Northern river reversal

[3] Despite the ousting of Khrushchev in 1964, talks about the projects of turning the major rivers Pechora, Tobol, Ishim, Irtysh, and Ob resumed in the late 1960s.

In 1971, at a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, the Soviets disclosed information about earthworks on the route of the Pechora–Kama Canal using three 15-kiloton Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy spaced 165 metres (540 ft) apart, claiming negligible radioactive fallout.

[1] Others feared climatic cooling from reduced river water flow, while others thought that increased salinity would melt ice and cause warming.

More disturbing, some scientists cautioned that if the Arctic Ocean was not replenished by fresh water, it would get saltier and its freezing point would drop, and the sea ice would begin to melt, possibly starting a global warming trend.

A British climatologist Michael Kelly warned of other consequences: changes in polar winds and currents might reduce rainfall in the regions benefiting from the river redirection.

[2] In 1986 a resolution "On the Cessation of the Work on the Partial Flow Transfer of Northern and Siberian Rivers" was passed by the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the CPSU, which halted the discussion on this matter for more than a decade.

[5] The Soviet Union and then Russia have continued these studies with the other regional powers weighing the costs and benefits of turning Siberia's rivers back to the south and using the redirected water in Russia and Central Asian countries plus neighbouring regions of China for agriculture, household and industrial use, and perhaps also for rehabilitating water inflow to the Aral Sea.