Vyacheslav Ruksha, Deputy Director General of ROSATOM and Director of the Northern Sea Route Directorate, addressed the seminar on shipbuilding and ship repairs in the Arctic. He declared that the demand in the construction of an Arctic ice class cargo fleet before 2030 shall be a minimum of 44 vessels. A minimum of 21 LNG tankers, 12 tankers, 9 container vessels capable of transporting among others reefer containers, 10 dry bulk carriers and 3 multi-purpose vessels shall be required for ensuring the development of cargo shipping along the NSR of up to 150 mln. tons by 2030. All of them should have an ice class no less than Arc5, specified Vyacheslav Ruksha.
Later in the day, a conference for the development of telecommunications and digitization in the Arctic was held within the chairmanship plan of Russia in the Arctic Council. Maxim Kulinko, Deputy Director of ROSATOM’s Northern Sea Route Directorate, informed that ROSATOM is working on the creation of a digital ecosystem of the Norther Sea Route. It shall consist of the core - a Unified Platform of the Northern Sea Route Digital Services (UPDS NSR) and new sources of information required for improving the appraisal accuracy of the ice, meteorological and navigation situation unfolding in the NSR aquatic area.
UPDS NSR assumes the creation of a unified digital space that shall allow in single window mode to render various services to carriers, shipowners and captains of ships, insurers and other participants of the logistics market in the NSR, and specifically the case is about the documentation of permits for passage of ships, monitoring, dispatching, management of fleet operation. It is planned to collect all types of information from all the available sources within the single digital platform, for example, hydro-meteorological data, location of vessels and icebreakers, utilized capacity of ports. As a result, the users shall get an "ice navigator" allowing with high accuracy to map the route in the changing ice conditions of the NSR.
Аt the SPIEF session "Investment projects in the Arctic: preferential regimes" Vladimir Panov, Special Representative of ROSATOM, addressed on Arctic development issues. He noted that the aggregate investments of ROSATOM in the Arctic development on the ongoing projects up to 2030 shall exceed 700 billion rubles. Approximately 6000 workplaces shall be created.
A third of these funds is the renewal of the icebreaker fleet. Another quarter are mining projects – a lithium project, Sovinoye, Pavlovskoye. Moreover, ROSATOM shall launch the international transit project, build the port infrastructure, equip the NSR route with the necessary amenities.
The issue of compliance with environmental safety standards was touched upon at the panel session "Climate Change Trends and Risk Management in the Arctic" as one of the priority objectives of the development of the Northern Sea Route and the Arctic Region overall. For 9 months of work over a joint project of Lomonosov Moscow State University Marine Research Center and ROSATOM, the team of more than 60 experts from 15 leading Russian and foreign research and development institutes, associations, amalgamations and public organizations in environmental protection and maintenance of biodiversity had developed a program of integrated environmental monitoring aimed at providing environmental safety of the NSR as a single infrastructure facility. At the core of the program were the materials of previous long-term studies of Arctic ecosystems, data of the pilot environmental monitoring performed in 2021, based both on the field research and on data of satellite studies of ship load and contaminations along the entire length of NSR water area, and recommendations of the international group of experts. "Our program contains the fundamental recommendations on the choice of environmental monitoring facilities and parameters, research methods and work implementation plans, which will ensure responsible environmental management and stable development of the Northern Sea Route. We have already received support from many Russian and international R&D organizations, which indicates a high assessment of the program among the representatives of Russian and foreign expert community", noted Nikolai Shabalin, Executive Director of Lomonosov Moscow State University Marine Research Center.
Source: Rosatom