That much said, three years prior,


the Russians sank a titanium flag in more than 13,000 feet of water beneath the North Pole, using sub- mersibles to stamp paid to Moscow’s commitment. Reportedly, a Russian think tank has proposed a made-in- Russia solution to the whole issue by renaming the Arctic Ocean the “Russian Ocean.” Russia argues that an undersea formation called the “Lomonsov Ridge” is an extension of Siberia’s shelf, and therefore be- longs to Russia exclusively.


Sketchy nuke record at best Over the decades the Russians


have had a less-than-stellar record with nuclear reactors on the seas and, of course, with Chernobyl on land. The first in-service nuclear ice-


breaker, Lenin, was also the first to encounter loss-of-coolant accidents in 1965 and 1967, resulting in re- moval and subsequent dumping in Tsivolki Bay, near the Novaya Zemlya archipelago, in 1967. Then,


in 1967, a cooling system leak was discovered shortly after a refuelling and the biological shield had to be broken to access the leak. Two OK-900 reactors were installed, re- placing the three existing reactors. Lenin remained in service until de- commissioning in 1989. The vessel resides in Murmansk. Soviet subs had a head start on


the icebreaker accidents, begin- ning with submarine K-8 in 1960, loss-of-coolant accident. Since that accident 14 reactor accidents have yielded substantial amounts of radioactivity released, resulting in dozens of deaths and hundreds in- jured. Examples of disregard for the environment with regard to dump- ing were made clear when reactor components were scuttled in the Kara Sea, near the Arctic Ocean, in 1965 and 1968. Now an area that was among the most remote loca- tions on Earth has become the focal point of commercial activity with melting ice caps liberating chan- nels for shipping and oil companies


The first nuclear-powered icebreaker ‘Lenin’ is now tied up as a restored museum.


ready to come out of the blocks and drill the seabed.


Largest nuclear fleet on the planet In February 2013, the World


Nuclear Association reported that between 1950 and 2003 Russia built 248 nuclear submarines and five naval surface vessels plus nine icebreakers powered by 468 reac- tors, and was then operating about 60 nuclear naval vessels. (Bellona, an international environmental non- governmental organization based in Norway, provides the following numbers: 247 subs with 456 reactors from 1958 to 1995.) For operational vessels in 1997, Bellona lists 109 Russian submarines (plus four naval surface ships) and 108 attack sub- marines (SSN) and 25 ballistic missile submarines. At the end of the Cold War in


1989, there were more than 400 nuclear-powered submarines op- erational or being built. At least 300 of these submarines have now


Photo: Wikipedia Common 34


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