According to the figures from Rosatom, 191 out of 198 decommissioned nuclear powered submarines from the Russian Navy will be fully dismantled by the end of 2010.
Today, about 25 remaining decommissioned submarines are not yet dismantled, said Yevgeny Yevstratov to RIA Novosti. Many of them are in process of disposal and the disposal work will continue for full also during 2010.
Most of the scrapped nuclear powered submarines belonged to Russia’s Northern fleet with bases along the coast of the Kola Peninsula. Some 1/3 of Russia’s nuclear powered submarines belonged to the Pacific fleet in the Far East.
Since the mid-90ties, Russia has received large amounts of funding from the international community to dismantle its retired Cold War fleet of potential hazardous nuclear submarines. The work is financial and technical supported by the G-8 countries, but also Norway and South Korea have assisted.
Norway has financed the decommissioning and proper storage of the reactor compartments from four submarines from the Northern fleet. In addition a fifth submarine has been dismantled in a cost-share between Norway and United Kingdom.
As reported by BarentsObserver in September all reactor compartments from submarines scrapped with Norwegian financial assistance are now stored safely onshore on a huge concrete pad in the Saida Bay on the coastline between Murmansk and the Norwegian border.
All in all, 33 reactor compartments are currently stored at the German-financed newly constructed storage pad. This first stage of the facility was commissioned in 2006 at a cost of more than 150 million Euros.
But many more are waiting. In the waters just outside the new onshore storage site, several tens of reactor compartments from scrapped submarines are floating.
The huge compartments now stored onshore in the Saida bay consists of the submarine’s reactor room, each holding two reactors where the metal in the tanks and tubes are still radioactive, even if all the spent uranium fuel is removed.
