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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."
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) --
Whatever the cause for melting Arctic is, it's actually bound to cause more use for those icebreakers instead of freeing them up. Just like any other country with coastline to Arctic sea areas, Russia has plans to drill oil in the Arctic. They are also trying to start using the northern route for shipping around the continent.
Also as previous poster noted, there's always winter. And it's not necessarily getting any easier because of the global warming, because extreme weather conditions may become more common.
Russia (and USSR before it) has been building nuclear-powered ice breakers for 65 years now.
Technically, it's the Arctic Ocean (consisting of numerous seas).
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."
We've got to close the icebreaker gap!
The ice breaks YOU! -Napoleon Bonaparte
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/
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Whatever the cause for melting Arctic is, it's actually bound to cause more use for those icebreakers instead of freeing them up. Just like any other country with coastline to Arctic sea areas, Russia has plans to drill oil in the Arctic. They are also trying to start using the northern route for shipping around the continent.
Also as previous poster noted, there's always winter. And it's not necessarily getting any easier because of the global warming, because extreme weather conditions may become more common.
The Russians are making a land-grab north of Canada. They'll be able to move troops and equipment to establish a stronghold without Canada being able to do anything about it besides call on their southern neighbors to start a war with Russia. Without significant and fast military build up, they are going to lose a significant portion of their energy future as Russia steals and squanders it.
The point is that most of the time, the Arctic is still impassible without icebreakers, and oftentimes even with icebreakers. With global warming, more and more of the Arctic is traversable by ship for more and more of the year, and these massive icebreakers are going to give whoever owns them and a bunch of Arctic ports a leg up on shipping in the area.