Bellona
Russia is working on a multi-billion-euro project to extract two nuclear submarines from their Arctic seabed graveyard.
Decades after the sinking of two nuclear submarines, Russia will “rescue” them from the cemetery where they lie. The radioactive threat is the reason that leads Putin to decide to invest billions in the project to remove these traces of the USSR.
The two submarines – K-27 (built in the 1950s for the Soviet Navy) and K-159 – were submerged for decades. The K-27 ended up deactivating itself just three days after entering the sea, in the 1960s: the ship’s cooling system released radioactive gases into the engine room.
Over the next two decades, the then Soviet Union tried numerous times to repair or replace the reactors, but the project did not bear fruit, and the vessel was decommissioned in 1979.
The K-159 was a tragic disaster, which resulted in the death of 9 Russian soldiers, and ended up sinking 800 kg of nuclear fuel into the sea. The vessel suffered radiation leaks, which contaminated the entire submarine.
Throughout its life, this nuclear submarine required constant repairs to operate. The ship was deactivated in 1989 and left to rust for over a decade.
According to Interesting Engineering, the Dutch salvage company Mammoet managed to lift the Russian ship Kursk from the Barents Sea in 2002. It is not known, however, whether with the current war in Ukraine ongoing the Netherlands will be willing to help again.
