According to researchers at Norway’s Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority and its Marine Research Institute, the situation is actually remarkably under control. Their new study integrates sonar and video survey data with seawater, sediment and biological samples, which were collected near the K-278 wreck in July 2019. Their main finding: Russian leaders put together a surprisingly solid environmental reform plan even after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
“It was an incredible effort, especially given the situation the country was in in the early 1990s,” said Svetlana Savranskaya, director of Russia programs for George Washington University’s National Security Archive, who reviewed the new study for Gizmodo.
“The study coming out of Norway confirms what I have seen in many Soviet and Russian documents,” said Savranskaya, who has extensively investigated similar cases of Soviet submarine crises. “They saw it as one of their top priorities to make sure that it was secure, that it was cleaned up, that it was transparent, and that they could be trusted by other international actors.”
fire down
K-278’s fate was sealed on April 7, 1989, when a fire in its rear compartment resulted in a blow torch fanning the flames due to compressed air from a broken ballast tank pipe. Only 27 members of its 69-person crew survived.
Between 1989 and 2007, Soviet and Russian expeditions landed manned Mir submarines to assess damage and continue monitoring. In 1994, with evidence that both nuclear bombs were exposed to the open ocean, the torpedo tubes were sealed with titanium plugs, and other exposed areas were covered with titanium.
“Apart from very obvious damage to the forward section and especially the torpedo compartment, it looks like the submarine sank that very day (as we were seeing it) rather than 30 years ago,” study coauthor Justin Gwynn, a senior scientist specializing in marine radio ecology for the Norwegian government, told Gizmodo via email. “It’s sitting upright on the ocean floor.”
Norway has taken over the responsibility of monitoring Komsomolets Nuclear tomb sunken in recent decades. The new analysis from Gwynn and his colleagues focuses on data collected via a remotely operated submersible sent to survey the wreck in 2019, equipped with (among other equipment) sonar, video, and large 11-gallon (40-liter) water sampling containers used to test for radioactive isotopes. Their most worrying discovery was an active leak of radioactive material from a ventilation pipe and a nearby metal grill, a leak sometimes powerful enough to be visible on video.
“We were actually very surprised to see something coming out of the ventilation pipe, where previous Russian investigations had detected releases from the reactor,” Gwynn told Gizmodo.
To better verify what these measurements might actually mean, researchers had to turn to known ratios of plutonium and uranium isotopes used by the old Soviet fleet of nuclear-powered submarines, as well as ratios found in global fallout and emissions by nearby nuclear facilities. The amounts of certain isotopes and the ratio of plutonium-240 to plutonium-239 “provide clear evidence that releases of these radionuclides are occurring from the reactor Komsomolets And the nuclear fuel in the reactor is being degraded,” they wrote in the study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Fortunately, the team found no indication that these leaks were affecting marine life or the environment locally due to the rapid dissolution of the material in seawater.
Even better, sediment and seawater samples taken close to the K-278’s torpedo compartment “found no evidence of any plutonium from the weapon in the torpedo compartment”, confirming that Russia’s early ’90s titanium patch is still going strong decades later.
Learning ‘lessons from Chernobyl’
According to Savranskaya in the National Security Archive, “Gorbachev and Yeltsin wanted to be seen as responsible international actors.” “They learned the lesson from Chernobyl – that secrecy, really, is not helpful in these situations.”
That transparency included the Russians’ own surveillance data as well as other technical specifications on the K-278 needed to help the Norwegians better interpret it, which Russia continued to supply even when its economy “went into complete recession” during the Yeltsin years, he said.
But, possibly not everything was shared. “I’m sure there are secrets that they kept hidden because the boat was unique in itself,” Savranskaya told Gizmodo, “with technology that, at that time, was not yet available. But they provided information – and they continued to provide information into the 1990s.”
At the time, Russian officials assessed that it would be too costly and risky to completely remove the K-278 for more intensive disposal elsewhere on land. Gwynn told Gizmodo that this was his opinion as well as that of his colleagues.
“Any potential release into the atmosphere during any rescue operation could result in contamination being deposited on the ground, which would potentially have far greater and long-term impacts,” Gwynn said.
But, he added, his team would like to send back more remotely operated or even manned submarines Komsomolets To understand the leak better. “We would certainly like to understand the cause of visual releases,” they wrote, “but would also like to understand why releases seem to vary over time.”
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