He219
03-09-2004, 07:45 PM
Far East Decommissioning Conference Cries for Cash (http://www.bellona.no/en/international/russia/navy/pacific/general/25895.html)
He declined to say where the ships were based or how much fuel they contained, but said the corrosion on their hulls poses "the greatest danger," but various international observers attending the conference have indicated the ships are located throughout the Primorye region, from near Vladivostok, to the Kamchatka Peninsula — where some reportedly lay beached.
http://vn.vladnews.ru/Arch/2002/ISS337/Pic/Zvezda_Subs_1.jpg
Nuclear submarines docked at Zvezda
The ecology and decommissioning chief also said security is lacking and storage facilities "dilapidated" at the Russian military bases around the country that store spent nuclear fuel from 170 submarines. Four of those bases are located in the Russian Far East, he said, though refused to be more specific about the number of vessels located in the Far East. .
Of the 190 Russian submarines that have been taken out of service Russia-wide since the end of the 1980s, only 71 have been secured to some extent, meaning their nuclear fuel had been removed and some of them were scrapped, Akhunov said. Other subs remain docked off Russia's Pacific coast and in the Arctic Ocean, awaiting full decommissioning.
In the Pacific Fleet alone, 42 out-of service submarines that still have their spent nuclear fuel on board still remain precariously afloat.
It was ecologists and ecology groups like Alexei Yablokov and Bellona who first raised the alarm in 1995 about these submarines, bobbing at dockside, still loaded with their nuclear fuel — which is a specifically Russian method for storing submarine SNF. At that time, revelations of such information brought allegations of treason, particularly against Bellona’s Aleksandr Nikitin, who was finally acquitted of these charges in December 1999.
http://cache.*****images.com/comp/731910.jpg?x=x&dasite=MS_GINS&ef=2&ev=1&dareq=E2399169AC85D6DEFE57CE58466A57EB02D2F87637210EE4
Children play near an area where old Russian submarines are retired in Vladivostok, Russia. The area is known as the "Submarine cemetery" and the Russian government says it does not have enough money to dismantle the old vessels. (Photo by Oleg Nikishin/Newsmakers)
http://cache.*****images.com/comp/731911.jpg?x=x&dasite=MS_GINS&ef=2&ev=1&dareq=E2399169AC85D6DEFE57CE58466A57EB442F5DBB9B6EE89D
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Fishermen and former Russian Navy sailors fish in the ice beside abandoned Russian military submarines in Vladivostok, Russia. The country's military has suffered major budget cuts since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. (Photo by Scott Peterson/Liaison)
http://cache.*****images.com/comp/737666.jpg?x=x&dasite=MS_GINS&ef=2&ev=1&dareq=E2399169AC85D6DE9DC143FB7D66712EA894BF1D36375CA2
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Abandoned Russian military submarines lay stuck in the ice where they sunk January 28, 2001 in Vladivostok, Russia. The country's military has suffered major budget cuts since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. (Photo by Scott Peterson/Liaison)
http://cache.*****images.com/comp/737662.jpg?x=x&dasite=MS_GINS&ef=2&ev=1&dareq=E2399169AC85D6DE9DC143FB7D66712ED7D52AAB7262B372
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RUSSIA - JULY 2000: (FILE PHOTO) Unidentified Russian submarines are moored before being decommissioned at naval base July 2000. A Russian K-159 nuclear submarine sank during a storm in the Barents Sea August 30, 2003 as it was being towed to a scrapyard, killing nine crew members. (Photo by ***** Images)
K-159 doomed by expectations of Western funding (http://www.bellona.no/en/international/russia/navy/northern_fleet/incidents/k-159/31528.html)
http://www.bellona.no/data/b/0/31/15/1_1407_1.jpg
The K-159 nuclear submarine at sea before it was decommissioned in 1989.
The K-159, a Russian first generation November class submarine, was doomed when it set sail, towed by a tugboat from the Northern Fleet's semi-abandoned Gremikha Base, on August 29th, according to the officer responsible for the failed operation.
Photos provided to Bellona by Russian website KSF.RU—which is run by journalists from closed naval cities on the Kola Peninsula—capture the K-159 and its crew the day before it sank. The condition of the submarine and the floatation pontoons attached to it seem to be far short of seaworthy, to say the least.
The K-159 was on its way to the Polyarny shipyard near the Arctic city of Murmansk for dismantlement when it sank during the early morning hours of August 30th, two days out to sea. The bulk of funding for dismantling the K-159—and 15 other non-strategic submarines, which were to be towed from Gremikha—was to come from Western donor countries.
An ongoing investigation of the tragedy, which claimed the lives of nine of the K-159's 10 crew members, was launched by the Military Prosecutor General's office, which has so far only brought charges against Captain Second Class Sergei Zhemchuzhnov, who was overseeing the towing operation.
Admiral Gennady Suchkov, the commander of the Northern Fleet, was suspended in September after the Russian Navy's Chief of Staff Vladimir Kuroyedov called the K-159 accident "a series of preventable mistakes."
This week Zhemchuzhnov launched a blunt and vociferous attack on the ways the Northern Fleet conducts the towing operations, listing the "preventable" mistakes that facilitated the K-159 accident. The whole operation, he told the Russian Kommersant daily, was blighted by antiquated equipment.
The pontoons used to keep the mothballed K-159 submarine afloat, made in the 1940s, were not airtight, and were not designed for towing operations, Zhemchuzhnov told the newspaper.
"As an officer, I didn't have an opportunity to express my personal opinion and had to fulfil the order," Zhemchuzhnov said. "The devices attaching the pontoons to the sub were welded to the rust-eaten hull, which in some places was as weak as foil."
The four pontoons themselves had to be repeatedly topped up with air, he told the paper, and one of them was "absolutely wrecked" and needed constant re-inflating.
The pontoons "consistently bled air pressure, and the K-159 crew was assigned to pressurise them every five hours to keep the sub afloat," Zhemchuzhnov said.
The submarine was ripped away from some of the pontoons in the middle of a reportedly violent storm and then tilted to its stern before sinking to the seabed.
In the summer of 2003, Russia became the beneficiary of an apparent outbreak of international non-proliferation and environmental philanthropy. Five countries made a combined donation of more than $200m toward Russia's efforts to decommission its retired non-strategic submarines and to clean up some of Northwest Russia's most radioactively contaminated areas. Much of the funding releases were facilitated by the signing in May of the Multilateral Nuclear Environmental Programme in the Russian Federation, or MNEPR, in Stockholm.
The Northern Fleet, anticipating the upcoming funding, decided to remove all the 16 rusty submarines from the semi-functional Gremikha Base—located on the eastern coast of the Kola Peninsula—and tow them to shipyards where they would be dismantled, Zhemchuzhnov said.
"The plan for towing the laid-up submarines from the Iokanga [another name for Gremikha] Base area to dismantlement sites was approved by the commander of the Northern Fleet in the spring of 2003," Zhemchuzhnov said. "In accordance with the plan, we were given the task of transferring 16 retired nuclear submarines during the summer navigation [period] from April to October. The K-159 was the 13th submarine we were transferring from Ostrovnoi [a town in the Gremikha Base area] to a dismantlement site."
In his interview, Zhemchuzhnov explained the high tempo of the towing operation by the fact that "there was big money involved [and] earmarked for dismantlement."
"I think this money was to be swallowed as quickly as possible, and reports about the cleanup of 'nuclear garbage' from the bases of the Northern Fleet were to be sent to Moscow," Zhemchuzhnov said.
The mass-scale operation did not go as expected. All 16 of the non-strategic submarines moored in Gremikha had already been rusting there for the past 10 to 15 years. Many of them had leaky ballast tanks—mechanisms that control the depth of a submarine's submersion.
Zhemchuzhnov said that in September 2002, when the first submarine was being transferred from Gremikha to a shipyard on the Kola Peninsula, two pontoons located on its stern broke loose, even though the sea was calm. The submarine eventually arrived safely at its destination. The incident, however, failed to send any wake-up calls to Northern Fleet commanders.
Retired rusting hulks of submarines like the K-159 are indeed an extremely urgent issue. But it is equally important to ensure that donor nations exercise greater control over the dismantling and nuclear and radiation safety projects that their funding grants facilitate.
"Western donors cannot simply give financial support without reviewing each stage of the process they are funding—for example the process of dismantling a nuclear submarine," Alexander Nikitin, former submarine captain first class and currently chairman of Bellona's St. Petersburg branch, said shortly after the K-159's accident.
Donor countries must insist on evaluating the projects they are funding from the point of view of the hazards the implementation of these projects could cause. Whether the observed lack of project oversight comes from the donors' naivete or their unwillingness to delve into Russia's infamous bureaucracy, such neglect can have dramatic effects. According to Nikitin, "if international donors pay for operations that lead to such incidents like the K-159 sinking, then it would be better if these international donors don't give any money at all."
Norway pioneered the efforts of the international community to fund the dismantlement of non-strategic submarines and this summer signed a contract with Russian shipyards to dismantle two Victor II class submarines. Both submarines had been located at Gremikha and towed to a dismantlement site for destruction.
Norway was, in effect, trapped when it paid for the dismantlement—and specifically the dangerous towing—of the vessels for the simple reason that it had not properly investigated the contract from the point of view of safe submarine destruction procedures. The money was simply transferred to the concerned shipyards that hire contractors of their choosing to carry out various aspects of the work. When asked to comment on this apparent oversight, officials from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said somewhat evasively that it was "a Russian matter."
http://www.bellona.no/data/b/0/31/50/4_1407_1.JPG
K-159 before departure, moored at Gremikha base. KSF.RU/Bellona
http://www.bellona.no/data/b/0/31/50/5_1407_1.JPG
The stern part of K-159's outer hull is rusted out.
KSF.RU/Bellona
http://www.bellona.no/data/b/0/31/50/6_1407_1.JPG
http://www.bellona.no/data/b/0/31/50/7_1407_1.JPG
Pontoons used to keep the mothballed K-159 submarine afloat were made in the 1940s. KSF.RU/Bellona
http://www.bellona.no/data/b/0/31/50/8_1407_1.JPG
http://www.bellona.no/data/b/0/31/50/9_1407_1.JPG
RIP :(
K-159's crew captured just before departure. Only one of them, Maxim Tsibulsky, survived the tragic trip.
http://www.bellona.no/data/b/0/31/51/0_1407_1.JPG
The crew is attaching pantoons to K-159.
http://www.bellona.no/data/b/0/31/51/1_1407_1.JPG
The crew is preparing K-159 for towing.
http://www.bellona.no/data/b/0/31/51/2_1407_1.JPG
Tugboat SB-406 is about to pull K-159 off the pier.
http://www.bellona.no/data/b/0/31/51/3_1407_1.JPG
K-159 starts off on its last trip.
http://www.bellona.no/data/b/0/31/51/7_1407_1.JPG
http://www.bellona.no/data/b/0/31/51/5_1407_1.JPG
The devices attaching the pontoons to the sub were welded to the rust-eaten hull which in some places was as strong as foil.
http://www.bellona.no/data/b/0/31/51/6_1407_1.JPG
K-159 is being tugged out into the open sea.
http://www.bellona.no/data/b/0/31/00/3_1407_1.jpg
Bellona Investigation Reveals Radiation Levels Are Normal After K-159 Sinking—So Far (http://www.bellona.no/en/international/russia/navy/northern_fleet/incidents/k-159/31140.html)
http://www.bellona.no/data/b/0/27/99/2_1407_1.jpg
Norway pays Russia to scrap non-strategic submarines (http://www.bellona.no/en/international/russia/navy/northern_fleet/decommissioning/28400.html)
OSLO - Norway plans to contract the dismantlement of two Russian non-strategic submarines. Other countries will follow the example.
http://www.bellona.no/data/b/0/30/40/9_1407_1.jpg
Two shots of a Victor III class attack submarine, the type of submarine Japan is now dismantling in a 'pilot project.'
World Funding Pours Into Russia for Nuclear Cleanup and Sub Dismantling (http://www.bellona.no/en/international/russia/navy/co-operation/30403.html)
It may have taken more than a year to kick-start the $20-billion pledges made at the Kananaskis, Canada, Group of Eight industrialized nations conference of June 2002, but, at last, some of the international funding spigots to help Russia deal with radioactive waste from its vast arsenal of decommissioned submarines and other radioactive hazards are opening.
http://www.bellona.no/data/b/0/25/24/4_1407_1.jpg
K-104 tilted on its portside in PD-63 floating dock in the water area of Polyarny shipyard.
Nuclear submarine emergency in floating dock during decommissioning (http://www.bellona.no/en/international/russia/navy/northern_fleet/decommissioning/25241.html)
A first generation Echo-II class nuclear submarine fell on its portside in a floating dock during decommissioning at a naval shipyard at the Kola Peninsula.
US sponsored defueling site approved for operation in Severodvinsk (http://www.bellona.no/en/international/russia/navy/northern_fleet/decommissioning/29332.html)
Zvezdochka shipyard defuelled the first Typhoon class submarine. The new facility received final approval by Moscow.
http://www.bellona.no/data/b/0/14/67/8_1407_1.jpg
http://www.bellona.no/data/b/0/25/61/4_1407_1.jpg
A TK-18 transport container is being loaded into railway car in Severodvinsk — the old defuelling scheme.
Brand new US sponsored defuelling site unable to handle Typhoons (http://www.bellona.no/en/international/russia/navy/northern_fleet/decommissioning/25613.html)
Submarine spent nuclear fuel unloading site commissioned at Zvezdochka shipyard, Severodvinsk, in late August encountered problems trying to defuel a Typhoon class submarine.
http://www.bellona.no/data/b/0/29/33/4_1407_1.jpg
Typhoon class submarine under decommissioning.
Interactive Map (http://www.bellona.no/imaker?id=17983&sub=1)
Source (http://www.bellona.no/en/international/russia/navy/northern_fleet/decommissioning/index.html)
He declined to say where the ships were based or how much fuel they contained, but said the corrosion on their hulls poses "the greatest danger," but various international observers attending the conference have indicated the ships are located throughout the Primorye region, from near Vladivostok, to the Kamchatka Peninsula — where some reportedly lay beached.
http://vn.vladnews.ru/Arch/2002/ISS337/Pic/Zvezda_Subs_1.jpg
Nuclear submarines docked at Zvezda
The ecology and decommissioning chief also said security is lacking and storage facilities "dilapidated" at the Russian military bases around the country that store spent nuclear fuel from 170 submarines. Four of those bases are located in the Russian Far East, he said, though refused to be more specific about the number of vessels located in the Far East. .
Of the 190 Russian submarines that have been taken out of service Russia-wide since the end of the 1980s, only 71 have been secured to some extent, meaning their nuclear fuel had been removed and some of them were scrapped, Akhunov said. Other subs remain docked off Russia's Pacific coast and in the Arctic Ocean, awaiting full decommissioning.
In the Pacific Fleet alone, 42 out-of service submarines that still have their spent nuclear fuel on board still remain precariously afloat.
It was ecologists and ecology groups like Alexei Yablokov and Bellona who first raised the alarm in 1995 about these submarines, bobbing at dockside, still loaded with their nuclear fuel — which is a specifically Russian method for storing submarine SNF. At that time, revelations of such information brought allegations of treason, particularly against Bellona’s Aleksandr Nikitin, who was finally acquitted of these charges in December 1999.
http://cache.*****images.com/comp/731910.jpg?x=x&dasite=MS_GINS&ef=2&ev=1&dareq=E2399169AC85D6DEFE57CE58466A57EB02D2F87637210EE4
Children play near an area where old Russian submarines are retired in Vladivostok, Russia. The area is known as the "Submarine cemetery" and the Russian government says it does not have enough money to dismantle the old vessels. (Photo by Oleg Nikishin/Newsmakers)
http://cache.*****images.com/comp/731911.jpg?x=x&dasite=MS_GINS&ef=2&ev=1&dareq=E2399169AC85D6DEFE57CE58466A57EB442F5DBB9B6EE89D
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Fishermen and former Russian Navy sailors fish in the ice beside abandoned Russian military submarines in Vladivostok, Russia. The country's military has suffered major budget cuts since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. (Photo by Scott Peterson/Liaison)
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Abandoned Russian military submarines lay stuck in the ice where they sunk January 28, 2001 in Vladivostok, Russia. The country's military has suffered major budget cuts since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. (Photo by Scott Peterson/Liaison)
http://cache.*****images.com/comp/737662.jpg?x=x&dasite=MS_GINS&ef=2&ev=1&dareq=E2399169AC85D6DE9DC143FB7D66712ED7D52AAB7262B372
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RUSSIA - JULY 2000: (FILE PHOTO) Unidentified Russian submarines are moored before being decommissioned at naval base July 2000. A Russian K-159 nuclear submarine sank during a storm in the Barents Sea August 30, 2003 as it was being towed to a scrapyard, killing nine crew members. (Photo by ***** Images)
K-159 doomed by expectations of Western funding (http://www.bellona.no/en/international/russia/navy/northern_fleet/incidents/k-159/31528.html)
http://www.bellona.no/data/b/0/31/15/1_1407_1.jpg
The K-159 nuclear submarine at sea before it was decommissioned in 1989.
The K-159, a Russian first generation November class submarine, was doomed when it set sail, towed by a tugboat from the Northern Fleet's semi-abandoned Gremikha Base, on August 29th, according to the officer responsible for the failed operation.
Photos provided to Bellona by Russian website KSF.RU—which is run by journalists from closed naval cities on the Kola Peninsula—capture the K-159 and its crew the day before it sank. The condition of the submarine and the floatation pontoons attached to it seem to be far short of seaworthy, to say the least.
The K-159 was on its way to the Polyarny shipyard near the Arctic city of Murmansk for dismantlement when it sank during the early morning hours of August 30th, two days out to sea. The bulk of funding for dismantling the K-159—and 15 other non-strategic submarines, which were to be towed from Gremikha—was to come from Western donor countries.
An ongoing investigation of the tragedy, which claimed the lives of nine of the K-159's 10 crew members, was launched by the Military Prosecutor General's office, which has so far only brought charges against Captain Second Class Sergei Zhemchuzhnov, who was overseeing the towing operation.
Admiral Gennady Suchkov, the commander of the Northern Fleet, was suspended in September after the Russian Navy's Chief of Staff Vladimir Kuroyedov called the K-159 accident "a series of preventable mistakes."
This week Zhemchuzhnov launched a blunt and vociferous attack on the ways the Northern Fleet conducts the towing operations, listing the "preventable" mistakes that facilitated the K-159 accident. The whole operation, he told the Russian Kommersant daily, was blighted by antiquated equipment.
The pontoons used to keep the mothballed K-159 submarine afloat, made in the 1940s, were not airtight, and were not designed for towing operations, Zhemchuzhnov told the newspaper.
"As an officer, I didn't have an opportunity to express my personal opinion and had to fulfil the order," Zhemchuzhnov said. "The devices attaching the pontoons to the sub were welded to the rust-eaten hull, which in some places was as weak as foil."
The four pontoons themselves had to be repeatedly topped up with air, he told the paper, and one of them was "absolutely wrecked" and needed constant re-inflating.
The pontoons "consistently bled air pressure, and the K-159 crew was assigned to pressurise them every five hours to keep the sub afloat," Zhemchuzhnov said.
The submarine was ripped away from some of the pontoons in the middle of a reportedly violent storm and then tilted to its stern before sinking to the seabed.
In the summer of 2003, Russia became the beneficiary of an apparent outbreak of international non-proliferation and environmental philanthropy. Five countries made a combined donation of more than $200m toward Russia's efforts to decommission its retired non-strategic submarines and to clean up some of Northwest Russia's most radioactively contaminated areas. Much of the funding releases were facilitated by the signing in May of the Multilateral Nuclear Environmental Programme in the Russian Federation, or MNEPR, in Stockholm.
The Northern Fleet, anticipating the upcoming funding, decided to remove all the 16 rusty submarines from the semi-functional Gremikha Base—located on the eastern coast of the Kola Peninsula—and tow them to shipyards where they would be dismantled, Zhemchuzhnov said.
"The plan for towing the laid-up submarines from the Iokanga [another name for Gremikha] Base area to dismantlement sites was approved by the commander of the Northern Fleet in the spring of 2003," Zhemchuzhnov said. "In accordance with the plan, we were given the task of transferring 16 retired nuclear submarines during the summer navigation [period] from April to October. The K-159 was the 13th submarine we were transferring from Ostrovnoi [a town in the Gremikha Base area] to a dismantlement site."
In his interview, Zhemchuzhnov explained the high tempo of the towing operation by the fact that "there was big money involved [and] earmarked for dismantlement."
"I think this money was to be swallowed as quickly as possible, and reports about the cleanup of 'nuclear garbage' from the bases of the Northern Fleet were to be sent to Moscow," Zhemchuzhnov said.
The mass-scale operation did not go as expected. All 16 of the non-strategic submarines moored in Gremikha had already been rusting there for the past 10 to 15 years. Many of them had leaky ballast tanks—mechanisms that control the depth of a submarine's submersion.
Zhemchuzhnov said that in September 2002, when the first submarine was being transferred from Gremikha to a shipyard on the Kola Peninsula, two pontoons located on its stern broke loose, even though the sea was calm. The submarine eventually arrived safely at its destination. The incident, however, failed to send any wake-up calls to Northern Fleet commanders.
Retired rusting hulks of submarines like the K-159 are indeed an extremely urgent issue. But it is equally important to ensure that donor nations exercise greater control over the dismantling and nuclear and radiation safety projects that their funding grants facilitate.
"Western donors cannot simply give financial support without reviewing each stage of the process they are funding—for example the process of dismantling a nuclear submarine," Alexander Nikitin, former submarine captain first class and currently chairman of Bellona's St. Petersburg branch, said shortly after the K-159's accident.
Donor countries must insist on evaluating the projects they are funding from the point of view of the hazards the implementation of these projects could cause. Whether the observed lack of project oversight comes from the donors' naivete or their unwillingness to delve into Russia's infamous bureaucracy, such neglect can have dramatic effects. According to Nikitin, "if international donors pay for operations that lead to such incidents like the K-159 sinking, then it would be better if these international donors don't give any money at all."
Norway pioneered the efforts of the international community to fund the dismantlement of non-strategic submarines and this summer signed a contract with Russian shipyards to dismantle two Victor II class submarines. Both submarines had been located at Gremikha and towed to a dismantlement site for destruction.
Norway was, in effect, trapped when it paid for the dismantlement—and specifically the dangerous towing—of the vessels for the simple reason that it had not properly investigated the contract from the point of view of safe submarine destruction procedures. The money was simply transferred to the concerned shipyards that hire contractors of their choosing to carry out various aspects of the work. When asked to comment on this apparent oversight, officials from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said somewhat evasively that it was "a Russian matter."
http://www.bellona.no/data/b/0/31/50/4_1407_1.JPG
K-159 before departure, moored at Gremikha base. KSF.RU/Bellona
http://www.bellona.no/data/b/0/31/50/5_1407_1.JPG
The stern part of K-159's outer hull is rusted out.
KSF.RU/Bellona
http://www.bellona.no/data/b/0/31/50/6_1407_1.JPG
http://www.bellona.no/data/b/0/31/50/7_1407_1.JPG
Pontoons used to keep the mothballed K-159 submarine afloat were made in the 1940s. KSF.RU/Bellona
http://www.bellona.no/data/b/0/31/50/8_1407_1.JPG
http://www.bellona.no/data/b/0/31/50/9_1407_1.JPG
RIP :(
K-159's crew captured just before departure. Only one of them, Maxim Tsibulsky, survived the tragic trip.
http://www.bellona.no/data/b/0/31/51/0_1407_1.JPG
The crew is attaching pantoons to K-159.
http://www.bellona.no/data/b/0/31/51/1_1407_1.JPG
The crew is preparing K-159 for towing.
http://www.bellona.no/data/b/0/31/51/2_1407_1.JPG
Tugboat SB-406 is about to pull K-159 off the pier.
http://www.bellona.no/data/b/0/31/51/3_1407_1.JPG
K-159 starts off on its last trip.
http://www.bellona.no/data/b/0/31/51/7_1407_1.JPG
http://www.bellona.no/data/b/0/31/51/5_1407_1.JPG
The devices attaching the pontoons to the sub were welded to the rust-eaten hull which in some places was as strong as foil.
http://www.bellona.no/data/b/0/31/51/6_1407_1.JPG
K-159 is being tugged out into the open sea.
http://www.bellona.no/data/b/0/31/00/3_1407_1.jpg
Bellona Investigation Reveals Radiation Levels Are Normal After K-159 Sinking—So Far (http://www.bellona.no/en/international/russia/navy/northern_fleet/incidents/k-159/31140.html)
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Norway pays Russia to scrap non-strategic submarines (http://www.bellona.no/en/international/russia/navy/northern_fleet/decommissioning/28400.html)
OSLO - Norway plans to contract the dismantlement of two Russian non-strategic submarines. Other countries will follow the example.
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Two shots of a Victor III class attack submarine, the type of submarine Japan is now dismantling in a 'pilot project.'
World Funding Pours Into Russia for Nuclear Cleanup and Sub Dismantling (http://www.bellona.no/en/international/russia/navy/co-operation/30403.html)
It may have taken more than a year to kick-start the $20-billion pledges made at the Kananaskis, Canada, Group of Eight industrialized nations conference of June 2002, but, at last, some of the international funding spigots to help Russia deal with radioactive waste from its vast arsenal of decommissioned submarines and other radioactive hazards are opening.
http://www.bellona.no/data/b/0/25/24/4_1407_1.jpg
K-104 tilted on its portside in PD-63 floating dock in the water area of Polyarny shipyard.
Nuclear submarine emergency in floating dock during decommissioning (http://www.bellona.no/en/international/russia/navy/northern_fleet/decommissioning/25241.html)
A first generation Echo-II class nuclear submarine fell on its portside in a floating dock during decommissioning at a naval shipyard at the Kola Peninsula.
US sponsored defueling site approved for operation in Severodvinsk (http://www.bellona.no/en/international/russia/navy/northern_fleet/decommissioning/29332.html)
Zvezdochka shipyard defuelled the first Typhoon class submarine. The new facility received final approval by Moscow.
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http://www.bellona.no/data/b/0/25/61/4_1407_1.jpg
A TK-18 transport container is being loaded into railway car in Severodvinsk — the old defuelling scheme.
Brand new US sponsored defuelling site unable to handle Typhoons (http://www.bellona.no/en/international/russia/navy/northern_fleet/decommissioning/25613.html)
Submarine spent nuclear fuel unloading site commissioned at Zvezdochka shipyard, Severodvinsk, in late August encountered problems trying to defuel a Typhoon class submarine.
http://www.bellona.no/data/b/0/29/33/4_1407_1.jpg
Typhoon class submarine under decommissioning.
Interactive Map (http://www.bellona.no/imaker?id=17983&sub=1)
Source (http://www.bellona.no/en/international/russia/navy/northern_fleet/decommissioning/index.html)