Russian sub clean-up delayed

Norway — the only NATO member-state that has common borders with Russia — has been at loggerheads with Moscow for quite some time about the tardy progress in removing nuclear wastes from its abandoned nuclear submarines. Russia’s argument is that it has no money to quickly remove the nuclear materials from the submarines and store them at a safe place.

According to Russian press reports, so far, nuclear wastes from 26 submarines have been removed, while many morestill are to be freed from their dangerous nuclear materials.

The nuclear wastes already removed from the rusting submarines are reportedly piling up in facilities near Murmarisk, the headquarters of the Russian North Fleet. Some of the decommissioned nuclear submarines have reportedly been decaying underwater for 10 years.

This has generated a lot of bad blood between Russia and Norway, especially as there is no consensus between the two countries as to where the wastes should be stored. While Norwegians strongly oppose any plans to store the nuclear wastes anywhere close to their country in the Arctic, environmentalists claim that transporting the nuclear fuel to Russia’s Ural mountains by train will be extremely dangerous.

Earlier, Russia had wanted to transport the nuclear wastes to a water-cooled facility at the Mayak complex in the Ural region of Chelyabinsk. But lack of funds delayed the completion of the project. The Norwegian government had then promised to help build the storage facility atMayak and provide money for transportation of nuclear wastes. But now it is reportedly seconding the environmentalists’ view that removed nuclear materials should stay on at the Kola peninsula and be stored in a completely new facility.