The new Chinese icebreaker Xue Long 2 has completed it’s first Arctic Expedition:
The Russian arctic is becoming more hospitable according to Aleksandr Skryabin, Captain of the shallow draft icebreaker Vaigach.
Over the years, the powerful vessel has crisscrossed Russian far northern waters, including the Gulf of Ob where Russia today is unfolding an unprecedented Arctic industrialization
The brand-new nuclear-powered icebreaker Arktika has reached the North Pole on its maiden voyage from Saint Petersburg to Murmansk.
With one engine down and now the task before the master is to return without incident otherwise his retirement plans were not looking that rosy.
The Russian propulsion motors are tandem units and the starboard shaft is down to 50 % of its rated output. Even with this handicap, Arktika is still the world’s third most powerful icebreaker with more than twice the output of USCGC Healy. After entering the polar ice pack, the icebreaker averaged 12 knots to the pole.
Considering the present ice conditions, Arktika could probably make it back with just one shaft turning.
The Victor Chernomyrdin will have official naming ceremony 3. Nov.:
Meanwhile Canada is looking for a good used icebreaker for the Great Lakes:
To be honest, I can’t really think of anything that would meet their spec and be available for purchase.
NSR is becoming a highway, but not for all:
I didn’t know the Northern Sea Route extends all the way to the Baltic Sea. 
Anyway, I’ve been tracking the shipping along the Northern Sea Route all summer with great interest. Lots of international transits and new ship types from low ice class Panamax bulk carriers to a four-masted steel barque which transited the route under sail.
In the meanwhile, I’ve tracked just five transits on the Northwest Passage, all of them Royal Wagenborg ships.
edit: It will be interesting to see what kind of ice conditions we are getting this winter particularly in the eastern sector where we have observed an unprecedented loss of summer ice.
More gas found in the Kara Sea:
I wonder what those “several countries building new icebreakers to increase freight traffic” are?
The ice at the North Pole is too thin to properly test the new nuclear icebreaker Arktitka:
It’s also October, the end of the melting season. Worst time to do ice trials.
This could have gone in the Climate Change thread, but that has deteriorated into an exchange of opposing “scientific” articles, insults and untenable opinions.
Re-growth of winter ice in in the Arctic has stalled. Why:
Since the USCGC Healy is out of action the Norwegian Coast Gard vessel K/V Svalbard is on her way to the Bering Sea off Alaska to retrieve scientific buoys that have been deployed for one year:
New onshore oil field to be developed in Alaskan arctic has been approved:
Russia update strategy plan for the Arctic up to 2035:
US Exim Bank to fund Australian mining company’s investment in a zinc and lead mine in Greenland:
A new haulout beach for Walruses on the Kara Sea has been found by Russian scientist:
New record for goods carried in transit on the NSR:
Another heat record set on Svalbard: