Ice Fishing

Ice Fishing

Via view from the porch

Arctic

Arctic Ocean

Found this in a story on Unherd:

Russia, whose territory spans around 53% of the Arctic Ocean shoreline, and China are rapidly developing plans to expand the Northern Sea Route. The maritime passage between the east and west of the Arctic Ocean is regarded by the Kremlin as vital to avoid Western sanctions. It is already possible to navigate the route for anyone with several briefcases full of dollars to pay for the mandatory Russian ice breakers which accompany any transit as patrol vessels. In 2024, the Kremlin is planning to commence year-round navigations of the route, through which it hopes to increase the amount of cargo shipped from around 30 million annually to 80 million.

I read a couple more paragraphs and decided whatever they were talking about didn't interest me, but here's some pictures of Russia's nuclear ice breaker Arktika.

The "Arktika" is the first days of January sailing north of the Taymyr Peninsula awaiting to assist an LNG tanker coming from Asia via the Northern Sea Route. Photo: Rosatomflot

Arktika, the first of three LK-60 icebreakers

 

Russian Icebreakers

The Soviet Union’s Nuclear Icebreakers
Asianometry

I've put up several posts about icebreakers and a couple about the Russian's nuclear ones.

Dudinka - Norilsk

Norilsk, Russia

A big Chinese nickel producer got caught in a short squeeze that severely disrupted the London Metals Exchange (otherwise known as LME) which, for some reason, is based in Hong Kong. They were trying to make some money by gambling, a time honored tradition amongst gamblers and financial whiz kids. They were betting that the price of nickel was going to drop, but then Russia invaded Ukraine, the US threw up a bunch of sanctions and the price of nickel skyrocketed because, don't you know, Russia is one of the biggest producers of nickel in the world.

Nornickel's Bystrinsky Mine and Concentrator

Rising prices are very bad for someone who is betting that the price is going down, especially when the time for settling the bet is coming due, so they tried to buy up a bunch of nickel to cover their bets, which drove the price up even higher and eventually the London Metals Exchange said this is crazy and shut down all nickel trading. It looks like the Chinese producer is going to be out $8 billion which is no small amount, even for a Chinese oligarch.

Norilsk - Dudinka Railway

Norilsk is the site of Russia's biggest nickel mining and smelting operation. It is pretty well landlocked, so their product is shipped to 50 miles to Dudinka where it is loaded onto ships on the Yenisei River.

Arctic Express loading at Dudinka, Russia

Dudinka is 1.5 degrees north of the Arctic Circle, so the Yenisei River is a river of ice, which makes shipping a challenge, to put it mildly.

Liebherr crane unloads the massive heat exchanger from the ship in Dudinka Seaport

Marine Traffic near Norilsk, Russia

All those colored dots on this map are big ships. Norilsk is near the right hand edge of the map and the green dot about a half of an inch to the left is at Dudinka. Left of center in the image is another river of ice but it has quite a bit more traffic. I wonder what they are doing over there. I imagine more resource extraction, but that's going to have to wait for another time.

MV Federal Yamaska Bulk Carrier
198 piece jigsaw puzzle

I did this puzzle a couple of days ago and I wondered where the photo was taken. Didn't find anything, I suspect it's in Alaska, but who knows. I'm tacking it on here just because it seems to fit.

Russian Yamal-LNG project on the Arctic Ocean

This Cost $27 Billion Dollars to Build

I am really enjoying hearing how the US wants to employ economic sanctions against Russia, and how we are pressuring Germany to not certify the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, all supposedly to protect Ukraine, a probable hub of corruption and villainy. Or maybe we're just doing that to keep the zillion dollar commissions flowing into the Biden's pockets. Whatever. Europe gets 40% of their energy from natural gas from Russia. What do you think will happen to natural gas prices if Russia starts feeling squeezed? You will notice that Total, the French oil company, is a big investor in this project.

Qatar has a big LNG facility. It's quite a bit warmer there, so it is not as efficient at liquifying the gas as the Russian plant, but they don't have to contend with ice and transport would be shorter, so it might be a wash as to which plant is more efficient.

Aker Arctic, the company that designed the ice-breaking LNG (Liquified Natural Gas) carriers, has appeared here before. Note that while the Finnish company designed these ships, they are being built in China.

LNG carrier cargo tank cross section

The membrane in 'membrane tanks' is a thin sheet of fancy steel. One mm (millimeter) thick steel is pretty stout stuff for any everyday kind of application. The steel used to make automobile bodies is only 0.7 mm (1/32 of an inch). Ship's hulls are more like 3/4 of an inch (19 mm), so I can see how shipbuilders would consider something only 1 mm thick as a 'membrane'.

I guess the part that really bugs me about this project is that is makes us, the US, look like a bunch of gibbering fools in comparison. Putin might be a murderous thug, but I suspect he is not worse than any other powerful man and might be quite a bit better. Or maybe his PR (Public Relations) office just does a better job. I look at the crap our government continues to pull on a daily basis and I'm not sure we have any room to talk. All of which reminds me of this scene from The Godfather:

The Godfather (6/9) Movie CLIP - Working for My Father (1972) HD

Everyone in a position of power is a murderous thug. The only difference is whether they are murdering your friends or your enemies.

Ilya Muromets

Bogatyrs (1898) by Viktor Vasnetsov. Left to right: Dobrynya Nikitich, Ilya Muromets and Alyosha Popovich

According to legends, Ilya Muromets, the son of a farmer, was born in a village near Murom. He suffered a serious illness in his youth and was unable to walk until the age of 33. He could only lie on a Russian stove, until he was miraculously healed by two pilgrims. He was then given super-human strength by a dying knight – Svyatogor – and set out to liberate the city of Kiev from Idolishche to serve Prince Vladimir the Fair Sun. Along the way he single-handedly defended the city of Chernigov from nomadic invasion and was offered knighthood by the local ruler, but Ilya declined to stay. In the forests of Bryansk he then killed the forest-dwelling monster Nightingale the Robber, who murdered travelers with his powerful whistle.
In Kiev, Ilya was made chief bogatyr by Prince Vladimir and he defended Rus' from numerous attacks by the steppe people, including Kalin, the tsar of Golden Horde. Generous and simple-minded but also temperamental, Ilya once went on a rampage and destroyed all the church steeples in Kiev after Prince Vladimir failed to invite him to a celebration. He was soon appeased when Vladimir sent for him. - condensed from Wikipedia

He must have made an impression. Russia is still enamored of him.

Igor Sikorsky named his giant four engined WW1 bomber after him.

Ilya Muromets bomber 1914

Russian Ice Breaker Ilya Muromets
Wikipedia has an article

Volga River Cruise Ship Ilya Muromets

Via daily timewaster

50 Let Pobedy

50 Let Pobedy

50 Let Pobedy is a Russian, nuclear powered icebreaker. It is the world's largest. I just saw it on Reddit and it reminded me that I put up a couple of posts awhile back about Russian icebreakers. You can see them here and here.

The post on Reddit gave me a name so I wanted to check it out, and that's when I come across this bit:

Russia currently operates all existing and functioning nuclear-powered icebreakers. The first one, NS Lenin, was launched in 1957 and entered operation in 1959, before being officially decommissioned in 1989. It was both the world's first nuclear-powered surface ship and the first nuclear-powered civilian vessel. - Wikipedia

Hey! Now wait a minute! I don't remember every hearing about the commies having any nuclear powered civilian ships, all I remember hearing about was this one:

NS (Nuclear Ship) Savannah, the first commercial nuclear power cargo vessel, enroute to the World's Fair in Seattle.

I remember it pretty well. I was only 11 when it came to Seattle. Took a tour while it was there. I remember it looked too pretty to be useful.

Now I read this bit about how the Soviets had a nuclear powered civilian ship before we did, and then I think about how the Soviets took an early lead in the space race and I'm thinking we've got some real dunderheads in Washington. But that's nothing new. At least we didn't have Stalin. If you are a corrupt despot you can direct the energy of your country any way you want. If you are a big shot anywhere else, you have to hire an advertising agency to make your pitch. After WW2, I think we coasted on our laurels a bit. No matter how much the hawks promoted the red scare, people just weren't scared enough to finance some scientific boondoggle.

I'm disappointed we don't have a base on Mars yet. Shoot, we don't even have one on the moon. When the Soviets failed to put a man on the moon, we relaxed and went back to arguing about politics or sports or whatever you feel like arguing about. I think arguing is our national pastime.

Or maybe our effort to put a man on the moon showed us how much we didn't know, so we pulled back and started going over what we had done and seeing how it could be done better. And we probably have a bigger pool of talent to draw from now. More people understand more about going into space that ever before, and maybe that's what you need to get there: a critical mass of people with the necessary knowledge.

Now it looks like SpaceX may build a rocket that could make building a moon base possible. I suspect the government is the only one with the wherewithal to fund such an operation, but if SpaceX reduces their costs as much as they promise, we could have tourists going to the moon, and Hollywood might even make movies up there. In ten years the moon could be a very busy place.

Meet Mr Boaty McBoatface

New UK Polar Vessel, as yet unnamed

The Brits are building a new boat and they are asking the public to suggest a name for it. The front runner is 'Boaty McBoatface'. Best name for a boat I've ever heard.

Boaty is a bit of an icebreaker. It can push it's way through one meter thick ice at three knots, which is good since you are going to be floating in freezing water most of the time. Polar Star, our one heavy icebreaker can handle ice twice that thick. More icebreaker posts.

Via Dustbury

Update May 2016 replaced missing picture. This one has the new name on it, and no, it's not Boaty McBoatface, unfortunately.

U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy

September 5, 2015. U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy arrives at the North Pole.

First U.S. ship to reach the pole unaccompanied, which implies that other U.S. ships have been there before. Since you would need an ice-breaker to reach the North Pole on the surface, that kind of implies that we went in the company of some other country's ice breaker. That wouldn't have been Russia, would it?

Healy? Where'd they get that name? Wikipedia, as usual, provides the story:

Healy was . . .named in honor of United States Revenue Cutter Service Captain Michael A. Healy (1839 – 1904) . Healy patrolled the 20,000 miles (32,000 km) of Alaskan coastline for more than 20 years, . . After commercial fishing had depleted the whale and seal populations, his assistance with introduction of Siberian reindeer helped prevent starvation among the native Alaskans.

I am beginning to suspect that we (as in we - the human race) won't be happy until we have killed and eaten every critter on the planet. And then we'll be sad.

Healy has a web cam. They put up a new pic every hour. Update May 2024 web cam is dead.

Inspired by Lloyd.

MVS Fennica

Icebreaker MVS Fennica in drydock

This is the ship that had Greenpeace all up in the air (hanging from the St. John's bridge here in Portland). It carried a blowout preventer to the Chukchi Sea off the northwest coast of Alaska so Shell could start drilling for oil.

More icebreaker posts.

Icebreaker Polar Star

 

The 38-year-old US Coast Guard Icebreaker Polar Star is refloated after overhaul on Mare Island. While not the USA's biggest icebreaker, it is the only one classified as heavy, which means it can break a path through six foot thick ice at a steady 3 knots. We have two larger icebreakers, but they are classified as medium as they can only continuously break ice four-and-a-half feet thick. They can all break thicker ice by backing and ramming, but that is much slower procedure.

The propellers on this ship are 16 feet in diameter and the pitch on all blades is adjustable, which means you can get more push at low speeds when you need it. AP Photo/U.S. Coast Guard.

More icebreaker posts.

Pic of the Day

Russian Nuclear Powered Icebreaker. Click to Embiggenate. Watch out for the teeth.

Russians Carry Olympic Torch to the North Pole

They got there on October 19, a month ago today. The ship is one of their nuclear powered icebreakers. They made quite a party of it. 
Update: I am adding 'icebreaker' so Blogger's search function can find this.

Aker Arctic’s ARC100HD – A Powerful, and Unusual Icebreaker

BY ROB ALMEIDA ON MAY 9, 2013

Aker Arctic’s ARC100HD Icebreaker

At first glance, very little about this new icebreaker looks right.  The port side shares almost nothing in common with the starboard side and even the bridge doesn’t appear to be facing the right direction.

Image: Rob Almeida/gCaptain

This was a very deliberate design consideration by the naval architects at Aker Arctic however, one that gives the ARC100 some very unique abilities while operating in first-year arctic ice.

Every other icebreaker in the world accomplishes its job while moving forward or astern, except for the ARC100.  This new icebreaker is able to operate as an icebreaker in any direction, and as the diagram below shows, use this to its advantage by increasing its virtual beam to create channels in the ice for ships with wider beams.

The ARC100HD has also been through a plethora of model tests at Aker Arctic’s facility in Helsinki, Finland which have demonstrated the vessel’s ability to break through 1.5m thick ice when moving ahead and astern at 5 knots (2 knots through 2m thick ice). In the oblique mode, the vessel will be able to cut a 50m wide channel through 1.5m thick ice.

In addition this vessel will also be outfitted with features that provide advanced oil response capabilities in an arctic environment. As the image below shows, the vessel deploys a boom arm and uses the full length of the hull to funnel oil to the on board collector tanks for oil separation.  This system allows oil recovery in heavy seas.

Vessel Particulars:

• Length over all: 98.0 m
• Breadth over all: 26.0 m
• Draught maximum: 8.5 m
• Bollard pull: 190 tons
• Main engine power: 2 x 8000 kW
 + 2 x 4000 kW = 24000 kW
• Accommodation: 40
• Deadweight max: 3200 tons
• Fuel oil: 2500 m3
• Recovered oil: 1500 m3
• Fresh water: 250 m3
• Urea: 250 m3
• Operation range: 10000 NM

Excerpted from gCaptain. It is certainly an unusual boat. I like the way they list the fuel capacity in useful units. This boat could probably do something useful with a cubic meter of fuel oil, like travel 4 miles. A gallon probably wouldn't even get it up to operating temperature. But why do we have a tank for urea, unless this a euphemism for sewage.

Update July 2020 replaced pictures that disappeared when Blogger 'fixed' some broken html code.