Joshua Handler

Russian nuclear‐powered submarine decommissioning

Russia is facing technical, economic and organizational difficulties in dismantling its oversized and unsafe fleet of nuclear powered submarines. The inability of Russia to deal effectively with the submarine decommissioning crisis increases the risk of environmental disaster and may hamper the implementation of the START I and START II treaties. This paper discusses the nuclear fleet support infrastructure, the problems of submarine decommissioning, and recommends international cooperation in addressing these problems.

Nuclear disasters at sea, then and now

The historical record is sketchy but it offers ample proof that hundreds of accidents have involved nuclear-armed or nuclear-powered vessels. Naval nuclear weapons now number 15,000-16,000, and safety is not improving.

NGOs and the Nuclear Navy

The January 1973 issue of Courier, the UNESCO journal, provided information on the ten main pollutants of our planet. The following was extracted from the information provided on the first of these pollutants, radiation: “Radiation arises from atomic weapons testing and the operations of nuclear-powered ships and vessels, in the production of nuclear fuels and arms manufacture [emphasis added]. Exceeding the permissible doses may lead to malignant neoplasms and genetic mutations.”

Waging submarine warfare

U.S. antisubmarine strategy is inherently ambiguous: conventional or nuclear antisubmarine weapons would target Soviet ballistic-missile submarines, and the Soviets could respond with nuclear attacks.