Enormous quantities of decommissioned Russian nuclear reactors and radioactive waste were dumped into the Kara Sea in the Arctic Ocean north of Siberia over a course of decades, according to documents given to Norwegian officials by Russian authorities and published in Norwegian media.<\/p>\n
Bellona had received in 2011 a draft of a similar report prepared for Russia\u2019s Gossoviet, the State Council, for presentation at a meeting presided over by then-president Dmitry Medvedev on Russian environmental security.<\/p>\n
The Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom confirmed the figures in February 2012 during a seminar<\/a> it jointly held with Bellona in Moscow.<\/p>\n Bellona is alarmed by the extent of the dumped Soviet waste, which is far greater than was previously known \u2013 not only to Bellona, but also to the Russian authorities themselves.<\/p>\n The catalogue of waste dumped at sea by the Soviets, according to documents seen by Bellona, and which were today released by the Norwegian daily Aftenposten, includes some 17,000 containers of radioactive waste, 19 ships containing radioactive waste, 14 nuclear reactors, including five that still contain spent nuclear fuel; 735 other pieces of radiactively contaminated heavy machinery, and the K-27 nuclear submarine with its two reactors loaded with nuclear fuel.<\/p>\n Bellona\u2019s two decades on the case<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cBellona has worked with this issue since 1992 when we first revealed the dangerous nuclear waste laying at the bottom of the Kara Sea,\u201d said Bellona President Frederic Hauge.<\/p>\n He acknowledged, however, that a precise accounting from the Russian side could hardly be expected given Russia\u2019s own ignorance of the extent of the dumped radioactive waste.<\/p>\n Hauge demanded that Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr St\u00f8re take the issue up with his counterparts in the Russian foreign ministry as soon as possible.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Norwegian government talks a lot about oil and gas with the Russian government,\u201d said Hauge.\u00a0 \u201cBut this report shows that decommissioned nuclear reactors and radioactive waste must be much higher on the agenda when the two countries meet on an official level.<\/p>\n Gradual revelations<\/strong><\/p>\n Per Strand of the Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority told Aftenposten that the information on the radioactive waste had come from the Russian authorities gradually.<\/p>\n \u201cNo one can guarantee that this outline we have received is complete,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He added that Russia has set up a special commission to undertake the task of mapping the waste, the paper reported.<\/p>\n A Norwegian-Russian Expert Group will this week start an expedition in areas of the Kara Sea, which the report released by Russia says was used as a radioactive dump until the early 1990s.<\/p>\n The expedition will represent the first time Norway has participated in plumming the depths of Russian waters for radiactive waste since 1994, \u00a0said Aftenposten.<\/p>\n Making way for oil exploration<\/strong><\/p>\n Bellona\u2019s Igor Kurdrik, an expert on Russian naval nuclear waste, said that, \u201cWe know that the Russians have an interest in oil exploration in this area. They therefore want to know were the radioactive waste is so they can clean it up before they beging oil recovery operations.\u201d<\/p>\n He cautiously praised the openness of the Russian report given to Norway and that Norway would be taking part in the waste charting expedition.<\/p>\n Bellona thinks that Russia has passed its report to Norway as a veiled cry for help, as the exent of the problem<\/a> is far too great for Moscow to handle on its own.<\/p>\n