engineering

Pechora–Kama Canal

Pechora–Kama Canal is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Pechora–Kama Canal rather than just read about it. In short: The Pechora–Kama Canal (Russian: Канал Печора-Кама), or sometimes the Kama–Pechora Canal, was a proposed canal intended to link the basin of the Pechora River in the north of European Russia with the basin of the Kama, a tributary of the Volga. Completion of this project would integrate the Pechora into the system of waterways of European Russia, centered on the Volga – something that was of importance before the ad…

Key takeaways

Pechora–Kama Canal belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Pechora–Kama Canal to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Pechora–Kama Canal from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Pechora–Kama Canal (Russian: Канал Печора-Кама), or sometimes the Kama–Pechora Canal, was a proposed canal intended to link the basin of the Pechora River in the north of European Russia with the basin of the Kama, a tributary of the Volga. Completion of this project would integrate the Pechora into the system of waterways of European Russia, centered on the Volga – something that was of importance before the advent of railways, or before the first railway reached the Pechora in the 1940s. Later the project was proposed mostly to transfer Pechora's water to the Volga and further on to the Caspian Sea.

19th century proposals In the 19th century, communication between the Kama and the Pechora was conducted mostly over a 40-km portage road between Cherdyn and Yaksha. There was also an option to use very small boats that could go up the uppermost reaches of Kama and Pechora tributaries, and cart the goods over the 4 km portage remaining. Poor river and road conditions made transportation into and out of the Pechora basin very expensive, and various improvement projects, including a narrow-gauge portage railroad were proposed. Nothing much was ever done, however.

20th century A canal between the Pechora and the Kama was part of a plan for a "reconstruction of Volga and its basin", approved in November 1933 by a special conference of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Research in that direction was conducted by Hydroproject, the dam and canal institute led by Sergey Yakovlevich Zhuk (Russian: Сергей Яковлевич Жук). Some design plans were developed by Zhuk's institute without much publicity or actual construction work. The canal plan was given new life in 1961 during Khrushchev's premiership. Now it was part of a grander scheme for "Northern river reversal", which also included similar river water diversion projects in Siberia.

Nuclear test

Unlike most other parts of the grand river rerouting scheme, the Pechora to Kama route did not just stay on the drawing board. It saw actual on-the-ground work done of the most unusual kind: on March 23, 1971, three 15-kiloton underground nuclear charges were exploded near the village of Vasyukovo in Cherdynsky District of Perm Oblast, some 100 km (62 mi) north of the town of Krasnovishersk. This nuclear test, known as Taiga, part of the Soviet peaceful nuclear explosions program, was intended to demonstrate the feasibility of using nuclear explosions for canal construction. The triple blast created a crater over 600 m (2,000 ft) long. Later it was decided that building an entire canal in this fashion, using potentially several hundreds of nuclear charges, would not be feasible, and the use of nuclear charges for canal excavation was abandoned. The Northern river reversal plan was completely abandoned by the government in 1986.

Environmental aftermath

The Taiga explosions may be among the devices that produced the highest proportion of their yield via fusion-only reactions, with 98% of their 15 kiloton explosive yield being derived from fusion reactions, a total fission fraction of 0.3 kilotons in a 15 kt device. Such bombs are known as clean bombs, as it is the byproducts of fission reactions that are primarily responsible for the radioactive intensity of nuclear fallout. Around 2000, local environmentalists carried out several expeditions to the Taiga crater, and met the only person still residing in the Vasyukovo village. The fences surrounding the crater had rusted away and fallen down, and the "Atomic Lake" or "Nuclear Lake" is now a popular fishing place for the residents of the other nearby villages, while its shores are known for the abundance of edible mushrooms. The area is also visited by the people who pick metal cables and other bits left over from the original test, to sell to scrap metal recycling businesses. The environmentalists recommended that the crater lake be fenced again, due to the continuing residual radioactivity. The triple "taiga" nuclear salvo test, part of the preliminary March 1971 Pechora–Kama Canal project, produced substantial amounts of relatively short-lived cobalt-60 from steel tubes and soil ("Origin of Co-60. Activation of stable Co, Fe, Ni (from the explosive device and the steel pipe, and from soil) by neutrons"). As of 2011, this fusion generated neutron activation product is responsible for about half of the gamma ray dose at the test site. Photosynthesizing vegetation exists all around the lake. A 2009 radiation survey of the lake and surrounding areas was conducted to determine the relative danger of the area, finding "the current external γ-ray dose rate to a human from the contaminations associated with the 'Taiga' experiment was between 9 and 70 μSv [micro-Sieverts] per week". The report also recommended periodic monitoring of the site. In comparison, typical exposure from naturally occurring background radiation is about 3 mSv per year, or 57 μSv per week.

See also Lake Chagan; a lake created as part of the Russian Peaceful Nuclear Explosions program Lake Karachay; a natural lake highly contaminated by the dumping of high-level nuclear waste

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Pechora–Kama Canal

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Pechora–Kama Canal claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Pechora–Kama Canal before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Pechora–Kama Canal ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Pechora–Kama Canal

In research: Pechora–Kama Canal appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Pechora–Kama Canal in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Pechora–Kama Canal is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Abandoned canal projects, Buildings and structures in the Komi Republic, Canals in Russia, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Pechora–Kama Canal outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Pechora–Kama Canal in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Pechora–Kama Canal means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Pechora–Kama Canal out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Pechora–Kama Canal in simple terms?

Why does Pechora–Kama Canal matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Pechora–Kama Canal?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Pechora–Kama Canal.