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Many nuclear subs litter ocean floor
Saturday, August 19, 2000
SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
WASHINGTON -- The doomed Russian vessel Kursk is one of at least a dozen nuclear-powered submarines lying lifeless undersea, some for more than than 30 years.
Naval and nuclear experts say the sunken vessels have not emitted serious levels of radiation from their nuclear reactors or spent fuel.
The two nuclear reactors aboard the Kursk were encased in combat-strength steel compartments in the rear of the sub, far from the gaping hole in the front. A Norwegian monitoring team in the area has picked up no indication that the reactors have leaked.
Similar findings were reached after decades of monitoring earlier nuclear sub tragedies where the vessels were left in their final resting places. Among them are two U.S. subs: the Thresher, which went down off Cape Cod in 1963, and the Scorpion, which sank in the Atlantic Ocean near the Azores in 1968.
The rest are Russian or Soviet subs, including three that were victims of accidents and at least seven loaded with spent nuclear fuel that the Russians intentionally sank as a way to dispose of the waste.
In recent years, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, the International Atomic Energy Agency and Norwegian researchers have found extremely low levels of radiation or none at all near the subs.
Greenpeace and other environmental groups consider the dead vessels to be a "ticking time bomb" because, over time, sea water can dissolve the metals encasing reactors and fuel.
But naval experts say it could take hundreds of years for the salty water to eat through the reinforced steel compartments. And, because spent fuel has a radioactive life span much shorter than that, leaks by then would likely be benign.
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