Enviros Cheer Start of Russian Nuke Waste Cleanup

by Andrei Ivanov

To the delight of Russian and Norwegian environmentalists who have spent years trying to discover the true scale of the problem, the Russian military suddenly has revealed plans to start cleaning up radioactive contamination at their top secret naval bases in the Kola peninsula.

"The fact that we are discussing it openly and that they are giving us details is a major breakthrough," says Desmond Cecil, a senior adviser at British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. (BNFL), one of a consortium of Western energy firms that already has tabled a project to reprocess spent nuclear fuel from the old Russian submarines.

Nikitin has since been charged with treason by the FSB, successors to the Soviet KGB intelligence service, charges that carry the death penalty. According to Bellona, an accident involving Northern Fleet submarines could result in an explosion far worse than that which occurred at Chernobyl in 1986.

Viktor Gubanov, head of the department of emergency environmental situations at Russia's Ministry of Atomic Energy (MinAtom) rejects the claim. "There will not be any Chernobyl here," he says.

"The situation is quite complicated. We just need to stabilize it and to decide what are our priorities."

Already a number of accidents have occurred involving Northern Fleet submarines, including losses of human life. The problem is not the reactors inside the submarines, which are encased in steel and so are relatively safe in the short term, but those which have been moved into inadequate storage facilities, where they have already caused serious contamination.

"I am very glad that the time has come in Russia when we have begun to carry out practical activities to clean up and to improve the environmental situation," says Igor Kolesnikov, a Russian Navy rear admiral and head of the Dzerzhinsky Naval College.

"Russia, including the military and the Atomic Energy Ministry -- is interested in open and frank talks. We have one aim: to safeguard the health and life of the population."

Cost has been the main obstacle. "The cost of the total cleanup in Russia is vast. What we've tried to do is identify cost-effective projects that make an impact," says Cecil. "

The Industrial Group consortium comprises BNFL, which initiated the project, Kvaerner Maritime of Norway, SKB of Sweden, SGN of France and the St Petersburg Scientific Research Institute of Industrial Technology (VNIPIET), an organization controlled by Russia's Ministry of Nuclear Power.

VNIPIET designed the present storage facilities of the Northern Fleet, located in Andreyeva Bay and Gremikha on the Kola Peninsula. Both facilities suffered accidents in the 1980s and are now out of operation.

The consortium proposes to organize the shipment of spent nuclear fuel over five years to Russia's Mayak reprocessing plant near Chelyabinsk and make safe several thousand tons of mixed nuclear waste and contaminated material currently stored or just dumped along the coasts of the Barents Sea. Reactors and spent fuel will be removed from more than 100 submarines now penned in Andreyeva Bay, 240 kilometers north west of Murmansk, close to the Norwegian border.

The material will be taken by special train to Mayak, where a dry storage facility will be built to store the material safely for the next 40 years. Construction could take-up to 10 years.

The project has yet to be given final approval by the Russian government, but Russian experts are positive this will come. The project had been stalled for some time, by the reluctance of the Russian Defense Ministry to cooperate.

The consortium already has invested a million dollars in a feasibility study and, if the project gets the go-ahead, it is hoped that Western governments -- in conjunction with Russia -- will contribute much of the remaining cash. The consortium will present their assessment of the situation and specific proposals on the clean up in July.

Norway has made a firm commitment to help. Following the signing on May 26 of several agreements with Norway, which will offer loans to finance the operation, Russian President Boris Yeltsin was able to announce that Russia will withdraw old nuclear submarines from the Barents region and declare it a zone of safety.

"We don't need old submarines and we are ready to begin dismantling them," Yeltsin said at the time. "We should understand, and we don't conceal this from journalists, that our northern region is saturated with nuclear forces and this worries the Norwegians."

The Russian-Norwegian accord was signed during a state visit to Russia by King Harald V of Norway. "This document will help us resolve, at least Partly, a very acute problem concerning waste from old submarines," says Deputy Atomic Energy Minister Nikolai Yegorov.

The environmental accord is one stage in an extensive program of shipping, recycling and disposal of spent nuclear fuel and other waste from old nuclear submarines, he explains. MinAtom estimates costs at several billion dollars. Some $30 million will come from implementation of the accord with Norway.

Yegorov says Russia needs five to 10 years to solve its problem with radioactive waste from serving and decommissioned nuclear-propelled submarines in its Northern Fleet but, while MinAtom is "making every effort to shorten this period," it lacks funds.

"Not a single kopeck has been received from the federal budget either in 1997 or in 1998" for the construction of recycling installations or storage, he said.

Foreign investment into Russia's program of radioactive waste disposal is three times that of Russia's. "We are already helped by the United States, Norway, and Japan, Sweden, Finland and the European Union are also about to provide assistance," he said.

Nikitin says he is pleased that the project will shortly be underway and hopes that Bellona's work will be acknowledged.

But BNFL spokesman Richard Acton will only admit that "international interest" had driven them to initiate the project. "To single out one body would be wrong: There are many organizations who are interested in these problems."