Lady Captain as Symbol Of Global Quest For Arctic
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She is Russian, she is blond and beautiful, and she is the captain of a huge Yamal nuclear-powered icebreaker plying the cold seas of Arctic. Marina Starovoitova is the first-ever woman to make it to the bridge of a 23-thousand- ton monster, capable of breaking ice 2.8-meters thick.
You’ll never forget that black-hulled ship, with white shark’s teeth on the bow, if you see it even only on the horizon.
It so happened that the same lady has seriously shifted the national public attention during last week’s celebration of a serious date – Rosatom’s 80th anniversary. To note, the present-day corporation has been established only in 2007, but it is the inheritor of a project launched in August, 1945.
You see, Rosatom is about so many things. Let’s use some quotations from the transcripts of the visit of President Vladimir Putin to the Russian Federal Nuclear Centre – National Research Institute of Experimental Physics in the city of Sarov.
First, Rosatom is about power stations. It operates 35 units and 11 nuclear power plants, or some 20 percent of the country’s energy mix. 38 new nuclear power plants are to be built by 2042. There are also works at 22 generating units abroad, with 41 units total in our international portfolio. The orders come, said the President, from India, China, Bangladesh, Turkiye. Which, all together, means that we are number one in the world today, noted Putin. Rosatom is an absolute leader in global nuclear energy. No company in the world builds so many facilities in general and so many facilities abroad.
Second, Rosatom was the first to launch serial production of the safest Generation III+ reactors. Now, it is working at fourth-generation energy systems based on fast neutrons with a closed cycle. And do not forget the project of controlled thermonuclear fusion.
Third, the corporation is engaged in future and present production of radiopharmaceuticals for diagnosing and treating complex illnesses, including oncological diseases. Quantum computers enable the development of new medicines, vaccines, and materials, as well as the rapid processing of vast amounts of data. Thanks to Rosatom’s efforts, prototypes of such systems with immense computational capabilities have already been assembled in Russia.
Fourth, there is another large-scale project, the creation of a space system with a special power plant and a so-called space tug based on a nuclear power unit. Such solutions open fundamentally new prospects for deep space exploration.
But, to repeat – thanks to the immense popularity of Captain Marina Starovoitova, looking so good on the screens, what the Russian media did discuss at length, was yet another Rosatom project. And that is everything connected to the Northern Sea Route, which will form part of the Trans-Arctic Transport Corridor. That’s Ms. Starovoitova’s place of work, the cold waters between St Petersburg via Murmansk to Vladivostok.
What we have here is set to be a vortex of international diplomacy, with all kind of rivalry and cooperation, for decades to come. It’s strange to believe that lands and waters so unhospitable are becoming so important, but still that’s what actually happens.
Let us quote again Vladimir Putin speaking at the same meeting.
By the way, we are discussing with our US partners the possibility of working together in mineral production, both in the Arctic and Alaska, he said. Nobody has the same advanced technology that we do, which attracts our partners, including in the United States.
That technology, to remind, is based on eight nuclear-powered icebreakers. No other country in the world has such a fleet. One more is already afloat, another is on the stocks. The decision to build two more is close to finalisation. And the fifth is under construction, plus 35 diesel icebreakers in service. Nobody has such a powerful fleet. And if we only talk about cargo transportation, Russia has crossed the line of 38 million tons last year, and the growth of that northern route is remarkable.
Several national newspapers have published a serious analysis of the situation these days. It’s mostly about the future Canadian Polar Max icebreaker, to be completed in Finland by 2030. These two nations, plus the US, have recently signed an agreement to build jointly the icebreaking fleet, so as to challenge Russia’s supremacy in that area.
To note, the US have only one big icebreaker worth its name. And, if you want to develop the Northern Route, minding the growth of volume of cargos transported, you’ll need twice as many ships as there are in service there now. Finally, do not forget the Arctic-class warships, that are also been produced and used by several nations, military icebreakers included.
China is an obvious other challenger in that field. It has bought its first icebreaker from the former USSR republic, Ukraine, in 1994. It has three Arctic-class ships, of own design and build, by now, not to mention the fact that China is now producing 53 per cent of all the ships in the world. It’s well known that China is working closely with Moscow on several projects in Russia’s extreme North, and is regularly plying the Northern routes.
South Korea is world’s second shipbuilder, and the prospects of cooperation with the US in Arctic territories have just been discussed by the President, Lee Jae Myung, visiting Donald Trump in the White House.
India and Russia have been discussing joint plans in Arctic area in April last year, we are talking about negotiations of National Center for Polar and Oceanic research with the Russian colleagues. We’ll see what comes out of it.
So, what do we do about the whole situation? Naturally, Moscow loves the prospect of doing business with the US, instead of confronting America. It’s much better to be tied up in unbreakable economic union than being not dependent on each other, right? But then, we are talking about the plans that may last us 20-30 years. And we have watched the way two first economies of the world, China and the US, have been forcibly divorced recently after decades of normalcy. Not to mention a strange case of Indo-American ties that suddenly went sour.
One of the answers was given in The Independent (Russia), publishing an opinion of Mikhail Yemelyanov, Director of Political Research Foundation.
Commenting on Donald Trumps’ idea of cooperating with Russia, Mr. Yemelyanov says: the US President probably feels that the age of “eternal” military and political alliances is gone. So, Trump is experimenting with ad hoc coalitions, preferably based on business interests, which makes the global situation rather liquid.
Liquid or not, one should not expect Russia to yield its near-monopoly on Arctic technologies to any friend or partner. We may not be a nation of Global North, but the geographic North is very much ours.
Dmitry Kosyrev is a Russian writer, author of spy novels and short stories. He also did columns for the Pioneer and Firstpost.com
