'Nuclear time bomb:' Downed K-27 submarine must be lifted out

A Soviet K-27 submarine suffered a nuclear accident before being dumped at the bottom of the Kara Sea 30 years ago. Russia may now have to lift the sub from dangerously shallow waters – before an “uncontrolled chain reaction” causes fatal damage.

“Radiation leakages will come sooner or later if we just leave the K-27 there. The sub has already been on the seafloor for 30 years, and it was rusty even before it was sunken. Leakages of radioactivity under water are nearly impossible to clean up,” Thomas Nilsen, a nuclear safety expert who has extensively mapped radioactive waste on the Arctic seabed, told RT.

Equipped with an experimental liquid-coolant nuclear engine, the K-27 was ill-fated from its launch in 1962. It made only three voyages, the last of which, in 1968, ended in tragedy.

A short way from its base in the Barents Sea, its reactor malfunctioned, and the brave but badly-trained crew made a futile attempt to fix it. Instead of solving the problem, they were exposed to fatal doses of radiation. Nine seamen died, most of them in hospital in agony from radiation sickness several days after the accident. The incident was kept secret by the Soviet government for decades, and the families of the victims received no compensation.

After repeated plans to redesign the sub, Soviet authorities decided it was easier to dispose of it, and towed the vessel to a remote test site in the Kara Sea, near the Arctic Ocean, in 1981.

Although international guidelines say decommissioned vessels should be buried at least 3,000 meters under the sea, the Soviet Navy scuttled it at around 75 meters.

Now, what was once one of the most remote places on Earth has become a hub of commercial activity, with the melting ice caps providing greater opportunities for shipping, and oil companies waiting to drill the seabed below the waves.

Earlier this year, environmental NGO Bellona claimed that the submarine may be reaching critical status, and now a joint Russian-Norwegian expedition is studying the site of the accident. It is expected to publish its findings in the coming weeks..

Big Oil to the rescue

Experts believe that the sub will eventually have to be removed from its current resting place.

"Russia must take responsibility for their own waste financially,” Bellona’s Igor Koudrik told the Barents Observer newspaper.

But so far, the government has not allocated any funds towards the operation.

Nilsen believes that the operation will be expensive – costing “tens of millions of euro” – and hazardous.

“Our challenge today is to find a way to lift it without shaking the reactors so much that an uncontrolled chain-reaction doesn't start. If that happens, a large amount of radioactivity can leak out to the fragile Arctic marine environment,” Nilsen said.

The increasing presence of energy companies will not necessarily add to the problem, but could provide a solution – if they pay for the lifting of the sub.

Russian giant Rosneft is conducting a seismic study of the Kara Sea, with a view to drilling its rich oil reserves. The potential profits could make the multi-million-euro extraction costs seem a fair price to pay for avoiding a nuclear accident.

Unfortunately, even if the danger of the K-27 is defused, others still lurk at the bottom of the sea.

The Russian government has recently released archives showing that there are 17,000 containers of radioactive waste, 19 ships contaminated ships, and 14 nuclear reactors in the Kara Sea – and most of these objects have been decaying there since the Soviet era.

Russia to build new naval bases in the Arctic

Russia is going to build bases for the Navy and Border Guard Service along the northern sea route which connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, says Security Council chief Nikolay Partushev.

The location of the bases, in some of the most remote areas of the Arctic Sea, has already been drawn up, Patrushev told the council’s meeting in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, on Monday.

However, he says the work on getting them up and running is going slowly.

“It was suggested we set up a patrol group, organize sorties along the northern sea route and develop a respective legal base, however, a lot of that hasn’t been done yet,” Patrushev said, as cited by RIA-Novosti.

The five Arctic powers – Russia, Norway, the United States, Canada and Denmark – have been at odds over how to divide up the region, which is believed to hold huge oil and gas reserves. The dispute has been heating up as rising temperatures make sea ice melt, and provide access to deposits, while record high oil prices make offshore drilling in the Arctic more economic.

Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, an economic zone belonging to a state is limited to 200 nautical miles from the coastline. However, that zone can be extended if a state proves that the continental shelf is a geological extension of the country’s territory.

Since 2007, Russia has conducted several expeditions with the goal to prove that an underwater mountain range is part of its own landmass. Moscow has planned to submit its claim to redraw the map of the Arctic by 2013.

By 2020, Russia will deploy a combined-arms force – including military, border and coastal guard units – to protect its economic and political interests in the Arctic.

Earlier in July this year, after overseeing the start of construction of one of Russia's newest generation of submarines, President Vladimir Putin said: “The Navy is an instrument for defending our national economic interests, including in regions like the Arctic, which holds a rich concentration of bio-resources, as well as deposits of hydrocarbons and other natural resources.”

Bid for naval dominance: Russia significantly boosts nuclear fleet

Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting "On implementation of the state armaments program regarding procurement for the naval forces".

Russia’s navy will be reinforced with 51 modern warships and 24 submarines, including eight fitted to carry nuclear missiles, by 2020. Over $140 billion will be spent on realizing the “potential of the sea-based nuclear force,” Vladimir Putin said.

­To maintain Russia’s place as a leading sea power Russia will allocate over 4.5 trillion rubles to build the vessels over the next eight years. Putin has emphasized that almost all orders will go to Russian industry, with all 24 submarines and 49 of the ships being built at domestic shipyards.

"We have a sufficient potential of a sea-based nuclear force,” Putin said. “And by 2020, it will be considerably improved by eight Borei-class new-generation missile-carrying submarines."

Russia’s navy has always been and remains one of the main tools of “protecting national economic interests,” Putin said, adding that it has a particular importance in such resource-rich regions as the Arctic. He expressed the hope that missile-equipped nuclear submarines will become the heart and cornerstone of the Russian Navy.

The main development task for the navy would be the formation of “multi-purpose naval groups,” which should be capable of repelling military threats from the sea, safeguarding transport communications, protecting the merchant marine and effectively resisting piracy.

Putin’s comments came after he oversaw the start of the construction of one of Russia’s latest generation Borei-class submarines.

The president noted that it was symbolic that the latest submarine was called after the unifier and defender of Russian lands, Prince Vladimir.

The Prince Vladimir submarine, which belongs to the fourth generation of nuclear strategic missile-carriers, will be built under the modernized Borei A project. It will carry 20 Bulava inter-continental ballistic missiles as compared to 16 carried by the submarines built during the earlier project.

The first Borei-class sub, Yuri Dolgoruky, laid down in 1996, is currently completing its final tests, and will soon be handed over to the navy. Meanwhile, the Sevmash plant is building two other submarines, which were laid down in 2004 and 2006.

New and very cold war: Battle for the Arctic

A new cold war could be on the horizon in the Arctic.

A new cold war might be heating up, as the US, Russia and other world powers are making claims for ownership of some Arctic assets.

With global warming looking like less and less of a myth, massive ice melt in the Arctic North is allowing for easy oil and mineral extraction. Some say that this race for resources up north is a “cold rush,” but with some heavy-hitters throwing their hat in the ring for ownership of Arctic land, things stand to get only more serious with time.

Representatives from the US, including Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, recently dropped by the Arctic Council in Nuuk, Greenland, marking the first time high-ranking officials from America have bothered to attend. Only weeks earlier, the US had a small fleet of nuclear-powered submarines patrolling the Arctic, 150 miles off of American land.

And with the US, Russia, Canada and others all concerned over who owns what, some are scared that a new cold war — an actually cold, cold war — could be on the horizon.

Aqqaluk Lynge tells The Guardian that he is “nervous” about the developments happening in the Arctic. Lynge is the former chairman of the indigenous peoples' forum, the Inuit Circumpolar Council, and notes that "There is a military build-up and an increase in megaphone diplomacy.”

“We do not want a return to the cold war,” adds Lynge.

In the meantime, the US is just now showing interest in the Arctic, with Russia having already increased missile testing in the area and the nation of Norway recently moved its main military base to the far north as well. Canada and the US have separately been in discussion for years now on an increased naval presence in the Arctic too.

In 2007, Russian explorer Artur Chilingarov placed a flag of his country in Arctic turf, telling reporters that "The Arctic is Russian. We must prove the North Pole is an extension of the Russian landmass." That didn’t sit too well with Canada, however, who took the gesture as provocative.

Paul Berkman of the Arctic Ocean geopolitics program at the Scott Polar Research Institute tells The Guardian that he believes that this increase isn’t anything to shrug off . "You have to ask why are these alarming and alarmist headlines being written and it may be there is unfinished business from the Cold War,” he say.