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What is the Northern Sea Route?
In Soviet legal and political perception the Northern Sea Route (NSR) stretches from Novaya Zemlya in the west to the Bering Strait in the east. It covers some 2200-2900 nautical miles of ice-infested waters and makes up only part of the Northeast Passage that connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans along the whole stretch of the northern coast of Eurasia. The route consists of a series of individual seas - the Kara Sea, the Laptev Sea, the East Siberian Sea and the Chukchi Sea, which in turn are linked by straits - the Kara, Matochkin, Vilkitski, Sannikov and Laptev straits. However, unlike most other sea routes, there is no single set channel to be followed. At times convoys will be forced to proceed north of the large island masses of Novaya Zemlya and Severnaya Zemlya due to accumulation of pack ice in the straits, making passage either difficult or impossible (see Figure 1).
However, the pack ice is not the only obstacle to navigation. The continental shelf along the route is very shallow indeed, in some of the straits only a few meters deep. Minimum depth in most straits exceed 20 meters, but in the Sannikov strait it is only 13 m and in the Laptev strait only 8 m. This places absolute limits to the draft of the vessels able to navigate without running aground.
Moreover, it seems to be a law of nature that in those places with the shallowest depths, the most difficult ice conditions will prevail. The hazards of ice navigation in shallow waters are obvious.
It is said that being at sea is risky, being at sea in ice is twice as risky, and being at sea in convoy with an icebreaker presents three times the risk. Why then, is it that the Northern Sea Route attracts increasing attention worldwide?
Geopolitical Advantages
None of the major industrial areas of Europe, the Soviet Union, North America or Japan is located more than 3860 nautical miles from the North Pole. Some 80% of world industrial production takes place north of 30 degrees North, and some 70% of all conurbations lie north of the Tropic of Cancer. Or, expressed in another way: the shortest distance between...