The image of Russian indifference and secretiveness about buried nuclear waste is a false one as there is in fact scrupulous monitoring of burial sites and a detailed database on dumping at sea has been compiled, according to the Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper. A European-funded international project has been collecting data on the Soviet and Russian nuclear fleet's radioactive waste since 1995. Among the secrets unearthed is the real location of the reactor of the icebreaker Lenin, the report on whose 1967 dumping en route to its designated Novaya Zemlya burial site had been falsified. Thus, according to the newspaper, "very important work is being done with no false secrecy or peering into keyholes". The following is the text of the article by Sergey Ptichkin, published in the newspaper on 29 August under the headline "Mystery of the disappearance of the Lenin's sarcophagus". The subheadings are the newspaper's own:

In October 1967, the damaged reactor compartment, weighing 350 tonnes, of the world's first nuclear-powered icebreaker was sunk off the shores of Novaya Zemlya. Time passed and they began to look at how the highly radioactive load was preserved on the bottom of the ocean - there was nothing there... [newspaper's ellipsis]

One of our authors, Marcus Warren, the Moscow correspondent of Britain's Daily Telegraph, writing on 8 August under the heading "Fresh Mind", mentioned the article "Monitoring that is barely acceptable" (Rossiyskaya Gazeta 4 August 2001). He suggested that we return to the topic and take a closer look at it. The topic is certainly interesting and almost inexhaustible.

What are we fussing about?

We recall that in the article which aroused Mr Warren's interest, the issue was the start-up of intelligence operations by NATO countries in the Barents Sea during the peak period of work to raise the nuclear-powered submarine Kursk. As justification, our Western neighbours express their usual concern about problems of the Arctic's ecology. Naturally, it was asserted that Russia is concealing the true situation concerning the burial of nuclear waste in that region and that is why it is necessary to keep one's eye constantly on her, that is, Russia. And it would be better if this eye were armed with all types of reconnaissance surveillance devices or, to express it more correctly, monitoring devices.

Problems of ecology have become for some people, not only in the West but in Russia, too, a unique eccentricity. For some reason, a firm conviction has developed that the entire world is anxious about the cleanliness of the Russian environment, whereas Russians themselves, in the best case, regard it indifferently. And if one tries to get trustworthy information, then one immediately encounters the "iron curtain" and vigilant agents of the Federal Security Service [FSB].

The scandalous process around the case of Capt 1st Class [Aleksandr] Nikitin serves as proof of this. As his service career waned, he became so "Green" that he offered to give (or perhaps sell) to the ecological organization Bellona secrets on all buried nuclear waste from spent reactors of the Soviet nuclear-powered fleet. This was done with much pomp, as if only Nikitin knew all the "terrible" secrets, revealed them and suffered because of them.

In fact, Russia has been scrupulously monitoring its own nuclear waste repositories for six years now. And this work has been going on within the framework of a large international project! The most unique and detailed computerized database has been compiled on the dumping of radioactive waste in the sea for the entire period of the Soviet/Russian navy's existence. Moreover, in the process of the work a discovery was made, one could call it sensational, albeit with a touch of scandal.

From the history of the problem

The problem of disposing of nuclear waste from ships with nuclear-powered units and also damaged reactors arose in the USSR at the moment of the birth of a nuclear-powered fleet, some 40 years ago (the first Soviet nuclear-powered submarine was launched in 1957 and was commissioned in 1959).

The mass arrival of the first nuclear-powered submarines in the navy began in the 1960s. At the same time, the first series of accidents took place, in the majority of cases associated with loss of coolant, over-heating and sintering of nuclear fuel.

Sometimes this led to radiation discharges, sometimes not. But afterwards the nuclear reactors were no longer fit for reconditioning. The mechanisms and power-unit systems contained built-up radiation and as a rule were severely contaminated with radionuclides and thus had to be buried somewhere.

Secluded bays on the eastern shore of Novaya Zemlya were selected as the place for nuclear burials. The island itself was a nuclear test range and its water expanses were closed to foreign navigation. In addition, the selected bays were protected from storm waves and had weak underwater currents. Depths exceeded 30 metres, which excluded the possibility of the dangerous objects being harmed by drifting ice.

As containers (unique sarcophaguses) for the damaged reactors and solid radioactive waste, the hulls of the submarines themselves were used. These were manufactured from particularly strong steel and are able to remain completely sealed for hundreds of years.

The facts of the burials were thoroughly documented, but alas, not summarized in a separate file, but were kept individually. In addition, it was completely natural that these documents should be secret. Thus, no-one had a general picture of the nuclear cemetery in the Kara Sea. In this sense, public concern was completely understandable and justified.

The first systematic attempt to analyse the situation with the waste was undertaken in the very beginning of the 1990s by a governmental commission specially appointed by the president and led by the well-known ecologist, Aleksey Yablokov. The commission managed to overcome numerous bureaucratic obstacles and collected as much information as was accessible at the time. Based on it the "White Book" came out in 1993; however, it was prepared in a compressed period of time and was marred with a number of inaccuracies and objectively required augmentation and refining.

Lazurit's deep-water feat

The loss of the nuclear-powered submarine Komsomolets and now the submarine cruiser Kursk, brought worldwide, although somewhat dismal, fame to the Rubin Central Design Bureau in St Petersburg, where these submarines were designed. Meanwhile, two other design bureaux remained in the USSR and Russia at which nuclear-powered submarines were also designed - St Petersburg's Malakhit and Nizhniy Novgorod's Lazurit. As experience has shown, the submarines of these design bureaux were and still are distinguished by their very high reliability and they often exceed American submarines in their combat characteristics.

In addition, it is essential to add that at Lazurit back in Soviet times, along with nuclear-powered strike submarines, they began to design the world's first rescue submarines, the Lenoks. These were built in Komsomolsk-na-Amur.

Unfortunately, the last Lenok which was fully repairable and ready for deep-water modernization had been quietly towed to China, having been sold for scrap metal. This occurred by a tragic coincidence of events on... [newspaper's ellipsis] 12 August of last year, on the day when the Kursk was sinking in the Barents Sea. And in fact, only the Lenok was ideally suited for conducting an effective rescue operation in the situation in which the Kursk ended up.

Nizhniy Novogord has not abandoned its work on means of rescue. Considering the latest catastrophes at sea and the prospects for intensified work on exploiting petroleum and natural gas deposits on the Arctic shelf, Lazurit proposed a project for a fundamentally new universal rescue ship. Without doubt, the given project should receive state support. Russia simply cannot afford to repeat the tragic mistake of a careless attitude towards rescue ships.

However, there was a period when it was necessary to save the unique design bureau itself, which was on the verge of being left to the mercy of fate. But, by definition, the collective headed by the first Hero of Russia in the shipbuilding industry, Nikolay Kvasha, could in no way, apparently, "go to the bottom". This collective learned to bring submarines to the surface in any situation. In addition, it was Lazurit that began to shovel through the nuclear rubbish accumulating in the fleet since the beginning of the 1960s.

In 1992 in accordance with an international agreement between Russia, the EU, the USA and Japan, the International Science and Technology Centre was formed. One of the priority directions of this international organization's work was to solve problems connected with the ecological legacy of the Cold War. Experts of the European Commission immediately valued the unique possibilities of the centre's Project No 101 announced by Lazurit on the collection and systematization of trustworthy information on the real influence of radioactive waste from the activities of the nuclear fleet on the actual and potential radio-ecological situation in the seas washing Russia's territory. The European Union took responsibility for the basic share of the project's financing, the execution of which, naturally, was assigned to the Nizhniy Novgorod design bureau. The work began in 1995.

First of all, Lazurit resolved all problems with the, so to speak, competent organs. The FSB held the importance of the assigned task in complete understanding and raised no obstacles, and in fact rendered assistance in overcoming all difficult spots. Thus, the Nikitin pattern was excluded from the beginning.

Included in the comprehensive investigation of the problem were 145 specialists from such solid centres as, for example, the Kurchatov Institute Russian Scientific Centre; the Tayfun scientific-production association; all Ministry of Atomic Energy design bureaux which created the nuclear reactor designs for submarines and surface ships; Murmansk's Atomflot; the navy's medical service; and a number of other organizations. Experts and consultants from the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (Italy) and the national nuclear centres of France and Great Britain were also drawn in. The leader of this highly competent collective and project, unusual for the creators of nuclear-powered combat ships, was the greatest specialist in the field of nuclear-powered shipbuilding, Stanislav Lavkovskiy.

For six years colossal and genuinely investigative research was conducted. Data on the burials through the whole history of the Soviet (Russian) nuclear fleet was gathered one grain at a time; mathematical models were worked out predicting scenarios for all possible breaches of containers and escape of radionuclides into the surrounding environment; and risk estimates were drawn up.

As of summer 2001, the database on objects with radionuclides contained information on 185 ships and vessels with nuclear-power units; 44 equipment-servicing ships; and 355 containers holding 33,000 units of equipment and structures and other radioactive contaminated objects.

When the Russian Federation Ministry of Atomic Energy became acquainted with this database and examined it for completeness and accuracy, a decision was made immediately to use it in preparing the new ecological "White Book 2000".

Lazurit's service was not only in that it managed to bring together and declassify all these individual and secret reports, but the creators of nuclear-powered submarines dug up secrets, the existence of which no-one had suspected.

The secret trail of the icebreaker Lenin

The nuclear-powered icebreaker Lenin had three nuclear reactors. In 1965 one of them overheated. Although there was no explosion, the reactor went out of service and was not restorable. A decision was made to cut out the entire reactor compartment and bury it - the compartment and the shielding assembly (the radioactive insides of the reactor) separately. A container was prepared in the form of a special barge weighing 350 tonnes. They welded the container with the shielding assembly containing nuclear fuel in it and began to tow it to Novaya Zemlya. All this happened in the autumn of 1967. According to the official report in September the barge was sunk to the prescribed depth in Tsivolka Zaliv. If everything had happened as it was recorded in the official document, there would be no occasion for alarm.

After a year of the first Russian-Norwegian expeditions to the sites of the nuclear-powered submarine burials, the huge barge could not be detected. At the same time many small sarcophaguses were lying where they were supposed to be lying in accordance with the old report. And no alien from a different planet stole a container weighing 350 tonnes! Lazurit conducted its own investigation and the secret of the disappearance of the most dangerous nuclear burial in the Kara Sea was revealed.

It turned out that the report was falsified. It was established that the beginning of the towing dragged on right up until October, a time of prolonged storms. Most likely, a critical situation developed and it was decided on the tugboat that it was better to cut the rope than to drown together with the barge. This happened not in September, but on 1 November 1967.

Nevertheless, the official report indicated the coordinates of Tsivolka Zaliv, ideally suitable for dumping a container and where it was supposed to be resting in peace and also a September date, when the disposal operation was to have occurred based on the schedule. An unusual conspiracy of silence reigned for 10 years.

However, there was one detail that only the Lazurit specialists knew. A representative of the navy's medical service was required to be present during such operations to certify the final death of the "nuclear genie". And he had the indisputable right to his own signature. In that official report of long ago, the military doctor did not go against his conscience, but indicated the exact date that the cables were cut and the exact coordinates of the sinking of the barge with the highly radioactive waste.

The place for the "funeral" was more than unfortunate! The barge could have ended up in the coastal zone of the open sea and not in the gulf, but in a zone of the strongest storm waves and sea currents and in addition, in shallow water. And this means it could be damaged from collisions with drifting ice or from moving across the rocky bottom. Considering that this damaged assembly alone contained around 60 per cent of the total radioactivity of all (!) the waste dumped in the Kara Sea, the situation is by no means a joke, but it is also not at a dead end.

The European Union and Norway, which today are financing the International Science and Technology Centre's Project No 101, showed great interest in the problem which arose. Considering this, Lazurit and Tayfun association specialists from Obninsk suggested to them that the work be expanded within the framework of the international project and a new expedition be organized the next year to the place where the coordinates established the sinking of the barge in order, first, to find the ill-fated sarcophagus and secondly, to study thoroughly the condition of the container. And then work out the means for protecting the ocean expanses from a very real threat of radioactive pollution.

Thus, very important work is being done with no false secrecy or peering into keyholes. One would like to believe that the International Science and Technology Centre will not lose interest in this project which is unique in its openness and complexity and that the Russian Federation government will render constructive assistance in solving the given ecological problem with its many unknowns. Monitoring in the interests of not only Russia, but the entire community of northern nations, is by no means unacceptable and continues honestly and professionally.

Source: Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Moscow, in Russian 29 Aug 01

/BBC Monitoring/ © BBC.

World Reporter All Material Subject to Copyright