Northern Sea Route operational all year round

I saw this pop up on the website of the Northern Sea Route Information Office, but they have it from Arctic-info:

Rogozin: Northern Sea Route could become operational round the year

“Russia has all the possibilities to make the Northern Sea Route operational round the year and in any season,” vice-Premier Dmitry Rogozin said today at a plenary session of the international forum on the Arctic.

"It is important that our structures and bodies responsible for the Northern Sea Route and the administration of the Northern Sea Route should be generators of ideas rather than the bodies stating facts and they should elaborate proposals on creating those technologies that will help make the Northern Sea Route operational round the year and in any season," the vice-premier said. "We have all technological possibilities for this," Rogozin added.

According to his report, the ambitious tasks of developing the Northern Sea Route are a priority for Russia along with the task of ensuring mobility and transport accessibility, TASS reports.

The Northern Sea Route development model will integrate all kinds of transport communication, including the air, river and railway carriages. In his state-of-the-nation address to both houses of Russia’s parliament, President Vladimir Putin stressed the importance of the competitiveness of the Northern Sea Route, which should become a link between Europe and the Asia-Pacific Region, the vice-premier said.

Russia also needs to create its icebreaker fleet, which will open big prospects for leading vessels along the Northern Sea Route, the vice-premier noticed.

Rogozin noted that Russia has invited China to take part in delivery of cargos to the Northern Sea Route.

"Our Chinese partners got interested in it. We do not rule out that there may be interests related to the economic development of the Silk Road. We proposed them to participate in such projects of building railways to transport cargos to the ports of the NSR. In fact, we can say now that this is not just the economic Silk Road but the cool Silk Road," - Rogozin said.

According to the official, raising competitiveness of the Northern Sea Route is only possible if port infrastructure is seriously upgraded.

"Amid this environment it saves us effort of focusing on higher competitiveness of the Northern Sea Route tracks without serious upgrade of sea ports’ infrastructure, provision of modern logistics, saturation of generating capacities, creation of modern communication and navigation systems, provision of navigation safety," Rogozin said.

It's a no-brainer for Russia to start preparing for this, but I'm curious to see when and how the Northern Sea Route will be made navigable during winter, not just because of the ice, but also because winters tend to be stormy in the Arctic (Iceland, for instance, experienced the strongest storm in 25 years a couple of days ago, hat-tip to Colorado Bob).

Comments

[Josh McDonald]

Long time lurker, first time commenter.

After reading this I find that I'm incredibly concerned about the prospect of significant icebreaker activity anywhere in the Arctic. I'm not a scientist and I often have difficulty following some of the conversation that goes on here but it seems to me that an active effort to break up the sea ice would have potentially serious ramifications on albedo and extent of new ice let alone multi-year ice. Someone please tell me how this is not a harbinger of things to come and an acceptance of the inevitability of a complete breakdown of the Arctic.

[jdallen_wa]

Josh McDonald -

You can set aside your fears about icebreakers; even ten times the existing fleet of breakers, dashing about constantly would have a trivial impact on the ice.

Far more open water gets created by the weather.

By the time there would be enough icebreakers built to be a hazard, the ice will have long since been reduced by climate change to the point they will no longer be relevant.

[NeilT]

I would have thought the biggest concern would have been the black carbon deposits from the bunker fuel of any older vessels being led through...

Given that the largest engines use about 11 litres a second. The very latest engines have been designed to be reduced in smoke, carbon deposits and sulphur, but it won't always be the very latest ships.

[Kris]

Neit wrote,

Given that the largest engines use about 11 litres a second.

Good or bad, that won't be of a concern as the Russians are planning to do the job with atom icebreakers. There are already some references to in this very blog, and it's that what Dmitry Rogozin was referring to when he talked about " ...we have all technological possibilities for this...".

Actually, that kind of icebreakers is strong enough to whitstand storms as the previous around Iceland (an island which really can't be situated into the Arctic).

[Bill Fothergill]

@ Kris,

I very nearly wrote a post along similar lines to yours, and was about to make reference to the Rosatomflot icebreakers.

However, when I re-read Neil's post, I saw that he was actually talking about...
"... the bunker fuel of any older vessels being led through..."

One would certainly hope that, even when being "led through a lead" created by an Arktika or Taymyr class breaker, any ship traversing the Northern Sea Route would still be ice-hardened, and thus less likely to be some old tramp steamer.

Also, Rosatomflot is not in business for altruistic reasons. I therefore suspect - simply on financial grounds - that their fees, even for multiple vessels being shepherded in line-astern convoy, will preclude nearly anything short of reasonably modern bulk carriers.

[NeilT]

Yes I get that Bill. But it is only in the last 4 years that I've seen any attempt at emission controls from the larger container ships. Even then the environmental control systems are designated as "optional", as they do decrease the fuel efficiency.

It was quite interesting to note that the fuel efficiency, basing it on fuel consumed over time, per bhp, in comparison with, say, a 60mpg (imperial), car running at optimal mpg. The latest ship engines use approximately 1/5th the fuel per litre that cars do for the same (relative), bhp.

Even so the largest container ships today burn more than 1m litres of fuel to run from Shanghai to Rotterdam, or to put it another way, around 300 thousand US Gallons.

I would not put it past shipping companies to have soot and emission filters which can be put in or out of the exhaust gas train dependent on where they are in the world and how much fuel they want to save.

That was just the point I was trying to make. That once we get shipping up there we introduce one of the very worst kind of polluters right into the environment itself.