Development Projects of Russia: Industry, Energy and Infastructure

Speed of road transportation to Crimea will be vastly improved. But of course Kommersant has to nitpick by complaining about the tolls. If there were no tolls then they would nitpick about how much the government spent on the project or something else.

Tolls were added on the road to Crimea
15.06.2023

Traffic is open on new sections on the M-4 highway towards the peninsula and the Black Sea

Travel from Moscow to Crimea on paid sections of M-4 has become more expensive by 600 rubles. The Avtodor state company has launched two new routes, allowing to bypass Rostov-on-Don and Krasnodar. This will save more than two hours of time, but due to the high price, many will prefer to go on a free alternative, experts say. Next year, another road to the Crimean bridge will appear, bypassing Krasnodar. It will shorten the road trip by another three hours, but it will also be paid.

https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/6044383

This is amusing... (includes english subtitles)

The video jumbles things up a bit. From what I understand there were joint ventures in Russia to produce F-class turbines of the Siemens and General Electric product families. Siemens had a joint venture with Power Machines, and General Electric's joint venture with Inter RAO is called Russian Gas Turbines.

If you go to news websites they will claim that the turbines are import substituted by 60% and 55% respectively. And that the turbine blades and combustion chambers are still imported.

But if you go to the website of Russian Gas Turbines, it states that they did joint work with other Russian companies to import substitute the turbine blades and combustion chambers as well. Basically General Electric provided design schematics for the complete gas turbine via a full license. Russian research institutes developed the materials for the hot part of the turbines, and tooling was bought for coating the turbine blades, their website states that they produced turbine blades and a combustion chamber in Russia in like late 2021. So at this point import substitution of the General Electric F-class gas turbine should be complete. There was an additional license deal agreement with General Electric to buy a full license for their much larger H-class turbines, signed in late 2021, which however fell apart with the sanctions.

Power Machines got fed up with Siemens telling them who they could and could not sell gas turbines to, after that incident when the Russian government tried to use Siemens gas turbines in Crimea and that sale got sanctioned by the Germans. So Power Machines decided to develop their own gas turbine family with their own resources and produce it. Government funds were provided. This way Power Machines neither need to pay royalties for licensing to Siemens nor do they need to be subject to sanctions. So they are developing the GTE-65 (F-class), and GTE-170 (E-class) gas turbines. Power Machines already produced large steam turbines, and Electrosila is in the same group and produces small gas turbines for APUs, so it is not like they did not have the expertise in house to design and make their own if they wanted to. Their gas turbines are in bench testing and expected to be in production in two years.

Unfortunately many of the large gas turbines in Russia, especially of H-class type, which were already installed will now be without spare parts or maintenance. The saga of the Nord Stream gas turbine repairs is just one instance of this and will repeat itself a little all over Russia. General Electric F-class gas turbines are fully import substituted, and the same could be done for Siemens F-class gas turbines if they wanted to. But maintenance and production of larger gas turbines is still a problem.

There is also the updated Soviet designed GTD-110M gas turbine by UEC Saturn but time will tell if they solved the reliability issues in it, like UEC Saturn claims, or not.

As for Fortum (Finland) and Uniper (Germany), they built gas turbine power plants in Russia to generate electric power with private capital. These power plants use large Western imported gas turbines which are now sanctioned from getting spare parts or maintenance. So I hope the Russian government gets this future to be scrap for nothing. Both Fortum and Uniper are state owned and this will cause them huge losses. And Russia gets scrap.

It is a good thing that after that experience in Crimea the Russian state finally decided that before massive serial installation into the Russian power grid any gas turbines need to be fully produced in Russia. Right now the dependence on foreign gas turbine imports for power generation is annoying but not critical. Much of the infrastructure in power generation from natural gas in Russia still uses less efficient much older Soviet era steam turbines.

Power of Siberia gas pipeline uses a mix of Aviadvigatel PS-90 derived gas turbines and the General Electric F-class gas turbine I discussed before so should have no issues.

Maybe those Project 20380 corvettes will be able to be moved from the Baltic to be Black Sea soon after all.

Russia to double North-South export traffic by 2025 — Putin
As regards the eastern direction, its export cargo traffic is to grow by a third by 2025 and add 100 mln metric tons to the 2022 level by 2030, the President said

ST. PETERSBURG, June 16. /TASS/. Russia will pay particular attention to development of the North-South transport corridor and plans to double export traffic along this route, President Vladimir Putin said at the plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF).

"We will pay special attention to the North-South corridor. We plan to double by 2025 and to triple by 2030 the volume of export transportation along this route," the head of state said.

Russia made an agreement with Iran on construction of a missing railway section on the territory of Iran, Putin noted. "We are also carrying dredging work on the Volga-Baltic Canal. It will be able to receive ships with the 4.5 meter draft as early as in this year.

As regards the eastern direction, its export cargo traffic is to grow by a third by 2025 and add 100 mln metric tons to the 2022 level by 2030," the President said.

The key activity in this direction is the increase of the throughput capacity of Baikal-Amur and Trans-Siberian railways, Putin noted. "It should add 15 mln metric tons as early as in this year, growing to 173 mln metric tons," the head of state stressed.

https://tass.com/economy/1633863

Undoing the damage of the 1990s by regaining control of Russian resources for itself.

Rostec plans to increase the production of high-capacity turbines GTD-110M to four per year. The corresponding agreement was signed within the framework of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum with the Ministry of Industry and Trade and Gazprom
https://www.uecrus.com/press/rostekh-planiruet-uvelichit-vypusk-turbin-bolshoy-moshchnosti-gtd-110m-/

Airport terminal in Gelendzhik

Lots of good stuff here...

It mentions the VK650V engine and the Al-222-25 engine for jet trainers and the Grom UCAV, as well as large power generating turbines plus almost 30 minutes of new stuff for Russia... well worth watching...

It mentions a few things in the new regions of Russia, but PD will be pleased to hear that three of the five modules of the new Vostok complex in Antarctica are now completed (19:42).

Its greatest problem is that it covers a wide range of topics and only talks for a few seconds on each development so some things appear repetitive and the interesting stuff like new Ka-52M helicopters for the Army or the high molecular polythene used for body armour etc etc... doesn't have enough detail...

Re the Gelenzhik airport development, RUssia has seen lots of very impressive airport development and redevelopment in recent times. Perhaps the only thing not done is an Asian style mega-development in Moscow.
With current events in Europe, Russia will adapt to circumstances. Its ideally situated as a global hub for the NOrthern Hemisphere.. and other parts. Only scummy American politricks are delaying that. But Russia can survive and flourish without any contact with the NATO gang.

As for Gelenzhik itself, another interesting development. Would be nice to see the Russian Riviera expand and take a more international profile over time.

Good initiative, but Russia shouldn't ignore high-speed railway development because Russia has one of the best geographical features for such development as most of the land is completely flat. But sadly, the Russian government and the Russian people are obsessed with cars and air travel, just like the Muricans. Air travel will never be as efficient as high-speed rail. Japan, China, Italy, and Spain have successfully killed their short-haul airlines with their super-efficient high-speed railway networks.

China is currently the undisputed leader in high-speed railway construction. They have created overnight bullet trains that have also successfully killed long-distance flights within their country. If you have an emergency, then you take the flight; otherwise, the bullet train trumps air travel in every other circumstance You don't even have to book hotels because you will be sleeping throughout the night in the comfort of a high-speed train cruising through the continent

Russia is now swimming in cash, and sanctions were imposed on their airline and car industries, so it's the ideal time to switch to the most efficient form of public transport, aka the long-distance high speed railway sector.






You've got to just ask the Chinese, and they'll jump in to develop your high-speed railway at a fraction of the cost. You can even set a 1 year deadline to finish such a megaproject on the entire European side of Russia. Not only that, they are also willing to transfer the technology. But a lack of political motivation and the stupid carbon copy of Ameri car culture have prevented the Russkies from enjoying such a marvellous, innovative, and hassle-free travelling experience in their day-to-day lives.

There were news articles in the last month mentioning a super high speed rail link in Russia. As fast as China.

I think it was 400kmh.

There is also the future possibility of a cross Russia high speed link direct to China.

https://www.railtech.com/infrastructure/2021/08/17/new-russian-train-of-400-km-h-to-be-ready-in-2028/?gdpr=accept

Note only THREE countries can produce 400kmh trains, and Russia is one of them.

https://www.railway-technology.com/features/moscow-kazan-high-speed-rail/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ope9qpuVQrk

Russia also has to consider ecology, the effect on local towns, the most cost efficient format, and historical sites etc. China will sometimes just blast thro and ignore these vital issues. Fortunately Russia is better than China in these things... or should be!

There is also the question... what can rail do that plane and ship cannot? Rail is part of the mix, but not everything.

Let´s say on a 1.000km axis China has some 30 cities with more than 1 million people.
Perfect for building a highspeed railway.

Russia has maybe 3 cities with more than 1 million people along a 1.000km stretch.
That will make the operation of such a railway more expensive.

But... for Russia the big benefit of rail is freight.
There has been discussion of a 400kmh freight line.
But does Russia need it?

Maybe rail could be brought into the 21st century/"rebranded".
Carriages with mini-offices for travelling business delegations.
Or gyms and other facilities for others who are travelling. Maybe turn the train into an "anticafe" type culture of sorts? Something that somehow sets trains apart from air travel.

Maybe travel will mean air to regional hubs and then rail to the local city/town in Russia?

Firebird wrote:There were news articles in the last month mentioning a super high speed rail link in Russia. As fast as China.

I think it was 400kmh.

There is also the future possibility of a cross Russia high speed link direct to China.

But when? There is no fixed date when the project will start. All I hear is talk, but no action. Indonesia already got its bullet train from China along with technology transfer, but Russia has been talking about high-speed railway connections with China for some years, but so far no initiative has been taken.

Note only THREE countries can produce 400kmh trains, and Russia is one of them.

Your wrong. There are more than three countries that can produce +400 km/h high trains, but sadly, Russia isn't among them. You can't produce 400 km/h trains out of thin air without conducting a single test run.

This was +500 km/h on France's TGV back in 2007.
 

The German-loving Putin administration totally ignored any project on developing domestic high-speed railways and instead bought some German ICE trains but couldn't run them to their full potential because no dedicated high-speed railway line was built. Had they let the Chinese build their railway, they could have gotten not only more advanced trains but also complete infrastructure and technology transfer at a fraction of the cost. But no, Putin had to cling to the Germans to satisfy his Russian inferiority complex. It took a full-blown sanction to wake him up to reality.

Russia also has to consider ecology, the effect on local towns, the most cost efficient format, and historical sites etc. China will sometimes just blast thro and ignore these vital issues. Fortunately Russia is better than China in these things... or should be!  

I hope that you're not buying into CNN's talking points against China because ecology and environment are the usual coping points used to explain China's rapid growth and development. By the way, the recent metro stations in Moscow were built with the help of the Chinese.

Hole wrote:Let´s say on a 1.000km axis China has some 30 cities with more than 1 million people.
Perfect for building a highspeed railway.

Russia has maybe 3 cities with more than 1 million people along a 1.000km stretch.
That will make the operation of such a railway more expensive.

Japan is running train services to remote stations with average passenger numbers of 5 at most, so this is not a good excuse for not having high-speed railway infrastructure. I thought Japan was more capitalist than Russia.

Firebird wrote:But... for Russia the big benefit of rail is freight.
There has been discussion of a 400kmh freight line.
But does Russia need it?

Maybe rail could be brought into the 21st century/"rebranded".
Carriages with mini-offices for travelling business delegations.
Or gyms and other facilities for others who are travelling. Maybe turn the train into an "anticafe" type culture of sorts? Something that somehow sets trains apart from air travel.

Maybe travel will mean air to regional hubs and then rail to the local city/town in Russia?

Megleve is the future of passenger railways. China and Japan both have prototypes, and China has already developed infrastructure for their state-of-the-art megleve. I hope that Russia will catch up soon

Japan does it in order to stay afloat. Investment in infrastructure was only 1 of the few key figures they got as an economy. The other was the tech industry. That industry is nearly dead entirely so much like China, the biggest, to keep afloat, is infrastructure or manufacturing of automotive or rail equipment. Japans land mass is so tiny compared to Russia as well, that the distance between locations is significantly shorter than that is in Russia. Very basic information that you can simply google and measure. Due to Japans rather lackluster highway system outside of the cities, the biggest method of transportation is rail next to airlines. Russia has a massive and rather revitalized highway system.

I have studied Japans economy for quite some time, and there is a good reason their debt levels are beyond acceptable and tolerable. So their method isn't anything to mimic.

When the first deal was signed with Siemens, back in 2006, China's high speed rail industry was not like it is today.
China itself was signing deals with the Germans, Italians, Japanese, Canadians, etc.

China also made deals back then to get the Siemens Velaro trains.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Railway_CRH3

You can only say the Chinese high speed train effort got into its own with the entry into service of the Fuxing train series. Which started being used in 2016.

I do think Russia should make its own high speed rail system to connect European Russia. But so far the Russian state has not put much money into this.

I think part of the problem is that they want to use russian gauge for everything and most high speed train equipment is for standard gauge.

I am surprised that car options are even considered in the Russian far east... it would require regular townships to stop and layover or get fuel, and considering the conditions where running out of fuel could be lethal in minus 30 degree temperatures that are not unusual I would think a train would be a valuable idea when crossing very large expanses of empty territory.

The point is that if you are building rail lines then build lots of them side by side and have an express track to get from one end to the other, and another track that stops most places so people can go to more out of the way places or get from out of the way places to everywhere else... and cargo tracks that can take goods.

Perhaps a mixed cargo track and passenger track that stops at every settlement delivering goods and perhaps people... it would be stopping rather often but rail is a very efficient way to distribute cargo and goods and is much more efficient than by long haul truck.

That would mean at least four lines including cargo just going through and not stopping anywhere, and a passenger train doing the same, plus cargo and passenger trains stopping most places. They could all be higher speed but the ones stopping all the time will obviously take longer.

Personally I think rail is rather safer than cars or trucks for transport very long distances and probably vastly more efficient, but a rail capacity to also carry cars would be useful too for those who started the journey by car and want to complete it by rail.

Those who love rail might also like stopping at every settlement rather than just getting to their destination as quickly as they can.

Opening up the Far East and the Far North will be rather good for Russia and make such places more appealing because they become less isolated and more comfortable in terms of available goods etc.

Perhaps even smart ideas like having a system where a part of the train can stop and drop off cargo or passengers and then catch up to the main section of the train that does not stop but does not travel at top speed... or some sort of release mechanism that can eject goods from the moving train so the train does not need to stop but the goods or people for that stop can get off safely and without being damaged...

The equivalent of parachuting people and goods as you fly over a town... but hopefully with less danger.

I seem to remember an article about the high speed train contracts Russia had with Germany being made null and void by the western sanctions and that Russian companies were going to take over the contracts and the technology to complete the work without compensating German companies.

I also remember commenting at the time that it was good they chose Germany over China because now they have the German technology with the sanctions they can essentially do it all themselves without worrying about copyrights and other paper problems.

The USSR had some insanely unconventional high-speed railway concepts and designs, but technological limitations at the time and a lack of funding prevented many of them from being finalised. I have full faith in Russian scientists and their technological prowess. It's just a matter of political will and the right amount of funding.

Bullet trains are fine and all but maybe not so much for freight? Anyway, it would be a good idea to build two tracks going to and from far east to far west Russia that is high speed for freight and passenger. At first it would be expensive but over time they will become cheaper the more people use it.

I think the effort to convert conventional rail lines to run at 160 kph for freight, doubling their speed, and double-stacked, quadrupling the freight carried, is way more important for Russia. The Russian government seems to have put more effort into that. Has been happening at Transsib and BAM for example.

These high speed rail lines are not of much use for freight. At most you can use them to carry light cargo like mail. They are useless for carrying minerals or other heavy loads around.

For everything else, like passengers, Russia has been spending massively upgrading airport facilities. And they subsidize plane trips inside Russia.

I still think high speed rail makes sense in European Russia, but it seems to have fallen behind as a priority.

I would think high speed rail makes a lot of sense for moving passengers in western Russia but also in the rest of Russia too.

Moving cargo is probably not a high priority in terms of speed but certainly rail speeds should be increased for all rail transport as much as possible just to improve the services. Having more tracks around the place is a good thing and I would think air travel will always be faster than rail simply because it can take more direct routes.

Infrastructure is always a good investment and higher speed rail lines even just for shifting raw materials will pay for itself over time by being able to shift more product faster.

Rail lines and air ports and naval ports should all be upgraded as a priority to make the far north and far east more accessible to the population.

I had read that internal travel in China has massively increased simply because you could go on a day trip to a different city that would normally take a weekend or longer to visit before, making the trip more appealing to more people.