For nearly two decades they remained missing, now their positions are known. Scientists from the Shirshov Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences located sunken vessels containing radioactive waste during an expedition with the research ship Akademik Ioffe in the Barents and Kara Seas. The mission was carried out jointly with the Kurchatov Institute.
The focus was on a sensitive chapter of Soviet waste-disposal history. In the Techeniya Bay on Novaya Zemlya, 146 containers of solid radioactive waste and the barge “Likhter-4” were sunk in the 1980s.
The barge was also transporting two reactor compartments from the Soviet nuclear submarine K-22, whose fuel had previously been encased in lead. Earlier expeditions had searched the archived coordinates but found nothing.
Working from the hypothesis that the actual dumping sites differed slightly from the archival coordinates, the researchers developed a specialized search-route system. First, clusters of waste containers were discovered, and eventually the presumed wreck of the barge itself.
A key concern is the potential environmental risk. According to the researchers, however, current radiation measurements show that the protective barriers remain intact and that no elevated radioactive contamination has been detected in the seawater.
Nevertheless, the discoveries highlight the scale of the nuclear waste legacy dumped in the Arctic and the long-term responsibility associated with managing this nuclear heritage.
Heiner Kubny, PolarJournal