Monthly Highlights from the Russian Arctic, October 2024
In this news digest, we monitor events that impact the environment in the Russian Arctic. Our focus lies in identifying the factors that contribute to pollution and climate change.
News
Publish date: February 7, 2003
News
In addition to several large workshops, the yard operates two large dry docks. Until the end of the 1980s, the yard employed 5,500 workers, but today the number of employees is much smaller.
Sevmorput has been repairing first-generation nuclear submarines since the end of the 1960s and until 1991, the refuelling of nuclear submarines was also undertaken here. Today, the shipyard also carries out repairs of second-generation submarines. In 1991, county officials prohibited refuelling activities at this yard on the grounds of radiation safety concerns and the fact that the yard is located only a few hundred metres from more populous areas of the city. Defuelling activities were later resumed on the condition that a so-called dry defuelling method was used, whereby the cooling water is pumped out from the reactor. In the future, the civilian nuclear service ship Imandra is likely to perform the defuelling operations at the shipyard.
There are presently two first generation Project 675 — Echo-II class and Project 658 — Hotel class submarines in the yard. The Project 658 — Hotel class submarine was defuelled in 1995.
In this news digest, we monitor events that impact the environment in the Russian Arctic. Our focus lies in identifying the factors that contribute to pollution and climate change.
A survey of events in the field of nuclear and radiation safety relating to Russia and Ukraine.
A visit last week by Vladimir Putin and a Kremlin entourage to Astana, Kazakhstan sought in part to put Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear corporation, on good footing with local officials.
Russia is formally withdrawing from a landmark environmental agreement that channeled billions in international funding to secure the Soviet nuclear legacy, leaving undone some of the most radioactively dangerous projects and burning one more bridge of potential cooperation with the West.