Russia's Rosatom to Order New Robot to Extract Minerals From Arctic Bottom

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Russia's Rosatom state nuclear corporation wants to order development of a robotic installation which would extract rare and hard-to-recover minerals at the bottom of the Arctic, Russia's Foundation for Advanced Research (FPI) told Sputnik on Monday.

Head of the FPI’s project group Viktor Litvinenko specified that the ordering customers of the automated system would be Rosatom and its subsidiary JSC Atomredmetzoloto (ARMZ Uranium Holding).

"This project will complement our work on the development of the Arctic … Such technology essentially does not exist … It will be quite a challenging project for ARMZ to go from land under water, where there are huge reserves of solid and hard-to-recover minerals. Now, we are working with them. Perhaps, there will be other partners," Litvinenko said.

He noted that the robotic installation would be based on the existing Iceberg project, which provides for creation of separate autonomous complexes for the development of hydrocarbon fields for oil and gas companies.

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"So some of the components have already been created, we will see what is missing and what could complement a large set of our autonomous systems," Litvinenko added.