Nuclear North North Passage

Modern shipping is mega huge super billion dollar business. Since the Suez Canal and the Panama Canal, there's only one big obstacle left: the route over the Northern hemisphere, from Europe to East Asia.

The mythical attempts to find a North West Passage to the Far East proved that the passage existed, but nothing more. Today, only occasionally, nuclear icebreakers create a passage along the border of Russia and Siberia. Some adventurers crawl the labyrinths of Northern Canada.

My idea is to create and maintain a permanent passage, straight over the North Pole, year round, the shortest route.

This would cut shipping costs tremendously, since it makes the trajectory to China about 4500 miles shorter.

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Build a few floating nuclear hubs every 500 miles or so, all over the trajectory (about 2500 miles from Svalbard Island to the Bering Straits -- [[see map in link 1]]). So you need about five of those.

Use the electricity they generate to heat a grid of simple metal heating cables. This grid needs to be not more than 200 metres wide or so. The temperature will be regulated according to the temperature of the water, climate and the thickness of the ice in the vicinity.

This operation requires a lot of permanent energy, but once you create an icefree corridor, the engine will keep on rolling quite smoothly. Moreover, you don't need to melt all the ice in the passage, just the bulk of it. It's only pack ice. No icebergs. And a thin layer of ice can easily be broken by normal ships.

Voilà, finally Europe can trade more smoothly with China, which is becoming the big player in the future.