The equivalent of six-and-a-half Hiroshimas lies just beneath the ocean's surface.

By Cory GraffPublished: Jan 17, 2021 9:00 AM EST

In the icy waters north of Russia, discarded submarine nuclear reactors lie deteriorating on the ocean floor—some still fully fueled. It’s only a matter of time before sustained corrosion allows seawater to eat its way to the abandoned uranium, causing an uncontrolled release of radioactivity into the Arctic.

For decades, the Soviet Union used the desolate Kara Sea as their dumping grounds for nuclear waste. Thousands of tons of nuclear material, equal to nearly six and a half times the radiation released at Hiroshima, went into the ocean. The underwater nuclear junkyard includes at least 14 unwanted reactors and an entire crippled submarine that the Soviets deemed proper decommissioning too dangerous and expensive. Today, this corner-cutting haunts the Russians. A rotting submarine reactor fed by an endless supply of ocean water might re-achieve criticality, belching out a boiling cloud of radioactivity that could infect local seafood populations, spoil bountiful fishing grounds, and contaminate a local oil-exploration frontier.

“Breach of protective barriers and the detection and spread of radionuclides in seawater could lead to fishing restrictions,” says Andrey Zolotkov, director of Bellona-Murmansk, an international non-profit environmental organization based in Norway. “In addition, this could seriously damage plans for the development of the Northern Sea Route—ship owners will refuse to sail along it.”

News outlets have found more dire terms to interpret the issue. The BBC raised concerns of a “nuclear chain reaction” in 2013, while The Guardian described the situation as “an environmental disaster waiting to happen.” Nearly everyone agrees that the Kara is on the verge of an uncontrolled nuclear event, but retrieving a string of long-lost nuclear time bombs is proving to be a daunting challenge.


The K-159 nuclear submarine during a transport operation in 2003. During the transport, a storm caused the vessel to sink, killing 9 crewmen.

Nuclear submarines have a short lifespan considering their sheer expense and complexity. After roughly 20-30 years, degradation coupled with leaps in technology render old nuclear subs obsolete. First, decades of accumulated corrosion and stress limit the safe-dive depth of veteran boats. Sound-isolation mounts degrade, bearings wear down, and rotating components of machinery fall out of balance, leading to a louder noise signature that can be more easily tracked by the enemy.

At the same time, newer vessels incorporate the latest advances in power plant technology, metallurgy, hull shape, low-friction coatings, and propeller design, making for faster, quieter, deeper-diving, and more deadly undersea combat vessels. “Technology advances and proliferation will make the submarine's stealth, endurance, and mobility even more important attributes in the future,” says a 1998 Defense Science Board Task Force report. In combat, older subs won’t cut it.

The Soviet Union and Russia built the world’s largest nuclear-powered navy in the second half of the 20th century, crafting more atom-powered subs than all other nations combined. At its military height in the mid-1990s, Russia boasted 245 nuclear-powered subs, 180 of which were equipped with dual reactors and 91 of which sailed with a dozen or more long-range ballistic missiles tipped with nuclear warheads.



The K-3, Russia’s first nuclear submarine.

The Soviet Union’s first nuclear-powered submarine was the K-3, the first of the NATO code-named November class (the Soviets called them the “Whale class”). The K-3 prototype sailed for the first time using nuclear power on July 4, 1958. All but one of the 14 November class vessels cruised with dual VM-A water-cooled nuclear reactors, with the final sub, the experimental K-27, powered by a pair of VT-1 liquid metal-cooled reactors.

The November class vessels were top-of-the-line attack submarines designed to locate surface vessels and opposing submarines using a powerful MG-200 sonar system. Once in range, Novembers would strike with ship-killing 533mm SET-65 or 53-65K torpedoes, each carrying up to 300 kilograms of hull-shattering explosives.

Eight hotel-class submarines, built to house and launch a complement of ballistic missiles, joined the Soviet fleet between 1959 and 1962. While Novembers were the USSR’s hunters, the Hotel-class subs were meant to stay undetected, using a pair of pressurized water-cooled reactors to cruise within striking distance of potential targets. Once enemy military bases or civilian population centers were in range, a Hotel class sub could unleash a barrage of R-13 or R-21 nuclear missiles, each of the latter with a blast yield of 800 kilotons. A strike of this magnitude over Midtown Manhattan would probably kill over two million people, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Fatalities would extend to parts of Queens, Brooklyn, and sections of New Jersey west of the Hudson.

Echo-class Soviet nuclear submarines took to the seas in 1960. These housed twin water-cooled reactors and carried conventional and nuclear-tipped cruise missiles, along with a complement of torpedoes. The Soviets built five Echo Is—equipped with six P-5 turbo-jet powered cruise missiles to hit targets on land—then launched 29 Echo IIs, specifically equipped with ant-shipping missiles meant to neutralize American aircraft carriers.


The K-3 nuclear submarine moored at the Nerpa Shipyard near Murmansk.

A majority of the Soviet’s nuclear submarine classes operated from the Arctic-based Northern Fleet, headquartered in the northwestern port city of Murmansk. The Northern Fleet bases are roughly 900 kilometers west of the Kara Sea dumping grounds. A second, slightly smaller hub of Soviet submarine power was the Pacific Fleet, based in and around Vladivostok on Russia’s east coast above North Korea. Additional Soviet-era submarines sailed from bases in the Baltic and Black Seas.

For decades, these pioneering Soviet submarine classes served around the world, awaiting the moment when the Cold War would turn hot. That moment never came. By the mid-1980s, the boats were reaching the end of their useful lifespan. Starting in 1987, the oldest Echo Is left the fleet for decommissioning, and November class attack submarines followed in 1988. But the disposal of these submarines posed more problems than previous conventional vessels. Before crews could chop the vessels apart, the subs’ reactors and associated radioactive materials had to be removed, and the Soviets didn’t always do this properly.

Mothballed nuclear submarines pose the potential for disaster even before scrapping begins. In October of 1995, 12 decommissioned Soviet subs awaited disposal in Murmansk, each with fuel cells, reactors, and nuclear waste still aboard. When the cash-strapped Russian military didn’t pay the base’s electric bills for months, the local power company shut off power to the base, leaving the line of submarines at risk of meltdown. Military staffers had to persuade plant workers to restore power by threatening them at gunpoint.

The scrapping process starts with extracting the vessel’s spent nuclear fuel from the reactor core. The danger is immediate: In 1985, an explosion during the defueling of a Victor class submarine killed 10 workers and spewed radioactive material into the air and sea. Specially trained teams must separate the reactor fuel rods from the sub’s reactor core, then seal the rods in steel casks for transport and storage (at least, they seal the rods when adequate transport and storage is available—the Soviets had just five rail cars capable of safely transporting radioactive cargo, and their storage locations varied widely in size and suitability). Workers at the shipyard then remove salvageable equipment from the submarine and disassemble the vessel’s conventional and nuclear weapons systems. Crews must extract and isolate the nuclear warheads from the weapons before digging deeper into the launch compartment to scrap the missiles’ fuel systems and engines.

When it is time to dispose of the vessel’s reactors, crews cut vertical slices into the hull of the submarine and chop out the single or double reactor compartment along with an additional compartment fore and aft in a single huge cylinder-shaped chunk. Once sealed, the cylinder can float on its own for several months, even years, before it is lifted onto a barge and sent to a long-term storage facility.

CONTINUED:

https://www.popularmechanics.c...submarine-graveyard/

Very interesting!

I've often wondered why nuclear waste isn't simply loaded onto a rocket and shot off into deep space. I suppose that there's the risk of having it get blowed up real good before getting to space, but I'd think that nowadays that risk is minimal.

the Russians should be spending their resources cleaning up this mess rather than fucking around in the Ukraine

I like the rocket idea - sorta

I'm shocked...shocked I tell ya that a culture that used a nuke to put out a gas well fire and still uses suicidal WWI-style massed human infantry wave attacks would do this! Shocked!

I once read somewhere that there is far too much waste to be shot into space. Then again, I would think every little bit helps. And now with SpaceX being so efficient, why not?

Great movie about K-19 Widow Maker and its reactor issues, true story...

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
I'm shocked...shocked I tell ya that a culture that used a nuke to put out a gas well fire and still uses suicidal WWI-style massed human infantry wave attacks would do this! Shocked!

Russia is not a nation or a country - it's a state of mind, a very sick one at that!

The whole nuke arms race from inception to today is rife with failures. Subs rotting, bombs dropped accidentally.
It’s a miracle we haven’t had large chunks of our population contaminated or blown up. If the ruskies contaminate the most plentiful ocean we have, that may still come to pass.

quote:

Originally posted by Gustofer:
I've often wondered why nuclear waste isn't simply loaded onto a rocket and shot off into deep space. I suppose that there's the risk of having it get blowed up real good before getting to space, but I'd think that nowadays that risk is minimal.

Because:

Risk = Probability of an event * Consequences of the event

Here, even with SpaceX's record, there is a non-zero probability of the event happening. Couple that with the catastrophic consequence, the risk is simply too high.

A far better answer is to establish underground nuclear waste depositories on the locations the nuclear nations used to test their atomic and thermonuclear weapons (i.e., NOT Yucca Mount but at the Nevada National Security Site underground testing center at 37° 6'22.35"N 116° 2'15.25"W).

And those locations are generally far away from population centers. You can't really say that for rocket launch sites.

Now that most civilized nations have stopped underground testing (all save North Korea) what the hell else can you do with those locations?

ETA: As for Russia's reactor graveyard, I doubt those reactors are rusting away. The water is deep, very cold, and has low dissolved oxygen concentrations. That noted, one day one will be breached, and you get an immediate runaway reactor.

If we are all lucky Greta Thunberg might have a opening in her busy schedule to tackle this problem.
No body can handle the Russians and all the evil powers of the world like she can.

Yet one more environmental disaster legacy of the Evil Effing Empire’s policies.

And does anyone on the Left so much as acknowledge what has been done to the planet by their favorite form of murderous government? (Yeah. Rhetorical question. )

Why does a breached reactor deep in the ocean go into runaway? If the fuel is not in close proximity now, why would it become critical with seawater in it. Or is the idea the rods would tumble together as the housing disintegrates?

quote:

Originally posted by Fly-Sig:
Why does a breached reactor deep in the ocean go into runaway? If the fuel is not in close proximity now, why would it become critical with seawater in it. Or is the idea the rods would tumble together as the housing disintegrates?

Reading the OP got me into considering what would happen. I was a Nuke machinist mate in the Navy. For one thing, the Missouri in Pearl Harbor is still mostly the way it was, right? And I think being close to the surface while still underwater would give it a faster corrosion rate than being down in the cold waters of the deep.

If Russians used control rods in their reactors, one would think the rods were fully inserted to absorb radiation. I don't think the configuration of reactors are designed to allow super criticality that would cause a nuclear explosion.

So assuming the nuclear material becomes completely exposed to the cold sea water without benefit of control rods (I would assume the control rods would have lost all their absorption powers anyway), the cold water will allow the fission process to accelerate. But since there's a lot of water, I doubt there would be any catastrophic boiling. I think the radioactive decay process will just accelerate.

quote:

Originally posted by Fly-Sig:
Why does a breached reactor deep in the ocean go into runaway? If the fuel is not in close proximity now, why would it become critical with seawater in it. Or is the idea the rods would tumble together as the housing disintegrates?

Water can act as a neutron moderator, but it can also reflect neutrons back into the pile. If the reactor is breached and flooded (since these reactors weren't designed to be flooded with water), fission can be accelerated by these reflected neutrons.

“A rotting submarine reactor fed by an endless supply of ocean water might re-achieve criticality, belching out a boiling cloud of radioactivity that could infect local seafood populations, spoil bountiful fishing grounds, and contaminate a local oil-exploration frontier.”

That statement is completely false.

That is not how a reactor works.

While the Soviet naval reactors program was a really dangerous exercise, the reactors were Insufficiently shielded, the choice of moderator was bad, and the decommissioning process was ridiculous, the scenario mentioned in this article would require the cores to be stacked in close proximity, which is not the case.

They left a lot of nuclear stuff to just rot away.
Their first early warning systems had a small nuclear reactor for generating electricity.
60 some odd years later they are still out there.

The thought of all that is horrific.
The entire human race is doomed because of shit like this.
The land of the walking dead is not that far fetched.

The Soviets were pretty good at math and physics. The scientists surely must have calculated the decay rate of the fissile material in comparison to the decomposition rate of the container. Even so, assuming, the situation is very worrying.

They left over 2,500 of these little nuke powerplants scattered across the country.
We only use them for long distance space travel as they are a huge risk to humans.
https://youtu.be/NT8-b5YEyjo?si=sy42v60m5KdvIJZQ