TIME EUROPE
September 4, 2000, Vol. 156 No. 10
Raising the Kursk
How to airlift a sub
By JAMES O. JACKSON
After their navy failed in the struggle to save the lives of 118 sailors aboard the nuclear submarine Kursk, the Russians must now start a new struggle — to save the sea from contamination by the highly radioactive contents of the Kursk's two reactors. The task is daunting, and there is little certainty that they will succeed any better than they did in their bungled efforts to save the submarine's crew.
It is possible, in fact, that the Kursk may be unsalvageable — so badly damaged that any attempt to move it or remove the reactors could be more dangerous than leaving it where it lies 108 m beneath the surface of the Barents Sea and 150 km northeast of Murmansk. "There should be a sign over it: 'Don't disturb this sub for hundreds of years,'" says Josh Handler, a former Greenpeace activist and a specialist in Russian nuclear accidents. Handler believes that a slow leakage of radioactive materials over many years will seep into the seabed and gradually dissipate, whereas a salvage operation could result in a more catastrophic release of radioactivity. The Russians might be able to encase the hulk in a glue-like gel that would limit radiation leakage — as was done with the submarine Komsomolets after it sank in the Norwegian Sea in 1989.
But other experts believe the Kursk, or at least its two 190-megawatt reactors, can be raised and rendered safe. They have advanced two methods: cut out the reactor compartment and lift it to the surface, or raise the entire boat using inflatable pontoons.
But separating the reactor compartments from the rest of the Kursk would lead to large-scale contamination even if the operation worked. "The sub is built around the reactors," says retired Rear Admiral Eugene J. Carroll of the Center for Defense Information, a non-governmental military think tank in Washington, D.C. "They would have to disconnect the reactors from all the pumps, releasing radioactive contaminated material." Contamination could be even worse if the reactors were not shut down properly during the accident that doomed the Kursk. "They're claiming that they have been shut down," says Handler. "But with all the confusion surrounding this, I think they are simply deducing that."
Raising the entire boat presents a similar set of dangers. The Kursk may have been so badly damaged that it will break apart while being raised, releasing radioactive materials. It is critical that the vessel be kept upright during the operation. "Should the boat turn upside down with its keel upward while it is being raised, the control rods could come out [of the reactor core]," says Dmitri Romanov, an official at the Rubin Central Design Bureau in St. Petersburg, which designed the Kursk. "Then a nuclear reaction can restart, and nobody can predict what will happen."
Nevertheless, the Russian navy and engineers from the Rubin bureau are already working on plans to raise the sub. Furthest along is a proposal by British-based balloonmaker Per Lindstrand, who says the boat could be brought up within a few months using inflatable pontoons. Lindstrand says divers could run cables beneath the hull using high-pressure hoses to drill small channels, then attach 20 uninflated balloons to the cables. The balloons would be inflated with nitrogen and the whole structure would float to the surface to be towed to a drydock. After pumping out the drydock, workers could recover bodies of crewmen and remove the 1.5-ton fuel assemblies in the reactor cores before removing the reactors themselves.
Even if salvagers were willing to risk the dangers of moving the Kursk, it will be many months before circumstances and weather permit it. Nuclear power experts say it takes three months for the reactors to cool completely, even assuming they were shut down properly. "It can't be done earlier than in 2001," says Admiral Eduard Baltin, former commander of Russia's Black Sea Fleet and himself a submariner. The region is 500 km above the Arctic Circle, where there is no sun in midwinter and where temperatures can fall to -35°C.
Political conditions, too, may be adverse. British and Norwegian rescuers who rushed to the aid of the Kursk sailors after the sinking complained of Russian confusion, secretiveness and suspicion. Norwegian officers at one point threatened to withdraw their rescue team because of inadequate information. Any attempt to raise the Kursk would need outside expertise, and the Russians could prove unwilling to change their habits to accommodate foreigners.
That might be a good thing. With the risks involved in a salvage operation so high, it is perhaps best to leave the Kursk where it is, quietly rusting — and quietly leaking radiation into the ocean — for hundreds of years to come.
With reporting by Polly Forster/Washington, Ulla Plon/Copenhagen and Yuri Zarakhovich/Moscow
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