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Potential nuclear threat to be eliminated

The nuclear powered battle cruiser "Admiral Ushakov" is today laid-up at Zvezhdochka shipyard in Severodvinsk. "Kirov" is the former name of the vessel.

Severodvinsk can soon get rid of one of the town’s potential nuclear threats. The battle cruiser “Admiral Ushakov” is to be scrapped. Money for the project has been allocated in next year’s budget.

Location

“A principal decision to decommission the vessel has been taken and Rosatom has been ordered to include the cruiser in their plan for utilization,” spokesperson Yevgeny Gladyshev at Zvesdochka shipyard says to ITAR-TASS.

The budget for 2015 provides funds to finance the development project on utilization of “Admiral Ushakov” and scrapping can earliest start in 2016, B-Port writes.

The huge battle cruiser “Admiral Ushakov” has been lying idle at the Zvezdochka shipyard since 1997, first awaiting repairs, and since 2012 waiting to be scrapped. The vessel was taken into service in 1980 and has not been to sea since 1990, because of problems with one of the ship’s two reactors.

The spent nuclear fuel has never been changed or removed since the vessel originally was commissioned back in 1980, then under the name “Kirov”. In January, Zvezdochka CEO Vladimir Nikitin expressed concern with the safety of the vessel. “One can say that this vessel constitutes a definite threat to Severodvinsk and its inhabitants. The deadline for docking and repairs of this vessel is long gone and keeping it afloat in the harbor is not only expensive, but also rather dangerous,” he said to 7x7.

Although both reactors are switched off, the state of the spent nuclear fuel is unknown. The cladding around the uranium fuel can be partly corroded or damaged during the years, and the reactors themselves are also likely contaminated with high-level radioactive compounds. An unloading operation of such old nuclear fuel is a risky operation, including scenarios like steam explosion and uncontrolled chain reaction.  

Zvezdockha specialists estimate that decommissioning of such a huge nuclear-powered battle cruiser could be 10 times as costly as a traditional decommissioning of a submarine, since Russia has neither the technology nor the know-how to scrap surface vessels of this kind, ITAR-TASS writes.

Russia has one other vessel called “Admiral Ushakov”, which is still in active service in the Northern Fleet. It is a Sovremenny-class destroyer formerly known as “Besstrashny”.