Polar Ice Roads to Europe Pondered by Visionaries

What the world really needs, according to Harold Heinze, is a good network of highways across the Arctic icecap that would link Alaska to the cities of Northern Europe and the Soviet Union, providing a cheaper way to move commercial goods between nations that border the Arctic Ocean.

“We know we can drive from the North Slope to Texas,” the president of Arco Alaska said. “There isn’t any reason why we cannot go the other way.”

As Heinze sees it, such highways would be made of ice.

“I’m talking about a way to improve upon nature,” the 44-year-old oil executive said.

Heinze is one of about 60 visionaries from around the world attending the first Global Infrastructure Projects Conference here this week to discuss “megaprojects” that are too great to be undertaken by a single nation but are so important that they might unite the world.

Among the proposals are the creation of permanent mining operations and scientific research facilities on the moon and the construction of giant dams to supply water to the United States and Mexico and to “green” the deserts of North Africa.

One of the most ambitious ideas--a massive dam across the Bering Straits that would literally bridge the Soviet Union and the United States and tap tidal currents to generate electricity--was scrubbed from the program, because the Soviet scientist who planned to discuss it did not show up.

“His country did not want him to come,” said Masaki Nakajima, a conference organizer.

Where the funds--or the political consensus--for such colossal projects would come from is far from certain. However, that has not detracted from the discussions here.

Just a Vision

“At this point, this is nothing more than a vision,” Heinze said of his highway proposal. “Yet it could be a reality.”

To the Eskimos of the Far North, many of whom are still waiting for electricity in their homes, the idea may seem like the meanderings of an idle mind. Heinze’s proposal, however, has clearly struck a responsive chord among the conference participants, many of whom have played key roles in some of the most ambitious projects in the world.

Heinze said the highway system could be built with current technology, using something the Arctic has plenty of: ice. Heinze envisions truck convoys loaded with merchandise roaring across the icecap highways “that would have no speed limit.”

The drivers could spend the night at what he envisions as a modern industrial city at the North Pole, called “Polestar.” The distance from Point Barrow, the northernmost community in the United States, to cities in the Soviet Union and Northern Europe would be about 2,000 miles by using the polar route, Heinze said.

The proposal, he conceded, would eventually make him look either “visionary” or “dumb.”

Driving Force

The driving force behind the conference is Nakajima, who established and directed the research arm of Japan’s huge Mitsubishi corporation. He is also the founder of the International Federation of Institutes for Advanced Study near Stockholm, which set up the conference.

Nakajima, accompanied by several Japanese scientists and executives, including Japan’s former minister of foreign affairs, Saburo Okita, is here pushing for the creation of an international fund to finance such megaprojects.

There is no money in the fund yet. However, Okita, who served five years as Japan’s foreign minister, waved a golden carrot Wednesday before the participants, saying that Japan might be willing to make the first move toward establishing such a fund. He noted that Japan’s trade surplus last year was about $50 billion.

Ideas Recycled

Not all of the ideas being discussed here are new, such as the damming of the great rivers of Alaska, Canada and the Northwest to supply water to the United States and Mexico. Many, in fact, have been rejected in the past, usually because of political or environmental considerations.

Among the fresh ideas, however, none generated as much comment as Heinze’s Arctic highway.

“I had never heard that one,” said John P. Sheffey, who directed the U.S.-sponsored research program on construction of a sea-level canal across Panama. “I keep wondering where the traffic would come from.”

The traffic will be there, Heinze insisted, once the road is built.

Heinze’s company is a major participant in the North Slope oil project, which he said is just the kind of project that demonstrates the feasibility of even the most extraordinary ideas.

“In a mere 20 years, a great industrial complex has risen (on the North Slope), where there was nothing,” Heinze said.

‘Small Price Tag’

A highway across the North Pole would cost only a “few hundred million dollars,” he said, calling that “a small price tag.” By contrast, the North Slope oil development has already cost more than $15 billion, and that does not include the trans-Alaska pipeline that carries the oil to the warm-water port of Valdez, according to a financial analyst at the conference.

Although the ice highway, as envisioned by Heinze, would be open to all commerce, it could also pave the way for movement of oil and gas to the markets of Northern Europe. Heinze even suggested that an ice pipeline could carry gas across the Arctic, thus making it possible for the first time to sell the enormous quantities of natural gas that are now pumped back into the ground for later use.

The technology needed to build the highway has already been demonstrated, Heinze said.

Ice Technique

Engineers have learned that when water is sprayed in a fine mist at freezing temperatures it forms a layer of ice that is surprisingly strong, he said. The technique was used to build massive ice barriers around offshore platforms in the Arctic Ocean. The barriers sink to the bottom of the relatively shallow water there, forming shields to protect the structures from tides and winds.

That same technique, Heinze said, could be used to build bridges to the permanent icecap, which is only a few miles offshore even during summer months.

The icecap itself is relatively uniform across the entire region, averaging only about 10 feet thick. The highway could be built, Heinze said, by trucks equipped with sprayers that would put down layers of ice strong enough to support commercial traffic.

Polar Binding

Such a highway, in time, would strengthen sufficiently to provide the structural integrity to bind the entire polar cap together. It would be so strong, he predicted, that it would withstand the enormous pressures where ice floes grind together, gradually building ice ridges more than 200 feet high.

Such ice ridges would be a minor problem--”just a little hill” across the barren landscape, he said.

A far more significant problem, Heinze said, is the fact that the entire icecap moves in a clockwise direction, so the roads would not always be pointing in exactly the right direction.

That could be overcome, he said, by building more roads.

In time, the icecap would look like a giant wagon wheel, with roads stretching in every direction.

Driven by currents and winds, the icecap moves at a surprisingly rapid pace, he said.

“We are talking in terms of miles per year,” he said.

Sir Herman Bondi, master of Churchill College in England and for many years head of the Royal Astronomical Society, who is chairman of the conference, said the problem of bridging the gap between ice and land may be the one insurmountable obstacle in the path of the highway.

Ownership Questions

Heinze said, however, that the potential problem can be overcome with adequate engineering studies. Most past engineering has been directed toward breaking ice, not building it, he said.

The highway plan also poses questions of ownership. But Heinze said international laws of the sea would take care of that.

If the highway is, in effect, floating on the ocean along with the icecap, “I’ve just built a different kind of ship,” Heinze said. Under the laws of the sea, “I can’t own the space, but I can occupy it.”

The same would hold true for mining operations, which Heinze believes could be carried out through his technique far more cheaply than with conventional mining ships.

A mining ship made of ice, he said, would be far cheaper than one made of steel, and it could drift slowly with the icecap, mining areas believed to be rich in minerals.

Development of City

In time, Heinze predicted, a city would undoubtedly develop at the North Pole, which would be the central crossroads for the highway system--”because cities always grow at a crossroads.”

Polestar would have a modest start, he said.

“I see it as a truck stop--a gas station and a fast-food store.”

And an Arco gas station, Heinze suggested.