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Boris B. Kudryashov turns 90

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June 10, 2021, marked the 90th anniversary of the birth of Boris B. Kudryashov, the legendary “Bur Burych”, a professor at Mining University. As a result of his scientific work, it became possible to drill the world’s deepest hole in the ice of Antarctica, 3769 m deep, and open the subglacial Lake Vostok, which plays an enormous role in the study of climate change in recent millennia.

Every polar explorer knows the name of Kudryashov, who forced the world scientific community to recognize the priority of achievements of Russian scientists in the study of the sixth continent. But 70 years ago, the West did not even invite the Soviet Union to participate in the dialogue on the creation of the international legal regime of management of this region, even though our country was a leader in its discovery – on January 28, 1820, the Bellingshausen Ice Shelf was discovered by the Russian expedition, consisting of two ships – the “Vostok” (Captain Faddei Bellingshausen) and the “Mirny” (Captain Mikhail Lazarev). For many years the icy continent remained without special attention from the great powers, but when they decided to explore it and began to claim territorial rights, they tried to exclude the USSR from this process. It did not work…

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© М. М. Семёнов. Шлюпы «Восток» и «Мирный» в Антарктиде

In January 1956, the flagship of the first Soviet Antarctic expedition “Ob” moored to the shore of Farr Bay, and the first landing of Russian scientists on the shore of the icy continent took place. This date is considered the beginning of scientific research of the continent by our country.

It is one thing to get to the white continent and build stations there, and quite another to start exploring it. The general study of Antarctica, studies of drinking water reserves and climate change, and geophysical and glaciological observations required equipment and technology to drill deep wells in the ice. However, the existing drilling rigs in the 1960s were unable to cope with the task.

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© Общественное достояние

In 1967, based on the economic contract between the Leningrad Mining Institute and the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI), a special group was created to solve the problems of drilling in ice. Boris Kudryashov, a young associate professor of the institute, was entrusted to lead the research team. Though he was not yet a full professor or the head of the department by that time, his broad erudition, encyclopedic knowledge, and outstanding managerial abilities predetermined the choice of the candidate.

He was born in 1931 in Leningrad into the family of a famous actor and teacher. Inheriting from his bohemian parents his love of literature and music, his capacity for metamorphosis, and his gift for storytelling, he could recite Omar Khayyam, Baudelaire, and Babel with ease. However, contrary to expectations, he did not go into humanities - he chose an engineering profession and entered the Mining Institute in 1949.

In 1956, just when the first landing of domestic scientists on the shore of Antarctica took place, Boris Kudryashov began his career and got a place as an assistant at the department of Well Drilling Technologies and Techniques at his alma mater. “coincidences are not coincident," as the Chinese philosopher Zhuang Tzu, who lived back in the 3rd century B.C., said. In 1960-61, Kudryashov did his postgraduate training at the Clausthal Mining Academy (FRG), and in 1963, he defended his candidate dissertation.

The young employee was tasked with creating a completely innovative piece of equipment that would be a scientific discovery in itself, as well as enabling subsequent discoveries.

Participants of expeditions in their memoirs do not hesitate to call the Vostok station, located deep in Antarctica at an altitude of 3488 m above sea level, “the most perilous place on Earth”, although only one person died there during its entire history.

Missing content item.

This is Earth’s southern pole of cold. No birds ever come here, and the dogs and test mice brought in during the first campaigns quickly died from the cold. The average annual temperature is -55°C. At such parameters, it was impossible to organize either an airplane landing or a transport trip. In 1983, an all-time record in the history of meteorological observations was recorded - minus 89.2°C. The polar night lasts almost four months, from April 24 to August 20. Usual atmospheric pressure is 460 mm of mercury column - rarefaction of air as on Elbrus peak with humidity lower than in Sahara. Under the most difficult conditions, the polar explorers, cut off from the world like inhabitants of another planet, had to make meteorological reports, conduct scientific research, and build a drilling complex.

Boris Kudryashov was the permanent head of Antarctic research at the Mining Institute from 1967 to 2002. He created the theories of rock drilling by fusion, thermal and mechanical destruction of ice, electro-thermal and electromechanical drilling tools on a load-carrying cable, complexes of stationary and mobile drilling equipment, systems of control, and automated control of the drilling process. In addition, he developed the basics of theory and technology of temperature control of drilling wells and rock destruction tools, new methods of drilling in frozen rocks with compressed air blowing and foam flushing, drilling with simultaneous freezing of wet rocks.

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The scientist not only supervised the scientific process in St. Petersburg but also personally participated in the 20th and 24th Russian Antarctic Expeditions as head of the inland sled-tractor scientific traverses. His team of ice and glacier drilling specialists drilled more than 20,000 m of wells with full core sampling in the circumpolar regions.

A distinctive feature of Boris Kudryashov’s scientific work is its practical orientation, which eventually led to the possibility of sinking in 1998 the world’s deepest well 5G-1 in the Antarctic ice depth of 3623 m and the scientific discovery that established the fact of superlong anabiosis of microorganisms in the ice, which age reaches 400000 years.

Marked in the Guinness Book of Records, the borehole allowed to approach another, no less significant discovery.

Back in 1964, the famous geomorphologist Andrei Kapitsa, who conducted seismic sounding of the ice sheet, suggested that under Vostok station there is the largest subglacial lake on the planet (approximate size - 250×50 km), which has been isolated from the outside world for several million years. In the late 1980s, this theory was finally confirmed, after which Russian, French, and American specialists began drilling a well together, which was supposed to reveal the secrets of the body of water. In 1999, drilling was stopped at about 120 meters above the supposed surface. To penetrate the subglacial lake and prevent its possible pollution, it was necessary to develop environmentally friendly technology.

Boris Kudryashov, who by that time had already defended his doctoral dissertation, received the title of professor and had worked as dean of the Faculty of Geological Exploration of LMI, head of the department of Well Drilling Technology and Technique, and vice-rector of the institute for scientific work, took up the task of solving this problem.

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© Схема бурения скважины озера Восток

In 2000, a team of authors under his leadership created the technology of deep drilling in the ice with original electro-thermal and electromechanical shells on a carrying cable. It was approved by the State Environmental Expert Authority, and on February 5, 2012, came the long-awaited news from Antarctica drillers: “The borehole at 3769.3 meters has opened the subglacial Lake Vostok”.

In the summer of 2013, at the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Council meeting, it was decided to assign the status of a historical monument and the name of Professor Boris Kudryashov to the building of the drilling complex of well 5G. This event was a result of recognition by the international scientific community of the achievements of Russian scientists in studying the Antarctic ice sheet and subglacial reservoirs. And it will allow keeping the name of the outstanding scientist in the memory of descendants.

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© Установление памятной доски на буровом комплексе имени Бориса Кудряшова

“The very fact of the opening of Lake Vostok is comparable to the news of man’s flight into space. The work in this direction was carried out for decades, people worked in extreme conditions, the equipment was tested to the extent that it could not be in any other region of the planet. And our further task is to obtain new knowledge and transform it into production,” said Vladimir Litvinenko, Rector of Mining University.

Boris Kudryashov was his scientific advisor in the framework of the Russia-NASA program. Research on it was conducted both in Leningrad and at the Los Alamos National Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy.

The scientist was known in Russia and abroad as a theorist and organizer of scientific research on exploratory drilling, founder of the domestic school of drilling thermal physics, and a talented teacher. He is the author of widely used analytical solutions of problems of borehole aerodynamics, heat and mass transfer, regulation of the temperature regime of wells, the efficiency of extraction of the Earth’s deep heat.

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© Форпост Северо-Запад / Горный музей / Ректор Владимир Литвиненко вручает Борису Кудряшову орден «За заслуги перед отечеством»

“I came to the Mining Institute to major in something quite different from drilling, but I saw an announcement in the dormitory on Shkipersky Stream that there would be a lecture on Antarctica,” the rector recalls. “There was a full house in the lecture hall and the professor, who later became my supervisor, Boris Kudryashov, was so fascinating that the next day I applied for a new specialization in ‘Technique and Technology of Geological Drilling for Solid Mineral Resources’”.

“He was a true researcher, an encyclopedist, and, most importantly, a man for whom science was not an occupation, but a way of life. In any direction the basic vector is important, and in drilling, he set it for many generations to come. It is enough to cite one figure: the Americans in Greenland gave up at one and a half kilometers. At his lectures, students stood in the aisles, and he kept tutoring postgraduate students even when the whole institute was already empty. I consider him not only my teacher but also my colleague,” says Vladimir Litvinenko.

More than 250 scientific works, including 17 textbooks, manuals, and monographs, more than 40 certificates of authorship and patents, 27 candidates and 6 doctors of engineering - all this is the legacy of the famous Bur Burich, whose contribution to the study of the sixth continent is simply impossible to overestimate.

Scientists of Mining University are still engaged in improving the technology of drilling in the ice and personally monitoring their adaptation in the harsh conditions of Antarctica. Representatives of the oldest technical university of Russia are always present in the research teams that go to the ice continent every year.

Восток
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