http://youtu.be/nzwid7jeqiE The Olympic torch for the 2014 Sochi Games will not go out under any circumstances. This assurance was given today by one of the artifact’s developers, Andrei Vodyanik, in a conversation with an ITAR-TASS correspondent. Asked how they managed to ensure that the design would keep burning in freezing temperatures, strong winds, and even underwater, the interviewee modestly explained that "it was straightforward engineering work". "Experienced designers and engineers were involved in creating the torch, so there were no particular difficulties," Vodyanik said. "Of course, we took into account how combustion systems and the torches themselves had been made by previous developers, but we tried to create individuality both in the technical solutions, in the artistic imagery, and in the engineering solutions embodied in it". http://www.itar-tass.com/c9/620367.html The Krasmash plant was paid 207 million rubles (about $6.3 million at the time) to manufacture 16,000 torches. The torch will burn for eight minutes. It can operate at temperatures as low as -40°C (-40°F) and in winds of 35 meters per second (126 km/h, 78 mph). The torch weighs 1,800 grams (1.8 kg / about 4 lb). Several cutting-edge technologies are used in its production. For example, nichrome wire wound into a spiral will help ensure stable burning in bad weather. http://torchrelay.sochi2014.com/novost-krasmash-peredal-orgkomitetu-sochi-2014-pervuyu-partiyu-fakelov-estafeti-olimpiyskogo-ognya Torches for the Sochi Olympics may cost 207 million rubles—more expensive than London’s As Vedomosti (a Russian business daily) found out, torches for the Olympic flame relay may cost the Sochi 2014 organizing committee about 200 million rubles. It did not hold a procurement tender, instead awarding the order to a Krasnoyarsk plant that manufactures intercontinental ballistic missiles. The flame relay from Olympia to the host city has been held since 1936, and the organizers of the Sochi Olympics have already announced the most ambitious relay in history: 14,000 torchbearers, 56,000 km (34,800 miles), sending the flame to the North Pole, taking it up Mount Elbrus, and into space. The Games organizing committee decided to purchase a record number of torches—16,000, a Vedomosti source at one of the companies involved in the selection process said, and this was confirmed by an official spokesperson for the Sochi 2014 organizing committee. According to an employee of a company bidding for the contract, the torch supplier was to be chosen without a tender. In the final stage, the competitors were the Krasnoyarsk Machine-Building Plant (Krasmash, state-controlled and known, among other things, for producing the Sineva ballistic missile) and the Kompozit holding company (controlled by former Rosnanotech CEO Leonid Melamed, and producing carbon fibers and fabrics based on them). By April 13, suppliers were supposed to submit proposals to Denis Kusenkov, director of the organizing committee’s flame relay department, and the selection process had been ongoing since then, the Vedomosti source said. The projects were not competing on design, since it had already been approved by the IOC, he explained; the competition was over materials and the torch’s weight. An organizing committee employee confirmed this. A committee spokesperson said the choice had been made in favor of Krasmash, but did not disclose the contract value. http://www.vedomosti.ru/sport/news/2878681/fakelnaya_konversiya