The Northern Sea Route (NSR) comprises all routes from the Barents to the Chukchi Sea and the Bering Strait suitable for shipping and includes the Arctic seas and part of the Arctic Ocean limited by the Russian economic zone.

The Arctic region is extremely rich in hydrocarbon, mineral and other resources. The NSR as a national transport corridor of Russia plays a major role in further economic development of northern regions and the State in general.

The NSR is rapidly becoming a transit Arctic shipping lane that can pose an alternative to the existing intercontinental shipping routes between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through Suez and Panama Canals.
In the recent years the interest of foreign ship owners for the NSR has significantly grown. Several factors explain this tendency - significant reduction of navigation period between ports of Europe and South-East Asia resulting in significant savings in fuel, absence of piracy threat, avoidance of canal tolls and others.

Full-scale and regular commercial shipping along the NSR has been organized since 1920. Since that time the basic stages of new navigational routes development were determined by the increase in icebreaking fleet power including the present use of powerful atomic icebreakers.. This has helped to prolong navigation periods in the Eastern Arctic to 6 months and has helped in developing new icebreaking routes in high latitude and close to the North Pole areas, including the ones outside of Russian Arctic sector.

The break in climate change also contributes to the demand for transits through the NSR and the growth of the icebreaking fleet. The cargo flow on the NSR started to increase again in 2000, in 2005-2007 the amount of cargo shipped in the Arctic area exceeded 2 million ton and keeps growing to present day levels of 2,5 million tons of internal cargo and 820 thousand tons of transit cargo (compared to 110 thousand transit cargo in 2010).

Federal State Unitary Enterprise of Atomic Fleet (ROSATOMFLOT) of State Corporation ROSATOM has been established to provide technological service and maintenance of nuclear-powered icebreakers and special fleet.

FSUE Atomflot provides the following services:
Ice pilotage of vessels on the NSR and to the freezing ports of Russia;
Support of expeditionary, scientific and research works aimed at studying hydro-meteorological conditions of seas and mineral and ore resources of the Arctic shelf adjacent to the northern coast of Russia;
Emergency and rescue ice operations on the NSR and freezing seas;
Tourist voyages to the North Pole, islands and archipelagoes of the Central Arctic;
Common and special technical maintenance and repair works of the atomic fleet;
Handling of nuclear materials and radioactive wastes.

The active fleet includes four atomic icebreakers with two nuclear reactors 75,000 HP; two atomic icebreakers with a single reactor power plant 40, 000 HP. Atomic icebreaking fleet has been providing regular shipping of Russian and foreign cargoes along the NSR since 1959.

At present the main areas of atomic icebreaking fleet operations are:
- Northern Sea Route
- White Sea for the purpose of Vitino Port operations;
- Baltic Sea;
- High latitudes for scientific and tourist purposes.