Word: permafrost
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...north around the Arctic Circle, scientists and engineers have been engaged for years in a cold war that knows no politics. From both sides of the Iron Curtain, volunteers enlist in the fight against a common enemy: permafrost, the iron-hard layer of dirt and rock bonded together by year-round ice. Permafrost underlies 20% of the earth's land area. It is 150 ft. thick at Fair banks, Alaska, more than 2,000 ft. thick beneath the Taimyr Peninsula in Russia. Permafrost blocks well shafts, freezes oil drills, makes water piping and sewage disposal costly, heaves...
Last week Western and Soviet permafrost experts got together at Purdue for a five-day conference on ways and means of heating up their underground cold war. Eventually the assembly settled down to develop two lines of strategy-attack and conservation...
...five-man Russian team, in particular, seemed interested in large-scale efforts to get rid of permafrost at mining or construction sites. Pointing out that massive blasting is too expensive, it offered plans for melting permafrost by solar heat trapped beneath huge sheets of plastic, and for electrifying the ground to move aside the water that makes permafrost so unreliable during partial thaws...
...scientists described the aerial mapping techniques that were used with great success to pick relatively solid sites for DEW line stations. Norwegian engineers explained how simple insulation prevents frost-heaving beneath their rail lines. Refrigerated well linings were described as an approach to keeping permafrost in place, but refrigerated building foundations, widely heralded a few years back, were rejected as too expensive to be practical...
...strike is no accident, but the almost inevitable climax to one of the greatest oil rushes in history. Besides Western Minerals, companies like California Standard, Amerada, Shell, Texaco and Midland have grabbed up 130 million acres in the area to stake millions on electronically corroborated hunches that underneath the permafrost lies one of the world's greatest oil pools. The rush has even pushed into the remote Arctic Archipelago, where at least ten companies have asked for exploration permits. Companies with household names such as Richfield are planning to explore places with exotic names such as Graham Island...