Moscow puts money on the table to raise nuclear subs from Arctic seabed

This photo of the K-159 was taken in Gremikha on August 28, 2003 at the start of the towing of the submarine along the coast of the Kola Peninsula. A few days later, in bad weather, the wreck sank. Photo courtesy of Bellon

The Government’s draft budget for 2026, and the planned budget for 2027-2028, include funding to lift the K-27 and K-159, two wrecked submarines that rest on the seabed in the Barents Sea and Kara Sea. 

It is the state nuclear corporation Rosatom that told news outlet RBK about the plans to finally do something about the ticking radioactive time-bombs."The draft federal budget for 2026 and the 2027-2028 planning period includes funding for the rehabilitation of Arctic seas from sunken and dumped radiation-hazardous objects, beginning in 2027. Preparations for the planned work will begin in 2026," the press service of Rosatom said. An explanatory note to Rosatom's budget post for disposal of nuclear and radiation-hazardous nuclear legacy sites details how 30 billion rubles for the three-year period are earmarked to planning and lifting of the Cold War era submarines left on the Arctic seabed. 

The K-27 and the K-159 are the most urgent to raise and bring to shore for safe scrapping. 

The K-159 sank onto the seabed 170 metres down in the Barents Sea, but officials said the 40-year-old vessel's nuclear reactors had been shut down in 1989 when it was decommissioned and they discounted an ecological threat. While the K-27 was dumped on purpose in 1982 in the Stepovoy Bay on the Kara Sea side of Novaya Zemlya, the sinking of the K-159 in the Barents Sea was an accident. 

Lifting a nuclear submarine from the seabed is nothing new. It is difficult, but doable. 
In 2002, the Dutch salvage company Mammoet managed to raise the ill-fated KURSK submarine from the Barents Sea. A special barge was built with wires attached underneath. The wreck was safely brought in and placed in a floating dock where the decommissioning took place.

Aleksandr Nikitin, a nuclear safety expert with the Bellona Foundation in Oslo, said to the Barents Observer that it is too early to conclude if the lifting actually will happen, or if this is a preliminary plan that needs to be developed before concluding. "As far as I understand, there's no concrete plan," Nikitin said. 

Before Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, Aleksandr Nikitin was member of Rosatom’s Public Chamber, a body that worked with non-governmental organisations to foster transparency and civic engagement on nuclear safety related issues in Russia. 

Nikitin believes there still are infrastructures on the Kola Peninsula to deal with the two submarines if they are lifted from the seabed. 
"Rosatom is currently trying not to destroy what the French built in Gremikha, hoping to dismantle the K-27 there if it's raised. This is a special facility where this nuclear submarine with a liquid metal coolant reactor can be dismantled," he explained. "As for the K-159, it could be dismantled, for example, at Nerpa." 

Nerpa is a shipyard north of Murmansk that has decommissioned several of the Cold War submarines at the time when Russia maintained a cooperation with European partners, including Norway. 

Ticking radioactive time-bombs 
Both the K-27 and the K-159 represent ticking radioactive time-bombs for the Arctic marine environment. K-159 is a November-class that sank in late August 2003 while being towed in bad weather from the closed naval base of Gremikha on the eastern shores of the Kola Peninsula towards the Nerpa shipyard north of Murmansk.Researchers have since then monitored the wreck, fearing leakages of radioactivity from the two old nuclear reactors onboard could contaminate the important fishing grounds in the Barents Sea. A joint Norwegian-Russian expedition examined the site in 2014 and concluded that no leakage has so far occurred from the reactors to the surrounding marine environment. However, the bad shape of the hull could eventually lead to radionuclides leaking out.The two onboard reactors contain about 800 kilograms of spent nuclear fuel, with an estimated 5,3 GBq of radionuclides. 

A modeling study by the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research said that a pulse discharge of the entire Cesium-137 inventory from the two reactors could increase concentrations in cod in the eastern part of the Barents Sea up to 100 times current levels for a two-year period after the discharge. While a Cs-137 increase of 100 times in cod sounds dramatic, the levels would still be below international guidelines. But that increase could still make it difficult to market the affected fish. 

K-27, the other submarine in urgency to lift, was on purpose dumped in the Kara Sea in 1982. In September 2021, divers from the Centre for Underwater Research of the Russian Geographical Society conducted a survey of the submarine’s hull. Metal pieces were cut free, the thickness of the hull was measured, along with other inspections of the submarine that has been corroding on the seabed for nearly 40 years. 

Additional to the K-27 and K-159, there are also the other dumped reactors in the Kara Sea, including from the K-11, K-19 and K-140, as well as spent nuclear fuel from an older reactor serving icebreaker LENIN In Soviet times, thousands of containers with solid radioactive waste from both the civilian icebreaker fleet and the military Navy were dumped at different locations in the Kara Sea.

Source : Barentsonbserver