WASTED NUCLEAR FUEL STILL INSIDE WRITTEN-OFF SUBMARINES
MOSCOW, December 10 (RIA Novosti) - The armada of written-off nuclear submarines, which during the cold-war times the Soviet Union built more than the United States, Britain, France and China combined, present today a grave potential danger to the planet. The total radioactivity of the wasted nuclear fuel in submarines pending utilisation, or earlier offloaded from reactors and kept in ad-hoc overland and floating storage cells, adds up to tens of millions of curie. It is much more than that spat out in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant catastrophe, Sergei Antipov, second in command of the Federal Nuclear Energy Agency, told the Trud newspaper.
As of today, 91 of the 194 submarines with nuclear power plants removed from the fleet's inventories are waiting for their lot or being dismantled. Fifty eight submarines with nuclear fuel on board are berthed. Expectation of fuel discharge and dismantling lasts ten or even 20 years.
Discharging nuclear fuel is no end of utilisation. A submarine is cut in three. The bow and stern are cut for scrap, equipment is removed. The reactor and two adjacent compartments are sealed. They are cut out together with the sub's pressure hull, made of special steel almost four centimetres thick. This portion is the protection against radiation. It defies corrosion for dozens of years. These three-compartment sections are towed to special bays to be temporarily kept. They remain afloat at special observed and protected berths.
Alongside submarines, about 40 nuclear technical servicing vessels are pending utilisation. Their hulls are not as strong and the potential environmental hazard is much higher. In many such vessels radioactive waste or wasted fuel are kept.
http://en.rian.ru/rian/index.cfm?prd_id=160&msg_id=5198415&startrow=11&date=2004-12-10&do_alert=0
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