Russia's Nuclear Time Bomb
"It's 7 a.m.," says the announcer on Good Morning Za Polynairy. "The temperature is minus 21 degrees, humidity is 23 percent, and the level of radiation is 4 micro roentgens per hour."
Today, there's no cause for alarm on Russia's Kola Peninsula. Four micro-roentgens is a relatively safe level of radiation. Still, it is no coincidence that radiation levels are reported at the top of every hour in the country's northwestern most territory.
Aside from being located one hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle, the Kola Peninsula has the dubious distinction of housing the highest concentration of nuclear reactors in the world.
Most of those reactors belong to Russia's northern fleet of more than 80 nuclear submarines. Some belong to a half dozen atomic icebreakers - the world's only civilian fleet of nuclear vessels. And four 440-megawatt reactors run the Kola Nuclear Power Plant, providing much of the region with electricity.
In all, more than 200 reactors dot this Arctic territory, which is smaller than the state of Pennsylvania.
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| A Soviet-era statue towers over Murmansk. |
The civilian freighter Lepse is moored right outside Murmansk, a city of 350,000 inhabitants. Inside are more than 600 spent fuel rods that were pulled from the reactors of the atomic icebreaker Lenin.
Removing the fuel from this old ship would be fraught with dangers. But any accident could send spent nuclear material right into Kola Bay.
Andrei Solopkov is a member of Bellona, a Norwegian environmental watchdog organization whose detailed reports on Russia's nuclear program landed Bellona member and former Russian Navy Captain Alexandr Nikitin in jail.
According to Bellona, the potential danger posed by the Lepse is just the tip of the iceberg.
From 80 to 100 nuclear submarines are stationed in top secret bases along the Kola coast. Over a period of three decades, Bellona reports that these subs have been at the root of more than fifty accidents. Many of those ships are now docked - waiting for their reactors to be dismantled. Russia can't afford to foot the bill, so the subs are literally rusting away.
Empire Of Decay
For twenty years, Vladimir served on North Sea submarines as a nuclear engineer. Today, he and his family live in Connecticut -- far away from the Kola submarine bases.
Vladimir is not affiliated with Bellona, but he confirmed the group's reports -- on the condition that his last name be withheld.
"There is such a thing as metal fatigue," he says. "Corrosion takes place and the metal falls to pieces. I five, ten years go by, in the end, these boats can just sink like stones right at the docksÂ…When I was there, there were already 6 old subs in need of dismantling. Now, I think there are 20 or 30 docked at the factories."
Ominously enough, the submarines' deterioration has been accompanied by some frightening security breaches.
There have been reports of attempted thefts of nuclear materials. And last September, a disturbed 19-year-old sailor held an entire nuclear submarine hostage for 20 hours after killing 7 crewmembers with an assault rifle.
As Russia sinks further into economic depression and its aging nuclear complex continues to deteriorate, analysts are suggesting that only outside help can stave off another nuclear disaster like the one that made the Ukrainian town of Chernobyl synonymous with the unthinkable in 1986.
"Russia alone, it's my personal opinion, is unable to solve all the problems 100% positively or perfectly," says Dr. Valery Mazing of Moscow's Canada/USA institute. "Imagine that something happens there in the Kola Peninsula. The influence of that also will not only be sub-regional or regional only, it can spread much wider."
By Ivan Watson
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