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By Commander George F. Kraus, Jr., U.S. Navy (Retired)

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

of obsolete nuclear submarines has presented Russia with enormous problems. Civilian protests, fueled by the memory of Chernobyl, have caused temporary halts in the already painfully slow defueling process.

The Soviet Navy has disappeared as a separate entity, but what is happening in the Russian Navy—and in the navies of the now-independent republics—remains relevant and important for the United States and the U.S. Navy. Russia is a country in transition; this is also true of its military forces, including its navy. The declining economy and the wholesale changes in the planning, financing, build-

ing, and supporting of the navy have had a major impact on force structure, readi­ness, and operations. Furthermore, many of the 15 independent countries of the former Soviet Union are establishing their own military forces from the remnants of the Soviet military.

Much of the recent literature and naval commentary from Russia has discussed

the declining size of the Russian Navy. Partially completed ships—such as the “new-generation heavy aircraft carrier” formerly under construction at Niko- layev—now reportedly are being dis­mantled rather than completed. Moreover, the Russians are facing substantial block obsolescence of nuclear submarines and surface ships built in the 1960s and 1970s, and these ships are coming out of the inventory in substantial numbers. One result has been a large backlog in nuclear-submarine dismantlement, nu­clear-material storage, and waste han­dling. The potential scale of this problem is enormous, and the lack of plans or re­sources to accommodate the required work has been highlighted frequently. Moreover, the population in the vicinity of many of the dismantlement and stor­age facilities has been activated by the specter of Chernobyl, and they are mak­ing themselves heard.

Nuclear-Submarine Dismantlement

The process of defueling the sub­marines in order to begin the scrapping process began some time ago, at least as early as 1987 in the Pacific. The capac­ity for defueling was one submarine per year at that time; by 1991, this had been expanded to “four or five” per year, ac­cording to Captain First Rank Smirnov, the Chief of Technical Maintenance of Nuclear Submarines in the Pacific Fleet Technical Directorate. At the rate of four or five per fleet area per year, just to de­fuel the current inventory of retiring boats (29 in the queue now in the Pa­cific and more than 30 in the Northern Fleet—a total that will probably reach more than 100 in the next few years) may take ten years or more—and defu­eling is but the first step in scrapping these boats.

In addition, the defueling of these units in various locations has created a civil­ian backlash. Fueled by the memory of Chernobyl, a number of protests have oc­curred in both fleet areas, and reports in December and January from Murmansk indicate that this effort has caused a tem­porary halt in the defueling, with a mora­torium on dismantling being announced °n 5 January by the administrator of the Murmansk oblast government. However, later in January, Red Star reported that the moratorium extended only until early May, and submarine dismantlement con­tinues on the “more than 30” submarines that Rear Admiral Rogachev, Chief of the Northern Fleet Technical Directorate, re­ports are waiting to be dismantled. Civil­ian concerns with nuclear submarine dis­mantlement in the Far East also have led to protests in Sovetskaya Gavan.

Dismantlement problems go beyond the protests and the absence of sufficient ^resources and suitable waste reposito- ries—although these are substantial is­sues. Captain Smirnov, in a May article ^ln Rossiyskaya gazeta highlights the im­pact of an independent Ukraine on the dismantlement process:

•    .    . the distinguished Mister

Kravchuk, President of Ukraine, has his own “naval” program. And it does not envisage the construction of float­ing bases for refueling reactors fi.e., nuclear-refueling barges, formerly built in the Ukraine], The nikolayevtsy [workers at the Nikolayev plant] have ceased building them. And workers at the “Zvezda” plant, an enterprise spe­cializing in nuclear-submarine repair, are not permitting cores to be un­loaded on their premises.

Although the Soviets built five sub­marine construction yards and expanded ibese facilities over the years, the repair and overhaul infrastructure always has *^agged behind. As these facilities are

the locus of dismantlement, their relative scarcity has affected the rate at which the process can proceed. The reported pace of actual dismantlement is quite slow— particularly in view of the queue—with only one submarine having been dis­mantled (as of last fall) in the Pacific, and two others there in various stages of being dismantled. Captain Smirnov notes:

Calculations show that, based on the rates of nuclear submarine scrapping and preparing them for long-term mooring—rates laid out in the gov­ernmental and departmental deci­sions—the navy will not be rid of these boats until the year 2010!

At least part of the problem is the tools and methods used in the dismantling. In the Pacific, cutting hulls still is reliant on “ancient oxygen torches.” Technical lim­itations result in a process that is largely manual and slow, and seem destined to prevent the navy from meeting the grow­ing demand. Moreover, another observer notes that there is “no state program for the salvaging of weapons and military equipment; therefore, there is also no money.” With the political and economic turmoil continuing, and with little likeli­hood of state funding returning to its for­mer levels, this shortfall may persist.

There are other deficiencies beyond the lack of resources. At Petrovka, for ex­ample, disposing of the reactor compart­ments presents another difficulty. Cap­tain Smirnov laments:

This current idea of piling things up, where retiring obsolete nuclear sub­marines is concerned, has led to a dead-end situation. We do not now have any repositories for reactor com­partments cut out of boats, and they won’t appear until the beginning of the 21st century.

The shipyards have been squeezed by the shift from a command economy. A Red Star report from the large submarine building yard at Severodvinsk claims that military conversion there is being carried out “in too much of a hurry and [we] have thrown the baby out with the bath water.” The “destructive consequences” of conversion have resulted in reduced productivity, the loss of trained people, and the “inevitable decline in the qual­ity of the work force. . . .” Furthermore, delivery discipline (enforced in the past by central fiat) and quality on the part of subcontractor suppliers to the shipbuild­ing enterprises have declined. This di­rectly impacts the ability of the shipyards to do operational repair and new con­struction, as well as dismantlement.

Another recent change that may affect submarine dismantlement is the Yeltsin decree announced in Red Star on 8 May designating the Severodvinsk shipyard as the “State Center for Submarine Con­struction” for Russia, and indicating that the other submarine yards will be con­verted to “civilian tasks.” This may open the other facilities, previously devoted to submarine construction, for participation in dismantlement, but its impact remains to be seen.

Fleet Supply (Rear Services) and Training Problems

The shipyards are not the only part of the navy infrastructure facing reduced re­sources. The decline is felt in particularly acute fashion at the unit level in the fleet. Red Star describes the impact on the “military settlements” in the Northern Fleet. As most of these facilities are above the Arctic Circle, winter lasts “from October until May,” and the de­mands upon utilities and transport net­works are particularly severe. As the Chief of the Maritime Engineering Ser­vice of the Fleet observed, there has been an absence of adequate investment and the fleet has been forced to borrow to meet its requirements. Because of a lack of funds, they cannot sign contracts for the delivery of materials required for cur­rent maintenance, and even employee wages are being paid from bank loans. Setting up stocks in preparation for the future is out of the question. State enter­prises, forced to shift for themselves in the transition to a market, are not mak­ing deliveries to the military. Supplies exist, but they are being sold at market prices and thus are often “ten times as expensive as former state prices.”

With no means of adjusting the fleet’s income to meet the higher prices, the sup­ply situation has become critical. Such shortfalls affect morale and the ability of units to maintain even a modicum of readiness.

Training is another problem for the submarine force. The operating tempo has been continually reduced since the mid- 1980s, and much training has come ashore—although there is a lack of suit­able shore-based training devices. In the past, training began at the submarine school at Paldiski and then moved to fleet certification training on board an in­dividual boat. Crews rotated back through Paldiski periodically after operational de­ployment and leave, before returning to the fleet. Two problems reported in Red Star last October and December now af­fect that sequence.

While Paldiski remains the only train­ing facility for submariners, it is located in now-independent Estonia—no longer even in the CIS (Commonwealth of In­dependent States), much less Russia. “In­deed, Paldiski is now abroad: you can­not go there without visas, without agreement with the republic govern­ment.” Moreover, the prototype reac­tors at Paldiski (at least two) have been shut down. Any crew training there, once visas are obtained, takes place on simu­lators. The facility director, Rear Admi­ral Borisov, notes that “The exercises were more realistic and effective when they could be carried out in reality, with the reactor in full operation.”

Dealing With Nuclear Waste

The problems of the nuclear subma­rine force have a lengthy history, and they are associated with an equally long his­tory of shoddy practice in the disposal of nuclear materials and nuclear waste. A March article in the weekly newspaper Sobesednik included a large map of the former Soviet Union that showed nuclear waste disposal sites, locations of nuclear- related accidents, and areas of radioac­tive contamination—including most of the nuclear submarine facilities. It re­minds us that, in addition to the units being retired and dismantled, there are previously “damaged” units awaiting dis­posal in both fleet areas. Smirnov ob­serves that, in the Pacific Fleet, there are three “. . . retired boats that had suf­fered nuclear accidents. They have been permanently moored for 13 years.” These problem units complicate an already dif­ficult process.

Furthermore, the lack of a plan for storage or disposal of submarine reactor compartments may add to the list of con­taminated areas. Captain Smirnov in his May article proposes a regional radioac­tive waste depository “in a selected coastal sea area.” He describes the issue in the following terms:

N. Bisovka, an executive of the Rus­sian State Atomic Oversight [agency] is outraged that I am developing a burial site for radioactive wastes by storing the compartments at sea. . . . But, nevertheless, what is safer to store? A technically prepared, pack­aged, hermetic, visually observable compartment on the sea floor, or an unprepared submarine with myriad holes in the outer hull, afloat?

It is not clear what neighboring coun­tries will think of this disposal practice, however “temporary” in concept.

The scale of the nuclear-submarine dis­mantling problem facing the Russian Navy is daunting. The impact on the ship­building and repair infrastructure will be substantial and long lasting, and the whole effort is severely complicated by the issues of waste handling and dis­posal. With resources so stretched, it is not clear from where the needed invest­ment and technology will come. In a so­ciety traumatized by Chernobyl, however, the message of concern from the popu­lation is stark and filled with foreboding. An example is the lead to Captain Smirnov’s article in May:

In one of the bays at a Pacific Fleet base there is dead silence. Watchful, deceptive silence. Dozens of sub­marines are growing stiff with cold, laid-up for a long period near resi­dential villages—a delayed-action nu­clear mine, ready at any moment to burst out of its casing.

Mr. Kraus is a senior analyst in the Foreign Systems Research Center of Science Applications International Corporation in Greenwood Village, Colorado. His area specialties include U.S. and Soviet naval oper­ations and military intelligence. He has served at the senior staff level in the Navy and in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and has taught at the Naval War College during more than 20 years of naval service.