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IIRC, the Russian icebreakers are suspected to be unable to operate in the antarctic. Not because they don't work there, but because they can't “cross the equator due to limitations on the maximum inlet temperature of their cooling water”.

https://www.navalgazing.net/Merchant-Ships-Icebreakers#fn1_3

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A simple heavy fuel tug boat could solve that problem, at some remarkable cost.

I wonder if you could just have it slowly push a barge that is pumping up cold water from a couple hundred meters and outputting it in front of the intakes.

In weight of all the US and Soviet nuclear powered vessels that can cross the equilateral waters.... I doubt that is true.

You know that reactor cooling designs could be different right?

The US has many warm-water ports; Their nuclear-powered ships already had to handle that. The Soviets had a single warm-water port and they'd have no need to base their nuclear icebreakers there, so they likely went with a simpler, cheaper design - "дешево и топорно".

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