You might think that as the Arctic continues to lose at sea ice cover, there would be less of a need for ice breakers. Well, it turns out that the opposite is true. First of all, there's going to be winter ice for a long time and with the busy Arctic, you're going to need year round access, so you're still going to have to deal with that. And that also although the ice cover is certainly retreating, conditions from year to year, and certainly on a regional scale, are highly variable and you're going to have to deal with that sort of thing. So yeah, we actually need more ice breaker capability if we're going to deal with the busy Arctic. Now the key points here, Russia absolutely has the best icebreaker fleet in the world, and this includes some extremely capable nuclear powered icebreakers. United States and other nations are really very very far behind. There is a new heavy ice breaker for the United States in the work, so there may be others coming. South Korea and China are developing more icebreaker capability, and China's thinking of a nuclear powered icebreaker. Well, right now, let's ask the question. Do any other countries besides Russia operate nuclear powered ice breakers? The answer is no, Russia is the only countries who's got them. As I just mentioned, China's thinking of one, I'm not quite sure where it stands at the moment, but right now it's just Russia. Now couple of charts I'm showing here are just showing the major ice breakers of the world, just kind of in numbers an and types. On the top of it is Russia, and just the point here is there's a lot of ice breakers. Russia has a lot of ice breakers including some very, very capable nuclear powered ice breakers like the Let Pobedy. But then a whole series of other classes of ice breakers. Sweden is doing okay, Finland's got some, Canada has a few ice breakers, you might think they'd have more given it's a fairly cold nation and to a lot of Arctic coast, but nothing near Russia. The United States, were not in very good shape at, but we've got at least one in the works. I'm turning here to the next page, just showing some other countries in their ice breaking capability. Again, the point being that there's just a lot less capability. Germany's got the polarstern, a very nice one, but really not a whole lot beyond that. This picture here is just showing some of the russian Ice breakers in Murmansk, it got some major seaport. In Arctic Russia, it's ice free the entire year because you've got that warm North Atlantic drift current coming in. So here's just a few of them, you see on the right, one who's clearly a nuclear icebreaker, I'm not sure which one it is from this picture, but these are pretty darn capable vessels. Now here, let's ask the question, what's the thickest ice that a heavy ice breaker, one of these really capable ones can break? The answer is around 3 meters, I mean that's more than 9 feet of ice. Think of that, 9 feet of ice, that's a hell of a lot of ice. Now you've got ice, of course, that thicker, even thicker in the Arctic, but a lot of it is a lot thinner. But that's a lot of ice that can be broken by an ice breaker. Now Russia is launching or has launched the new Arctica, there was an old Arktika. Here's a image of the new Arktika. It looks a little photo shop to be, but that's OK. This is basically their latest and greatest done nuclear powered ice breakers. Two nuclear reactors I believe on it, something like 130 meters long or something like that, very, very, very capable, and they've got others being planned as well. Turning to the United States, so one of our ice breakers is the Polar Star is pretty capable. Of course, is conventionally fueled, conventionally powered, but very, very, very old into then refurbish, a number of times capable but very, very old. Well, we've got another one, the Healy. Now that's less capable, it a smaller vessel, but certainly, a lot newer than the Polar Star. Now, as I mentioned, funds have been appropriated for a new heavy ice breaker for the United States, contracts awarded to a company called VT Halter Marine. A construction supposed to begin soon, delivery in 2024, and that will replace the aging Polar Star. And there are possible contracts for additional ships, but at least this new one that's going to be built. Just looking a little bit at Canada, there's the Amundsen, there's a whole lot of research done on the Amundsen, but again, a rather old vessel. And here's a couple of other Canadian ice breakers, the Healy and the Louis St Laurent, doing a joint exercise. So again, these are pretty capable ice breakers, but nothing like the big Russian nuclear powered ice breakers. I mentioned the Polstern, that's a German ice breaker. What's notable here is this is the ice breaker that's been supporting a lot of operations on the mosaic field expedition. Remember that Mosaic is this yearlong expedition out on the Arctic sea ice cover with hundreds of participating scientists doing all kinds of measurements of the ocean in the atmosphere to understand the Arctic and Arctic chain. And during this whole thing, the Polarstern basically has been their home. South Korea, right? South Korea is not an Arctic nation, but it has strong Arctic interest, looking at things like the Northern Sea Route as providing a lot more marine traffic into boots on another port. And so one of their ice breakers It's called the Araon. Well, the only one I believe they have right now is the Araon. Some of our scientists from National Snow and Ice Data Center have had the opportunity to cruise on the Araon up into the Chuck sea. So again, pretty capable as it is used a lot for scientific work. Now it operates in both the Arctic and the Antarctic. Here's a China's ice breaker, Xuelong or Snow Dragon. Now this is again conventionally powered. But China is considering a nuclear powered icebreaker so that it would become the only other nation in the world of besides of Russia with that nuclear capability and we'll see where that goes. So the point is, is that as the Arctic loses its ice cover, you might think you need fewer icebreaker capabilities, but no, you don't. There's variable ice conditions, ice are going to be there all winter, and the point is is that Russia as you might expect, considering their long Arctic coast, is well ahead of the rest of the world, and is certainly going to remain there.
