An environmental disaster is brewing in the poorly protected storage facilities harboring Russia's naval nuclear waste. Aid from the West may help avert a meltdown.
Since the 1952 Soviet resolution to build nuclear submarines, the Soviet Navy and its Russian successor have had to contend with the problems associated with the disposal of nuclear waste. This waste has accumulated from several sources associated with the decommissioning of aging submarines: spent fuel, solid radioactive waste, liquid radioactive waste (liquid cooling metals and water), and contaminated equipment. Today, it is estimated that the Russian Navy has a minimum of 21,000 cubic meters of solid radioactive waste and 7,500 cubic meters of liquid radioactive waste at its various naval bases and shipyards. All of these storage areas are full and most are in poor condition.
It is estimated that the Pacific Fleet alone possesses an estimated 8,400 spent fuel assemblies that are classified as nuclear waste and are stored at coastal bases or on storage ships. The waste dumps for the Far East used by the Pacific Fleet are on the Kamchatka Peninsula and at Cape Maidelya, near Vladivostok, with some additional waste stored on a group of service ships.
The Russian Navy has a long history of dumping nuclear waste in the oceans. For most of the Cold War the Ministry of Defense, which controlled all military nuclear reactors (approximately 200), was answerable to none of the agencies inside of the Soviet government that monitored internal nuclear activity. The nuclear safety department was created in 1979 to inspect military nuclear facilities, but it answered only to the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, not the Minister of Defense. Therefore, the Soviet Navy was able to conceal any mistakes, accidents, improper procedures, or other improprieties the safety department might uncover. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, however, Russian naval and nuclear-waste disposal operations have been under increasing scrutiny. The elevated prominence of the disposal problem relates directly to the heightened sense of environmental awareness throughout the world. In addition, the extreme secrecy of the Soviet regime no longer exists.
The Cover-ups
The availability of information regarding the manner in which the Russian Navy handles its nuclear waste has increased over the past decade. One way that information has been made public is through the efforts of men such as Captain Grigory Pasko. Captain Pasko was a Russian naval officer with the Pacific Fleet, as well as a reporter for the fleet's newsletter, Boyevaya Vakhta. For several years, he wrote stories concerning the improper disposal of radioactive waste by the Russian Navy, especially the dumping of liquid waste in the Sea of Japan.
In 1997, Captain Pasko was arrested and tried on charges of espionage and treason. Strangely, the case against him was based almost entirely on his work as a reporter. Pasko would research, write, and videotape his stories and then pass them to a small Japanese television station for dissemination in the Japanese media, and this distribution of information formed the entirety of the case for espionage. Ironically, Pasko performed all of this with the foreknowledge of his superiors. He subsequently was sentenced to three years in prison, but the sentence was commuted by the government immediately because of intense pressure from international human rights and environmental organizations.
The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) also has investigated several scientists researching the nuclear-waste dumping problem. The most notable of these cases was that of Dr. Vladimir Soifer. Dr. Soifer, working for the Pacific Ocean Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, was researching the effects of the same dumping that Captain Pasko witnessed and documented. On 3 July 1999, FSB agents raided Soifer's home and laboratory and seized his documentation and research.
Actions such as these have led many in the international community to express concern. In addition, some charge that "instead of protecting Russia from the import of radioactive and toxic wastes, the special services are persecuting those who care about Russia's ecological safety."
The Danger
Contributing to the severity of the problem is the fact that the Russian Navy uses radioactive fuel enriched to a much higher level than that used at traditional nuclear power plants. Conventional landbased plants use uranium"' enriched to 4%. In Russian submarine reactors, the enrichment is as high as 90% to permit longer periods between refueling. This leads to waste with a much higher level of radioactivity that takes much longer to become stable and nonradioactive. The longer half-life and increased radioactivity mean additional disposal and storage problems, as the storage facilities themselves must be constructed to last for extended periods.
The storage areas used by the Russians are incapable of fulfilling the purpose for which they were designed. For example, the Andreeva Bay storage facility, which is the only operational facility for storage of used fuel from the Northern Fleet's nuclear-powered submarines, holds 21,000 spent fuel rods in three concrete tanks. The facility is almost entirely outdoors, with no protection from the elements. This lack of shelter is an important concern in an area of such high latitude, and violates both international and Russian regulations for the handling of nuclear waste. The thawing of the facility in the spring could cause leakage into the water supply and the nearby Litsa fjord.
Snow and ice already have caused cracks in the concrete tanks that contain the spent fuel rods. This year, there was not enough funding to "winterize" the tanks. This could lead to an increased chance of criticality, because the fuel rods could be forced into closer proximity to each other as a result of the cooler temperatures.
What's Next?
Russia does have a reprocessing facility in Siberia, the Mayak reprocessing facility, which separates unused uranium from the spent fuel and reforms it into new fuel cells. The plant has not performed its expected duty, however, because transportation of spent fuel to Mayak is economically and technically daunting, and because the facility itself has contaminated a large geographic area as a result of accidents and releases.
Russia has investigated several possible intermediate solutions to the problem of disposal of this enormous amount of nuclear waste. The most promising involves the construction of a regional storage facility that would have a useful life span of 50 years. Within this time, the Russians believe they would be able to implement the permanent solutions now being debated. The permanent solutions include the use of the most abundant of Russian natural resources—permafrost. The idea is to build repositories in the permafrost of Novaya Zemlya and bury the waste deep underground. In addition, and much to the chagrin of their Western neighbors, the Russians have considered constructing a new storage facility on the Kola Peninsula.
The "solution" on which Captain Pasko reported, the dumping of liquid waste in the Sea of Japan, reached its height in the mid-1980s. International attention was drawn to the dumping in 1993, however, when the Russian Navy discharged almost 900 tons of low-level liquid waste about 300 miles west of Japan's northernmost main island of Hokkaido. Like a bad neighbor, the Russians threatened to continue dumping unless Japan provided financial assistance to construct a proper storage facility.
The Russian Navy and Norway, in partnership, already have begun legitimate cleanup efforts. The Norwegian government, in a move designed to prompt other Western governments to provide financial and technical aid in the effort to improve Russian nuclear-waste storage facilities, signed an agreement with the Russian government on 26 May 1998.The Andreeva Bay facility is only 45 kilometers from the Norwegian border. This fact, and the increased levels of the isotopes cesium137 and plutonium239 in the sediments of the Litsa fjord, contributed to the desire of the Norwegians to get the ball rolling.
Another joint effort being pursued by the Norwegian government and the Russian Navy is the stemming of a radioactive brook that is flowing into the Litsa fjord from Andreeva Bay: "The idea is simple. Dig a trench around the storage facility." While the project is not viewed with much optimism as a means to solving the problem, it is seen as a positive first step that will lead to further joint efforts between the Norwegians and the Russians. In fact, the trench is merely a small part of a much bigger and comprehensive plan of action being drafted by the Norwegians.
In the Russian Far East, liquid radioactive waste is being treated on a barge, recently completed by the Russian Navy at the Amursky shipyard. The barge will process approximately 7,000 cubic meters of liquid radioactive waste per year. Interestingly, the bill for the barge—approximately $21 million—was paid by Japan.
The Russian Ministry of Defense has admitted that the present levels of funding received from the Russian government prohibit any effective solution to any of the problems created by the decommissioning of nuclear submarines. The international community, however, has begun to contribute both financial and technological aid to help cover the costs of disposing of the waste.
Ensign Johnson is a command center controller for the First Coast Guard District in Boston. He has a degree in Russian language and literature from the University of New Hampshire.