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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."
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.
You think so?
It's easy to see if you're right. Just get yourself some super-heated steam (a pressure cooker is a good start), an appropriately-sized chunk of saltwater ice (do you own a freezer?) and see if it is practical.
Myself, I'm thinking that it doesn't work the way that you think that it does.
But it's your idea so I'll let you either prove or disprove it yourself. Good luck!
Kid-proof tablet..
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
The crew doesn't care. People that work under those conditions are entirely acclimated to rolling seas.
Ice breakers are simple, stupid devices. Adding huge super heated pressurized ice blasters to something that must operate a billion miles from any sort of repair facility is just silly. Strong, redundant, protected engines combined with a ludicrously thick hull is optimal.
Sometimes the weather gets so bad the crew must retreat to quarters for days. When they emerge there is a meter or more of solid ice encasing everything. The mass of it increases the draft so much a ship can become unstable and the crew must remove it symmetrically to remain level.
There is no place for the sort of equipment necessary for controlling super-hot steam under extreme pressure on the deck or bow of an ice breaker. The ice would just mangle it beyond all fucking hope.
Would make it possible to use a more seaworthy hull shape and thus improve the conditions for the crew.
the Russians have actually addressed the hull-shape issue with some of their new diesel ice breakers and ice-strengthened freighters
by building ships with an ice-breaker bow one end, a more normal bow on the other end, a bridge with a full set of controls front and back, and a hybrid propulsion system that can efficiently go in both directions.
so they sail along in "normal ship mode" most of the time, and when they hit thick ice they just turn the ship around and switch to "icebreaker mode"