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Russia Builds World's Largest Nuclear Powered Ice-Breaker
Hugh Pickens writes "Eve Conant reports that Russia's dream to dominate the Arctic will soon get a boost with a $1.1 billion nuclear-powered icebreaker 170 meters long and 34 meters wide. It's designed to navigate both shallow rivers and the freezing depths of the Northern Sea. Powered by two 'RITM-200' compact pressurized water reactors generating 60MWe, the world's largest 'universal' nuclear icebreaker is designed to blast through ice more than 4 meters thick and tow tankers of up to 70,000 tons displacement through Arctic ice fields. Why the effort and cost? 'Climate change is a pivotal factor in accelerating Russia's interest in icebreakers,' says Charles Ebinger. 'With climate change we are seeing a major change in the Northern Sea Route, which is a transport route along Russia's northern coast from Europe to Asia. Just in the last few years, with less and less permanent sea ice, maritime traffic across the Russian Arctic has risen exponentially.' The expectation is that the melt will continue, but there are still sections of route that would require icebreakers to keep it open year round. Icebreakers are an excellent example of a special purpose vehicle that is very poorly designed for operation outside its specific envelope. The key element is the rounded bow, a shape best suited to riding up on ice shelves and crushing them from above, causing the ships to roll from side to side in the waves when sailing on open water, making for a very seasick ride for the crew. Russia is the only country in the world currently building nuclear icebreakers, and has a fleet of about half a dozen in operation, along with a larger fleet of less powerful, diesel-powered icebreakers. The U.S. has been relying on a Russian diesel icebreaker to deliver supplies to Antarctica due to our own shrinking fleet of the cold-water, diesel-fueled vessels."
...that global warming is a conspiratorial lie!
Ok, kidding. I had to.
If all the ice is melting from global warming or natural warming?
Soon there won't be any ice to break!
Russia has been flexing its muscle in Canada's direction quite a bit in recent history. Methinks they plan on staking a claim to our north sea route (north of Canada, not Russia).
Pushing a heavy ship up on the ice to crush it and thus break it may be efficient, but is hardly the only way to break ice, and probably not the most efficient all things considered.
A nuclear-powered ship should have raw power and heat in abundance. I'm thinking that super-hot steam under extreme pressure would cause any thickness of ice to crack, and cracked ice is extremely brittle and easy to crack even more, so a combination of super-hot steam and raw ramming force would crack the ice just as efficiently without the need for the ship to go on top of the ice and crush it. Would make it possible to use a more seaworthy hull shape and thus improve the conditions for the crew.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
Shouldn't it be the Arctic Sea?
For what it's worth - Russia is big and strong, and will be a power to count on the coming decades. As long as they keep to economic strength and avoid the military path it's no big problem.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Now that is what I'm talking about. Instead of trying to prevent global warming(something I doubt is even possible, regardless if global warming is human made or a natural event), why not try to take advantage of it. Humans survived to this day not because we stopped things from happening, but because we adapted to live with or overcome them.
The English canals had icebreaker boats which worked exactly the same way, except that they were human powered. the crew moved around on the deck to get the bow onto the ice then moved forward to break it, then rocked from side to side to clear the passage. So this solution has probably been around for several hundred years of testing. I imagine that the experience and knowledge of everybody from the canal builders to PhD-level marine architects somewhat exceeds that of xenobyte.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
some god damned Ice to be left to actually break with the stupid thing.
When the harvests fail, you can be the test subject to see how well you can adapt to no food.
Now go and kill yourself Republican and make the world a better place.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
We've got to close the icebreaker gap!
We all know that ice melts quicker if it's broken apart...
series o7 debates [nero-online.org].
We don't do anything anymore. Sooner or later, the rest of the world will get tired of giving us a free ride.
The ice breaks YOU! -Napoleon Bonaparte
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...What do the Russians need with an icebreaker? The ice caps are melting, the thing'll be obsolete in ten or two hundred years anyway...~
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
It may be nice to pretend that you don't need the support of a large organisation (eg. a Navy) to run large projects (eg. a huge nuclear powered icebreaker) that cost a lot of money for little or no financial return - however that act of pretending is known as fantasy. You fantasy is somewhat offensive in blaming governments for stopping the mythical creature of some libertarian building a nuclear icebreaker in his garage in Idaho. If it wasn't for that darned red tape and their dog he could do it! Scale that up to a fucking huge oil company and they've still got better ways to spend their money than building nuclear icebreakers. Private enterprise is just not going to do it - it's the sort of infrastructure that's applied at a national level (Russia) and borrowed on an international level.
I used to live in Stockholm, and used to see the icebreakers going out to do their stuff. I lived on top of a granite cliff two thousand yards from the path the ship was taking, and I could feel the engine vibration up through the soles of my feet into my chest cavity. I could clearly understand how those ultrasound-based crowd control weapons work. [Note that these were by comparison "tiny" icebreakers - one example of several http://www.sjofartsverket.se/en/About-us/Activities/Icebreaking/Our-Icebreakers/Research-VesselIcebreaker-Oden/Icebreaker-Oden/
"Cock Up Your Beaver" does not mean what you think. This sig is intended to clog filters and annoy do-gooders
Very interesting documentary by NatGeo on icebreakers, watched it a few days ago after Ars coverage of the news. Explains how they work and why they are designed like that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F95wO1-flM0
"Hello, IT... Have you tried turning it off and on again? Yeah... No problem."
Since the world appears to be now cooling, it will be interesting to see what use they will have for these ships when the ice becomes thicker.
Pushing a heavy ship up on the ice to crush it and thus break it may be efficient, but is hardly the only way to break ice, and probably not the most efficient all things considered.
A nuclear-powered ship should have raw power and heat in abundance. I'm thinking that super-hot steam under extreme pressure would cause any thickness of ice to crack, and cracked ice is extremely brittle and easy to crack even more, so a combination of super-hot steam and raw ramming force would crack the ice just as efficiently without the need for the ship to go on top of the ice and crush it. Would make it possible to use a more seaworthy hull shape and thus improve the conditions for the crew.
Man, those Ruskies are dumb! They spend a billion dollars building a giant icebreaking ship, and none of them made the connection that nuclear generators make heat, and heat melts ice. Hah!
PS: Love your sig.
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
cold water causes shrinkage
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
"Plutonium and Uranium walk into a bar...?"
Good gods, how big of one could they possibly build?
It's designed to navigate both shallow rivers and the freezing depths of the Northern Sea.
"Is this a submarine?!"
Anyway Arctic, fucked it. Make faster fucked. Ice clear tanker for, fuck. Profits more me for, fuck. Warming global, cares who, fuck?
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
If it ever navigates "the freezing depths of the Northern Sea" it will just be a very expensive nuclear powered shipwreck.
Oh, and on Netherlands - A lot of the country was built on land claimed from the ocean via the building seawalls.
I don't read AC A human right
A nuclear icebreaker, travelling through rough seas with several tonnes of radioactive waste on-board, opperated by a country with possibly the worst environmental record in the world. What could possibly go wrong?
http://bellona.org/articles/articles_2011/vaygach_norway
http://www.bellona.org/filearchive/fil_The_Arctic_Nuclear_Challenge.pdf
Private industry did in fact build an ice breaker (not nuclear) on the Great Lakes and had the Coast Guard run it for them. No reason why they couldn't do the same with a nuclear powered one.
Why couldn't we just go under the ice? Why couldn't we build something like an oil tanker that is completely submersible?
It is nuclear power, it would seem that with 60MWe, which I presume is megawatt electricity (as opposed to thermal) one could power large gyros or at the very least have some crew quarters mounted on a Stewart platform. Water jets to provide stability?
Sure thing
Also, there's this little-known fact that latitudes near the Equator are much bigger around than extreme latitudes.
Also little known is the fact that the land masses aren't evenly distributed. Canada and Russia are amongst the largest land area countries, but have much lower populations for a reason - there's a huge amount of land up north that's been uneconomical due to the permafrost, glaciers, and such.
Though in checking up on the studies, I did see that farmers would have to shift crop types all over - switching to more heat/drought resistant varieties.
I'm not convinced there's enough benefit from a warming arctic to offset a scorching equator.
To be honest, neither am I. There's reasons why I'd support a massive building program for nuclear power, I hate coal power for numerous reasons(but wind/solar isn't there yet).
I don't read AC A human right
Asking if they are going to college isn't working out so well.
This is what Canada should be doing rather than building stupid new frigates.
Ice Breakers particulary nuclear would be so much more useful in every way.
I mean even when we deploy our little ships to a combat zone, how useful are they other than as a token of participation compared to our allies anyway.
Ice Breakers could be supplying a economic service that only maybe one other country is capable of (Russia). They would be supporting our northern sovereignty. Providing economic and material and stability support to our northern communities. Would be facilitating search and rescue operations where no one else can (recall just a year or two ago the cruise ship that got stranded in the ice). Anyway it boggles my mind the stupidity of our government.
For the 8 Billion we are spending we could get 7 of those jnuclear boats simply buying them from russia. Build our our, even better supporting our ship building communities. It isn't like we don't have our own nuclear program, at least for now.
As it is, likely most of the components for our Frigates other than the hull is just going to be bought at great expense from the bloated US war machine, which is probably what this is all about anyway.
At the very least, they could build a few less Frigates, and replace them with Ice Breakers. Anyway that's my rant for today... so far anyway... :)