ERICON Aurora Borealis Icebreaker
The ERICON project was completed on 31 May 2012. Only the future will show whether the existing obligations of the countries involved in the project can be transformed into Aurora. But afterwards there were no answers about the timing of the implementation and the potential capabilities of the vessel. The "Aurora Borealis" was projected as the world's first combination of icebreaker, drillship and multipurpose research vessel. The ship was to be equipped so that it can be used in all seasons in polar areas and in the open sea. The construction costs were estimated (at 2008 prices) at 650 million euros. With sufficient financial support, the training should be completed in 2011, and the actual construction should begin in 2012. In this case, the first research studies can be carried out around 2014.
The German Scientific Council completed the evaluation of the Aurora Borealis project in May 2005 and recommended the construction of a research icebreaker in 2006. The Wissenschaftsrat (scientific advisory committee to the German government) recommended paying Germany at least 30% of the cost of Aurora Borealis. A total of 15 organizations and agencies from 10 European countries, including Norway and the Russian Federation, established the European Research Icebreaker Consortium. At the initial stage of the project, the European Commission has allocated 4.5 million euros. Now they needed to find interested organizations that were ready to pay the remaining amount - 645 million euros. Finding investors was much more difficult.
The presentation of the technical project of the multi-purpose research ship "Aurora Borealis", combining the features of an icebreaker and a deep-water drilling ship and intended for the study of the polar seas, took place on 03 December 2008. The Finnish company Wartsila, which manufactures engines, and the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research presented a project of the European scientific icebreaker Aurora Borealis ("Northern Lights"), intended for research in polar seas.
"Aurora Borealis" will be a unique combination of a heavy icebreaker, a scientific drilling ship and a multipurpose research platform and will be able to work all year round in all polar waters. It will be the most capable research vessel in the world. The project "Aurora Borealis" is included in the list of priorities of the European Strategic Forum on the Scientific Infrastructure of the European Commission (ESFRI) as part of the 7th Framework Program among the seven projects from the environmental research section.
The most important new development is that the ship can flexibly and thus hold itself exactly in position against the driving ice by means of lateral ice breaking. The technique is called "dynamic positioning" and allows the "Aurora Borealis" to perform deep-sea drilling without the accompaniment of other icebreakers. Thanks to a special reed shape, the ship can break a closed ice sheet up to 2.5 meters thick at a speed of up to two to three knots. Another special feature are the so-called "Moon Pools", two seven-by-seven-meter-wide, through shafts in the middle of the ship's hull. Above the rear "Moon Pool" will be the derrick, while the front bay will allow even very sensitive and expensive equipment, such as remote-controlled underwater robots, to be brought under a closed ice blanket without being exposed to wind and waves.
"If polar research in Germany wants to remain competitive, then a new research vessel with drilling technology is essential," explained Jörn Tiede, former director of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI). Drilling cores that are extracted from the Arctic seabed are particularly informative for climate research. The individual sediment layers provide information about the temperature history of the past. After the Wissenschaftsrat also issued a recommendation in 2006, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) provided more than five million euros for a feasibility study and technical planning. During the two-year planning phase it became clear that the new super research icebreaker "Aurora Borealis" can not become a German project alone. The European Commission was one of the seven major research projects of the Environmental Sciences research group to be included in the list of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) in the 7th EU Research Framework Program. According to the Commission, many European nations have a keen interest in understanding the Arctic environment and its potential changes as its territories extend in part to the high northern latitudes.
"Aurora Borealis" is in many ways superior to the former star of European polar research, the German icebreaker "Polarstern". It was to be the world's first combination of icebreaker, drillship and multipurpose research vessel. A new type of drilling technology would allow drilling drones from 5000 meters of water depth plus 1000 meters of drilling depth in the seabed from the pack ice. In the floating pack ice, the ship will be held by a dynamic positioning system in one location. So far, the researchers remove cores with the help of gravity cores. The hollow metal tubes are rammed from aboard into the soft seabed. But they only reach the superficial layers at a depth of up to 60 meters. The "Aurora Borealis" should also be able to be used during the winter months and thus throughout the year in the Arctic.
The "Polarstern", however, spends only the summer months in the Arctic since their first research trip in 1982, since they can break ice only up to a thickness of 1.5 meters and the ice in the winter up to three feet thick. After a short maintenance period in the home port of Bremerhaven, the ship then travels south to the Antarctic. Commuting between the poles causes a large part of the high operating costs for the "Polarstern". Martina Kunz-Pirrung, Scientific Coordinator of the "Aurora Borealis" project, saw great potential for savings here: "The year-round use of the 'Aurora Borealis' in the Arctic makes the expensive commuting of the 'Polarstern' superfluous." Uwe Nixdorf, geophysicist and responsible for the research ships at the Alfred Wegener Institute, says: "Already during the transfer of the 'Polarstern' into the Antarctic, a lot of science is being carried out and for years we are collecting data on air pollution and sampling it southern waters. " Nixdorf also can not imagine that you can completely do without the work with the "Polarstern" in the Arctic.
"We have fixed geological and biological data facilities in front of Spitsbergen. These are checked and maintained once a year. Performing such simple tasks with a ship like the 'Aurora Borealis' meant shooting cannon at sparrows! "In his opinion, it is clear that the" Polarstern "must continue to be used in both polar regions." Both ships are very different created, each has its areas of application, none can replace the other. "Martina Kunz-Pirrung agrees:" The 'Polarstern' takes on important multifunctional tasks. It also supplies, for example, our research stations, such as the Neumayer station in the Antarctic. "Recently, a new edition of the ship in the board of trustees of the Alfred Wegener Institute was decided." Until 2015, the old model will still do its services, then comes, Polarstern II '.
When the "Aurora Borealis" sets off to the north for the first time is not sure yet, because the financing is not yet available. The construction costs are estimated at 650 million euros. How this sum is to be raised is discussed by the European Polar Research Icebreaker Consortium ( ERICON ), which was founded in December 2008 and is funded with 4.5 million euros from the EU's 7th Research Framework Program. "ERICON is made up of representatives from 15 institutions in 10 European countries and they are now building the necessary management structures to find European partners to help with the financing," says Kunz-Pirrung. "Some governments have expressed interest, including Russia and Norway, but there are no concrete commitments."
When riparian states of the Arctic Ocean, such as Russia and Norway, show interest in drilling projects in the Arctic, it can not be ruled out that they are not only concerned with science, but also with the development of new oil and gas resources. Martina Kunz-Pirrung asserts, however, that such considerations have not flowed into the technical design of the ship. "Unlike the Japanese exploratory research vessel 'Chikyu', the 'Aurora Borealis' will not be equipped with a drilling technology that will allow it to drill oil or gas deposits." Geophysicist Nixdorf also affirms that the primary interest of basic research is valid. "But geoscientific research is never completely 'germ-free' in terms of energy resources, and data are always collected that could be of interest to energy companies".
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