Iggy's Arctic Dreamland

Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff has a dream - a dream of a pan-Arctic park, a pristine nature enclave where the habitat and ecology of the Arctic will be preserved. Where he came up with that silly idea is anyone's guess. Perhaps he hadn't heard that Russia had already launched the first in what's supposed to be a fleet of ice breaker/supertankers being built specifically to help exploit the massive energy reserves believed to lie beneath the Arctic Ocean floor.

Before Mike wastes more time daydreaming about Arctic parks, maybe he should read The Guardian. It's reporting on Russia's plans to build 'a fleet' of floating and submersible nuclear power plants to exploit Arctic oil and gas reserves. That's 'submersible' as in underwater as in underwater nuclear power plants Mike.

A prototype floating nuclear power station being constructed at the SevMash shipyard in Severodvinsk is due to be completed next year. Agreement to build a further four was reached between the Russian state nuclear corporation, Rosatom, and the northern Siberian republic of Yakutiya in February.

The 70-megawatt plants, each of which would consist of two reactors on board giant steel platforms, would provide power to Gazprom, the oil firm which is also Russia's biggest company. It would allow Gazprom to power drills needed to exploit some of the remotest oil and gas fields in the world in the Barents and Kara seas. The self-propelled vessels would store their own waste and fuel and would need to be serviced only once every 12 to 14 years.

In addition, designers are known to have developed submarine nuclear-powered drilling rigs that could allow eight wells to be drilled at a time.

The British paper notes that Russia has a history of nuclear dumping in the Arctic Ocean.

Countries including Britain have had to offer Russia billions of dollars to decommission more than 160 nuclear submarines, but at least 12 nuclear reactors are known to have been dumped, along with more than 5,000 containers of solid and liquid nuclear waste, on the northern coast and on the island of Novaya Zemlya.

Let's see - oil drilling, gas drilling, seabed mining and nuclear power plants. What more could you want in a nature park? Oh yeah, I know. A permanent Russian Arctic military force would be the icing on the cake. What? They're organizing that too? Oh my.

Gagging the Debate on Arctic Drilling

Political pressure from Sweden and the United States has gagged scientific warnings on the perils of oil drilling in the Arctic ocean.

A group of scientists from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Arctic Research division, led by director John Calder, together with 150 scientists with the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP) spent four years compiling a report entitled "Arctic Oil & Gas" in which they laid out the environmental risks unique to the region. From Spiegel Online:

Among other things, Calder's report warns against the dangers posed by faulty pipes and tanker accidents. "Oil spills are especially dangerous in the Arctic, because its cold and heavily season-dependent ecosystems take a long time to recover. Besides, it is very difficult to remove the damage from oil spills in remote and cold regions, especially in parts of the ocean where there is ice." Calder also criticizes the destruction of landscapes that comes with building pipelines and describes the way Arctic villages would change once the oil money upends all traditional social structures.

But despite these commendable warnings, there is a significant problem behind the work of Calder and other scientists: it has been devalued by political wrangling. Until recently, the summary ended with more than 60 recommendations the scientists had compiled for politicians. Those recommendations have since disappeared.

The modifications are the result of quarrels within the Arctic Council, which commissioned the AMAP study. Unanimity is required between the permanent members of the Council, which include the Scandinavian countries, Iceland, Canada, the United States and Russia -- but Sweden and the US were opposed to the document. Sources at the Tromsø meeting said the Americans didn't even want the term "climate change" to be used in the final report.

John Calder remains perplexed. His report, originally intended as a milestone in the development of the Arctic oil and gas industry, could end up being largely ignored because its most important section, the recommendations for action, is missing.

"Risks cannot be completely ruled out," the authors write in the penultimate chapter of the AMAP report. It is statements like these that have prompted the environmental organization World Wildlife Fund, which presented its own report in Tromsø on the risks of oil accidents in Arctic environs, to call for an end to exploration for new oil and gas reserves in the Arctic.

"The Arctic has an almost unparalleled level of ecological sensitivity and one of the lowest levels of capacity in terms of cleaning up after an accident," said James Leaton of WWF's chapter in the United Kingdom.