Arctic Route May Provide a Trade Shortcut for Ships

Nuclear-powered icebreakers someday may lead freighter convoys through the frozen seas north of Siberia on a shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

According to the Fridtjof Nansen Institute, a private agency in Oslo, the 4,000-mile route warrants serious study as an alternative to the usual crossings through the Suez and Panama canals.

The passage, called the Northern Sea Route, would more than halve distances between some ports in Europe and North America or Asia.

“It could change world shipping,” said Willy Oestreng, director of the institute.

Last year, Soviet maritime officials asked the institute to prepare a preliminary study of the passage from northern Norway to Alaska. Its report, which proposed further study to expand use of the passage, drew on experts from the United States, Canada, Britain, Norway and the former Soviet Union.

Russians envision their 30 nuclear-powered icebreakers leading freighters and cruise ships through the polar ice at least 10 months a year.

Oestreng said environmental risks such as nuclear accidents, fuel spills and disturbing wildlife are major considerations.

“We have to determine whether the risks are acceptable,” he said. “I don’t think it would ever be used to transport oil because of the possibility of ecological catastrophe.”

The route, also known as the Northeast Passage, was sailed first by Finnish-Swedish explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiold in 1878-79. Ice ridges up to 42 feet high, combined with Soviet military concerns, have kept it from becoming a major trade route.

Oestreng said modern icebreakers and changes in the Soviet Union revived interest in the passage, but Rolf Saether of the Norwegian Shipowners Assn. cautioned about cost, reliability and politics.

“I don’t think anyone can foresee what will be happening in the (former Soviet Union) at the turn of the century,” he said.

Oestreng noted that the route follows Russia’s northern coast. He said: “Russia has the same desire . . . to open the passage. If they are going to use the enormous resources of Siberia, they need 10 or 12-month sailing.”

Ice would slow the average speed, but the shorter distances--4,200 miles from Hamburg, Germany to Alaska, compared to 10,400 miles via the Panama Canal--could cut three or four days off expensive sailing time.