There are only three remedies against radiation: time, distance and shielding. He who knows how to handle that, he is up to snuff. No worry. During the cold war years the Soviet Union built over 250 nuclear submarines. This was a major deterrent against possible aggression. With the Soviet Union's breakup Russia inherited many headaches, for one, that of clearing her land and her territorial waters of radionuclides--just where the formidable sub-marines were laid up. Unfortunately for lack of funds and due attention the nuclear waste disposal job was neglected. This is true of spent nuclear fuel storage and reuse, too.

Today we are no longer at a standstill.* Alexander Maximov, retired rear-admiral and chief of the DV-Nuclide Company, told Alexander Kulikov of the news-

* See: A. Pimenov, "Submarines: Difficult Parting", Science in Russia, No. 3, 2009.--Ed.

paper DV Scientist about what is being done for nuclear safety in the Pacific area of the Russian Far East. Nuclear safety has been Alexander Maximov's lifelong concern. Once he handled an emergency situation, the aftermath of the breakdown of the K-431 submarine in the Chazma bay. He also attended to another accident, radioactive contamination caused by the K-42 submarine. For a few years he had been heading a service involved with radiation protection of the Pacific Fleet and, in 2003, set up the DV Nuclide Company in charge of radiation and X-ray control, and radioactive waste disposal in the Pacific area.

It is all-important, Rear-Admiral Maximov said, to protect people and the environment against all these hazards. This means insulation or dilution of radionuclides so as to minimize their concentration in the biosphere down to reliable safety standards. The best available technology is to build deep and well-protected coastal storages. Thus insulated, radionuclides will decay in time and pose no threat any longer.

The Far Eastern enterprise Zvezda has a fine record of tackling such problems. In 2007 it did a good job in utilizing the K-l16 submarine that was in a sorry state: its reactor had been at work for quite some time, with long-lived radioactive isotopes polluting all of the submarine.

The K-314 submarine suffered a bad accident in 1985 as it was returning from its patrol duty to its port of registry: a breakdown of its reactor damaged the fuel core. All of the sub's compartments were contaminated, and some of the radiation escaped into the environment. Alexander Maximov also took part in deactivation work. He and his team sought to restore the reactor and save the submarine for further service. It was a hopeless case. The submarine was written off and laid up for utilization.

This is done with the use of special equipment creating a strict radiation control zone to enable safe access of crews to the reactor after it has been opened. The fuel core is the number one problem. The spent nuclear fuel has to be removed together with the heat-transfer agent and the fuel assembly units which are placed into sealed transportation containers. Thus disemboweled, a submarine is shipped into a dry dock chamber, where it is dewatered. Thereupon scaffolding is built for crews who cut the hulk into several parts for subsequent disposal.

For all these problems, Rear-Admiral Maximov concluded, Russia is still a great sea power both militarily and in its nuclear potential. She has accumulated thousands of tons of highly radioactive substances that have to be controlled for hundreds and hundreds of years unless we learn how to reuse and utilize them. That is why Russia's future cannot be divorced from further progress of nuclear power engineering.

A. Kulikov, Nuclear Safety to the Pacific Ocean, DV Scientist, Nos. 20-21, 2010

Prepared by Andrei NOVIKOV

Science in Russia, No. 2, 2011