The Petrozavodsk plane crash on June 20th, 2011, has shocked the town of Petrozavodsk and the whole Republic of Karelia. Meantime as a coincidence, top Russian government officials were attending to the international aviation exhibition in Paris in order to help marketing a new Sukhoi SuperJet airplane.
Since the airplane that crashed was an old-fashioned Tupolev Tu-134 model, the accident is expected to give an impulse to the introduction of more modern models such as SuperJet 100. The old Tupolevs are a notorious remainder of the breakdown of Aeroflot in the 1990s, when the skills base and strict quality controls of the formerly state-owned monopoly loosened. As a response to the outdated airplanes, the Russian government urges on modernizing the airplane production and introducing new models that would have better capabilities to meet international competition.
The Superjet plane, designed and manufactured by Russian OAK concern, is a prime example of such endeavors. However, this is not the only way ahead to make passenger traffic run smoother. Other strategic lines in transport investments are at least as important as airlines, or even more important. One cannot forget the strategic importance of railways, not least at the event of airplane accidents. Russian transport functionaries have already paved the way to successful high-speed train connections between Moscow and St. Petersburg as well as between St. Petersburg and Helsinki. It takes less than four hours to take the «Сапсан» from Moscow to St. Petersburg, and three and a half hours by Allegro from St. Petersburg to Helsinki. Finnish businessmen are increasingly substituting airplanes with trains during their business trips. This has been an important direction of development in China as well.
Nowadays, it takes a bit under five hours by the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed train to finish its 1,305 km journey. What is more, construction of the high-speed railway (which is for 1,268 km part of its length ballastless) involved international suppliers such as Alstom, Siemens, and Mitsubishi-Kawasaki to take charge of parts of the project. Simultaneously with the news concerning the Petrozavodsk airplane accident, there has been alarming news on the state of nuclear power stations in Kola Peninsula. A report commissioned by Rosatom has entered into the possession of Aftenposten, a Norwegian newspaper, enumerating serious risks associated with the old power plants. Rosatom’s report warns about shortcomings in emergency cooling systems, the storage of nuclear fuel, maintenance and surveillance of the reactors located in close proximity of the Finnish border. As regards to the nuclear power industry as a whole, the Russian government has got serious attempts to modernize it and provide new technologies and solutions for the World market.
All such global setbacks as the leaks from the Fukushima reactor, the withdrawal of the German government from new nuclear power, and the alarming reports on the poor state of the nuclear power plants in the North-West Russia, render the prospects of the industry more negative. That is why the Russian government should take a new tack as regards to the country’s energy supply, as it has to do with its airplane industry.
The Kola Peninsula with its heavy industries demands for huge amounts of electric power, which is mostly provided by nuclear energy. One has to note, however, that the region has huge resources of water power on a global scale, and what is more, of wind power, to replace the nuclear power. It has been scientifically confirmed that the Kola Peninsula constitutes the windiest region in Europe. There has been some investment in this industry in the area, and the local and regional authorities have a positive attitude towards wind power investments. However, the possibilities cannot be fully exploited due to the lack of state subsidies, which is often the key to the industry’s success in other countries such as in Germany. Substituting the dangerous - and non-ecological - air traffic for train connections as well as the risky - and continuously non-ecological - nuclear power for windmill power would be an option worthy of consideration in the future. It could be even more easy for Russia than for its competitors to invest in these technologies.
As mentioned already, Kola is the best place in Europe for windmills to run. And it is easily seen on the map that the north-western part of Russia is one of the most convenient places for the construction of railways in Europe. The contractor does not need to cross big mountains and great rivers. The Beijing-Shanghai high-speed train project alone involved 22 tunnels and 244 bridges, including the longest bridge in the world.
