Funding the North Pole, NPT Working Group, and Ice Thawing

Photo: Makovnev Afanasii/GeoPhoto.ru

Funding the North Pole, NPT Working Group, and Ice Thawing

The federal government of Russia decided to allocate 1 more billion rubles (USD 13.4 million) to fund the construction of the North Pole, a self-propelled research platform able to autonomously operate in ice-covered waters for up to three years. Its builder's trials being scheduled for 2022, the government authorized the Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring to oversee the final construction stage.

The Ministry for Far East and Arctic came up with a draft regulation on the establishment of an interagency working group for the construction of a nuclear power plant in the Yakut Republic (Russia). The power plant is expected to provide energy for a to-be-developed gold mining project and neighboring off-grid settlements in the Russian Arctic. If created, the working group would focus on finding the best solution for the power plant and draft a roadmap for its construction.

Russian researchers made a considerable progress in finding out what factors contribute to warming in the High North. According to a recent study made public by a group of MSU scientists, the process of ice thawing in the Atlantic sector of the Arctic may be speeded up by an influx of warm waters from the lower latitude Atlantic, which ascend to the surface of the Barents Sea and Kara Sea and warm it up.
Alexander Stotskiy
19 July 2021
Arctic Today