Moscow: Nuke Subs May Leak
Over 100 mothballed nuclear submarines rusting in Russia's Arctic ports threaten to leak radioactive waste because officials can't afford to unload their spent nuclear fuel quickly enough, officials acknowledged Thursday.
It was one of the clearest warnings of the danger to be issued by the Russian government. Previous warnings have come mostly from scientists and environmentalists. A retired Navy captain was jailed for espionage after raising alarms about the problem in 1994.
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Some of the submarines with Russia's Northern Fleet were decommissioned 25 years ago, and have languished dockside far longer than safety permits, said Valery Martynov, an official with the State Nuclear Oversight Committee in charge of nuclear safety in Russia's north.
But the government isn't properly equipped to remove the waste quickly enough, Martynov said, according to the ITAR-Tass news agency. Continuing at the current rate, officials will need at least 12 years to unload all waste from the nuclear submarines, Martynov said.
To speed up the process, officials have turned to foreign governments for assistance. British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, in Murmansk Wednesday, promised $4.8 million to help process the accumulating waste.
However, a British Foreign Office report said the cost of cleaning up just a single sub can run to around $4 million. A December 1998 study by the office estimated the cost of decommissioning about 100 Russian submarines, defuelling, clearing waste and spent fuel would run into billions of dollars and take 30-40 years to complete. All told, the study said, the job could cost almost $100 billion.
Norway, concerned with nuclear risks posed by the aging subs, has promised to finance construction of more waste-removal equipment this year, the Russian oversight committee's Martynov said.
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