“Rossita” left Fincantieri shipyard on July 30 and arrived in Murmansk on Monday, RIA Novosti reports. The vessel is now moored to another of Rosatomflot’s nuclear waste ships, the “Serebryanka”. “Rossita” was built as a result of an agreement signed by Russia and Italy in 2003 on cooperation on nuclear safety and scrapping of discarded nuclear submarines. Plans for the vessel are drawn by Russian specialists.
“Rossita” will sail between the ports of Gremikha, Andreyeva Bay, Sayda Bay, Severodvinsk and other places where plants for scrapping of nuclear submarines are located. The vessel is 84 meters long and 14 meters wide and has a depth of only 4 meters, which makes it possible for the vessel to enter any port on the Kola Peninsula. It can carry 720 tons of cargo.
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Gremikha is located on the eastern shore of the Kola Peninsula and is the second largest of the two onshore facilities used by the Russian Northern Fleet to store its radioactive waste. Located 350 kilometers off the Kola Inlet near Murmansk, Gremikha is not connected to the rest of the peninsula by roads.
Andreyeva Bay is the primary spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste storage facility for the Northern Fleet, located some 45 kilometers from the border to Norway. It contains about 21,000 spent nuclear fuel assemblies and about 12,000 cubic meters of solid and liquid radioactive wastes. There are three wet storage tanks in the Andreeva Bay facility, containing large volumes of spent nuclear fuel. These tanks are deteriorating due to poor maintenance and the harsh Arctic climate.
