Nuclear security

Russia Has a Fatally Wounded Nuclear Submarine That Could Become an Underwater 'Chernobyl'

 K-27 was permanently laid-up soon after in June 1968, though the Soviets carried out various experiments onboard the vessel until 1973. K-27 was eventually decommissioned February 1979 and then scuttled in very shallow water—just 99ft deep—in the Kara Sea on Sept. 6, 1982, where she remains as a ticking environmental time bomb. Indeed, the problem is so grave that many environmental scientists believe that the submarine must be retrieved and disposed of properly.

“Radiation leakages will come sooner or later if we just leave the K-27 there. The sub has already been on the seafloor for 30 years, and it was rusty even before it was sunken. Leakages of radioactivity under water are nearly impossible to clean up,” editor of the Independent Barents Observer, Thomas Nilsen, formerly of the Bellona Foundation and co-author of The Russian Northern Fleet: Sources of Radioactive Contamination told RT in 2012.