How nuclear icebreakers work - and the reversible ships that will replace them
By Loz Blain
18:28 December 20, 2011
MT Tempera, one of the new class of double acting reversible ships, going backwards to act as an icebreaker
Image Gallery (22 images)The Arctic North end of Russia is believed to hold as much as a quarter of all the world's oil deposits - an utterly monstrous economic prize, hidden in one of the toughest and least hospitable environments on the planet. Getting to this prize, and then transporting it back to refineries, is a monolithic task that requires one of the most awe-inspiring pieces of machinery man has ever built - the nuclear icebreaker. Purpose-built to the point of being almost unseaworthy on the open waves, these goliaths smash their way through 3-meter (10-foot) thick ice crusts to create viable pathways for other vessels - but fascinating new technologies could mean the days of the dedicated icebreaker are numbered.
Making hay in the Arctic
Where there's a well, there's a way. An oil well, that is. Black gold. Texas tea. And some of the world's richest reserves of the stuff are buried beneath the beds of the Berents sea, North of Russia and well into the Arctic Circle. It's estimated that this area holds somewhere around a quarter of all the oil reserves in the world.
But it's an area that gets no sun at all for at least one day every year, and which is so cold that the sea itself freezes over with 2-meter (6.5-foot) thick ice for more than two thirds of the year. When it's not frozen over, there's 12-meter (40 foot) waves to deal with. It's one of the world's most extreme environments; inhospitable doesn't even begin to cover it.
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