Heading off nuclear proliferation and protecting the environment: Dismantling Russian nuclear submarines

Developing a road map for dismantling old nuclear attack and cruisemissile submarines belonging to Russia’s Pacific fleet was the aim of aNATO-sponsored Advanced Research Workshop held in Vladivostok, from 17to 18 March.The workshop is part of NATO’s Security through Science Programme.

Effortsto complete the dismantlement of Russian nuclear submarines haveemerged as an issue of broader international interest. The G8 GlobalPartnership against the Spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction, agreedin June 2002, calls for spending 20 billion $ up to 2012 to secure anddestroy nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and material in theformer Soviet Union.

This includes the nuclear materialassociated with Russia’s fleet of decommissioned nuclear submarines.While progress has been made in decommissioning and dismantling surplusnuclear submarines from the Russian navy, most progress has been on thefleet of strategic submarines, which are capable of carryingintercontinental ballistic missiles.

Work still remainsto be done with regard to general-purpose submarines, i.e. attack andcruise missile submarines. As of May 2003, Russia had 87 decommissionednuclear submarines stored afloat with nuclear fuel onboard. Of these,77 are general-purpose submarines, which are no longer seaworthy andcontinue to degrade thereby increasing the threat of the release ofpotentially highly radioactive material into the environment.

Additionally,the spent nuclear fuel represents a significant proliferation hazardand a potential tool for terrorist acts using radiological agents. Inaddition, most of the previous US and European efforts have focused onthe Northern fleet, in Murmansk, near Norway, while plans for thedismantlement of the Pacific fleet are much less developed.

The38 participants to the workshop discussed the scientific, engineeringand organisational problems that remain unresolved in dismantlingnuclear submarines of the Pacific fleet and considered methods forbetter co-ordinating the Pacific fleet and Northern fleet’sdismantlement efforts. Before the workshop, the planning committeevisited the Petropavlovsk and Vladivostok submarine facilities in orderto share their findings during the workshop’s discussions, which drewon expertise from Russia and other New Independent States, WesternEurope, Japan and the US.