I sure hope Murmansk is pulling its weight, because Sevastopol and Kronshtat aren't in much better shape.
Posted on 01/14/2003 2:26:59 PM PST by Magnum44
Boston Globe January 13, 2003 Pg. 9
Russia Loses Funding To Destroy Nuclear Subs
By Anatoly Medetsky, Associated Press
BOLSHOI KAMEN, Russia - The towering rock in the bay that gave this town its name is long gone, blown up by engineers who called it a hindrance to navigation.
Gone, too, is the town's one-time livelihood: refueling and repairing the submarines in the Pacific Fleet of the Soviet Union.
A half century after its birth as a secret Soviet military town, Bolshoi Kamen, Russian for Big Rock, has another mission that could disappear. It's the home of Zvezda [Star], one of Russia's two principal centers for scrapping the submarines it no longer needs.
For eight years, Zvezda has received funds from the United States to safely dismantle 22 submarines taken out of service under disarmament treaties.
In all, Washington committed $120.1 million to Zvezda, funding such equipment as the gargantuan, clanking shears that slice up submarines for scrap metal and the boxy building where cable is reprocessed to retrieve copper.
Zvezda is scheduled to cut up its last submarine under that deal later this year, and the American funding will dry up, so the plant's bosses are campaigning for new money to pay for the disposal of dozens of other submarines that did not target the United States yet remain security and environmental threats.
Russia says the money must be found quickly. ''Nuclear things are like a volcano and can explode any time,'' says Valery Lebedev, deputy nuclear power minister.
Altogether, Russia has decommissioned about 190 nuclear-powered submarines over the past 15 years. Officials say 90 of those still languish at docks with nuclear fuel in their reactors.
The presence of the radioactive fuel and poor conditions at naval facilities feed international worries about the possibility of nuclear materials being transferred to other nations or terrorists.
Poor maintenance also creates a risk of dangerous radiation leaks. Two decommissioned submarines sank off the northeastern Kamchatka Peninsula in 1997 and 1999. They were quickly raised, and the navy said they did no harm, but they remain a concern.
Russia plans to destroy 131 submarines by 2010, said Viktor Akhunov, head of the Russian Atomic Energy Ministry's ecology and decommissioning department. Almost all were taken out of service in the 1980s.
Akhunov says it will cost $3.9 billion to scrap all the subs. Yet last year, the Russian government budgeted just $70 million for improving nuclear safety in the country as a whole.
Because Russia has no onshore facility for storing decommissioned submarine reactors, the practice is to cut the reactor compartment from each submarine and store it afloat.
One of the most pressing tasks, therefore, is building a storage base for 19 reactor compartments floating in Razboynik Bay near Bolshoi Kamen, Akhunov said.
This seems quite unsafe.
I sure hope Murmansk is pulling its weight, because Sevastopol and Kronshtat aren't in much better shape.
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