosatom for exclusive rights to apply the Taymyr and Vaygach until the end of the vessels’ service lives.

In addition to messes and other social premises, there is a large auditorium that doubles as a recreational room and a winter garden that can be used to provide fresh vegetables for the crew during the polar night.

The vessels were designed to operate in areas where there might be only 80 centimetres (31 in) of water beneath the keel, less than the thickness of the ice floes the icebreaking bow is pushing under the ship.

The scenarios used for structural dimensioning of the reactor compartment and shielding included a 25,000-ton SA-15 type arctic freighter striking the icebreaker amidships at 7 knots (13 km/h; 8.1 mph).

[2] The nuclear power plant on board the icebreaker produces superheated steam, which is used to generate electricity for the propulsion motors and other shipboard consumers as well as heat to maintain operational capability at −50 °C (−58 °F).

Vaygach has two main turbogenerators aft of the reactor compartment consisting of Soviet-made steam turbines coupled to Siemens generators, each producing 18,400 kW of electricity at 3,000 rpm for the propulsion motors.

[3] Vaygach has a nuclear-turbo-electric powertrain, in which steam produced by the nuclear reactor is converted first into electricity, which in turn rotates the propulsion motors coupled to the propellers.

Two of the three generating sets, located ahead of the reactor compartment under the superstructure, can be used to provide approximately 4 MW of power for the propulsion motors while the third takes care of the auxiliary load.