Barents Sea
Photo of the Kursk nuclear-powered submarine that sank in the Barents Sea (photo is from the submarine's home base in Zapadnaya Litsa. Photo: Bellona). Click here to go to a more comprehensive web page about this submarine accident.
Chernobyl
This photo taken in November 1994, shows an exterior view of the sarcophagus around the reactor of the nuclear facility in Chernobyl, Ukraine. The news article below describes plans for future containment. Click here for the full original article from the Washington Post ($3.95 charge to purchase complete article).
Also see Time Magazine article (1992) and map ($1.99 charge to purchase complete article.)
Chelyabinsk
Kamchatka
The post-Soviet reforms that have downgraded the status of the Pacific Fleet (relative to the Northern Fleet) have arguably upgraded the relative importance of Kamchatka Oblast facilities (within the Pacific Fleet). Whereas the nuclear submarine base at Rybachiy (Russia's largest) previously shared responsibility for the Pacific Fleet's SSBNs with several smaller bases in Primorskiy Kray, the four remaining active-duty SSBNs (all Delta IIIs) are now all stationed at Rybachiy. SSNs and SSGNs are also stationed at Rybachiy. These nuclear submarines continue to conduct operations in the Sea of Okhotsk and in the Pacific Ocean.
At the same time, however, Kamchatka Peninsula facilities have shared the fate of other Pacific Fleet facilities in having to deal with large backlogs of decommissioned nuclear submarines and an overflow of liquid nuclear waste and spent fuel. These materials are kept in ground-based tanks and floating storage vessels at the Kamchatka Shipyard (also known as Site 49K), which is also responsible for the refueling active-duty submarines as well as the defueling of decommissioned vessels. The actual dismantlement of SSBNs must be done (according to START I) at Bolshoy Kamen , however, meaning that decommissioned vessels must eventually be transported to Primorskiy Kray. Thus, several SSBNs sit idly in Rybachiy awaiting transport south, while a large number of SSNs await the delivery of new technology to the Kamchatka Shipyard to allow their dismantlement on site.
Due to the lack of rail or road links from Kamchatka to the trans-Siberian railroad, submarine fuel, spare parts, weapons, and other equipment must be delivered to these facilities by ship during the summer and early fall. The primary point of contact for naval fuel cycle activities is Chazhma Bay in Primorskiy Kray.
Source: The Monterey Institute of International Studies and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Nuclear Successor States of the Soviet Union: Status Report on Nuclear Weapons, Fissile Material, and Export Controls , no. 5, March 1998, p. 17.
Click here for recent developments
Stories of nuclear contamination have emerged with alarming regularity from the former Soviet Union since the end of the Cold War, and they are always shocking. But now comes the biggest shocker of them all. Last week, Norwegian and Russian scientists revealed that the Mayak reprocessing plant in the southern Urals has leaked five times more radiation than the Chernobyl accident, Britain's Sellafield nuclear plant and all the world's atmospheric bomb tests put together. Mayak was always known to be polluted. But the scale of the contamination is staggering. Its source, as the scientific report makes plain, is the reactors and reprocessing plants that provided the plutonium for the Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal. In many ways the mistakes made at Mayak are the same as those made in the 1940s and 1950s by the US at Hanford and Britain at Windscale (now Sellafield) in their race to develop nuclear weapons. The difference is the frightening scale of the Russian problem. Indefinitely containing Lake Karachay, for example, where most of the deadly strontium-90 and caesium-137 from Mayak is lurking, is a daunting challenge for engineers. It will also be very expensive. And the key question is: who should pay?
At the moment it seems as if a small country without any nuclear pretensions is shouldering most of the burden. The Mayak report was funded by the Norwegian government as part of its E10 million-a-year programme to investigate Russia's nuclear hazards. The Norwegians are worried that some of the pollution could find its way to their northern shores. And yet, as Norway has been pointing out for years, it is not just Russia's neighbours who sh . ever the rest of Western Europe needed an example of how Russia's nuclear problems could affect them, the Mayak catastrophe is it. If Lake Karachay's radioactive load leaks into the Arctic Ocean, one of the planet's last great wildemesses, it could travel halfway across the globe. Norway is worried that it will not be able to afford the measures necessary to stop this happening. Russia, although it certainly bears moral responsibility for what has taken place at Mayak, could never pay for it. Self-interest suggests that other European countries, and even the US, should dig deeper into their pockets. The moral logic is even more persuasive. Shouldn't all the nations that were caught up in the nuclear arms race start paying for cleaning up the mess it made?
Radioactive contamination from the production of plutonium for the former Soviet Union's nuclear weapons was far higher than anyone believed, warns new study. A scientific investigation by the Russia and Norwegian governments conclude that since 1948 the Mayak nuclear complex in the southern Urals has leake 8900 petabecquerels (PBq) of the radio active isotopes strontium-90 and caesium 137 into the environment. This is more than five times greater than all the radioactivity from the same isotope released by the world's 500 atmospheric nuclear tests (1550 PBq), the 1986 Chernobyl accident (70 PBq) and the Sellafield nuclear plant (47 PBq) put together. The Mayak complex, next to the city now called Ozyorsk in the Chelyabinsk region was the most important of the Soviet Union's bomb factories. It included seven plutonium production reactors and three plutonium separation plants. Two of the reactors and one of the separation plant are still working alongside 40,000 cubic metres of stored high-level waste. Accidents and deliberate discharge from Mayak have polluted hundreds of lakes, over 200 kilometres of the Techa river and 20 000 square kilometres of country side. More than 16 000 residents have been evacuated from 40 villages since the 1950 and people are still banned from living or farming in a zone 350 square kilometre around the complex. "It is the most radioactively contaminated area in the world," says Per Strand from the Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority. The study, published last week in Oslo by a group of Norwegian and Russian radiologists, says that almost half the radioactivity released is still contained in one lake. According to Russian scientist anyone foolish enough to linger around Lake Karachay for a few hours risks acute radiation sickness. Mayak began discharging liquid waste into the lake in 1951 and is still putting i 25 PBq a year. The expert group, which took 475 samples from 22 sites in 199* discovered groundwater 3.6 kilometre from Lake Karachay containing up to 8800 Bq of strontium-90 per litre. Strand is worried that this could poison the drinking water of tens of thousands of people in nearby towns, leach into rivers and be transported to the Arctic Ocean. In April 1967, following a drought, Lake Karachay dried out and its heavily contaminated sediments were scattered up to 70 kilometres away. In an attempt to prevent similar disasters, the lake is now gradually being reclaimed. But the Norwegian and Russian radiologists warn that radioactivity could still be remobilised by storms, floods or droughts. They point out that strontium-90 is continually leaking out of the Asanov swamp at the head of the Techa river. The next stage of their study is to examine the risk of accidents and their potential impact on health. T'he most widespread contamination in the past was caused by the explosion of a high-level waste tank at Mayak in 1957. Known as the Kyshtym accident, after a nearby town, it spread a plume of radioactivity hundreds of kilometres downwind of the complex ("Two decades of dissidence," New Scientist, Vol. 72, 1976).
Source: http://www.dhushara.com/book/explod/nuclears/fallo.htm
Novaya Zemlya
Novaya Zemlya - plan for repository (May 2002 article)
Novaya Zemlya - repository plan scrapped (November 2002 article)
Semipalatinsk
