Japanese Boost Nuclear Submarine Reactor Disposal

Seventy reactors from decommissioned nuclear submarines are scheduled for disposal in Russia’s Far Eastern Primorye Territory by 2020, the regional Legislative Assembly has reported.

Fifty four reactors are already located in Primorye Territory and another 19 will be delivered from Kamchatka. Disposal of reactors will be carried out with equipment donated by Japan in May 2012.

According to the Legislative Assembly, a long-term storage for reactor compartments from decommissioned submarines has already been created. The disposal will be carried out as part of a program of industrial utilization of weapons and military hardware planned for 2011-2015 and 2020.

On May 18, 2012 Japan gave the Far Eastern Center for Radioactive Waste Management the sea tugboat Sumire, two portal cranes and the floating dock Sakura with a displacement of 3.5 thousand tonnes. The cost of the supplied equipment is about two billion rubles. The transfer of the equipment was carried out as a part of a government level agreement between Russia and Japan on the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

Previously the construction cost of a storage facility for decommissioned submarine reactors was estimated at 80 million dollars. Japan has been involved in international programs for disposal of nuclear submarines in the Pacific for the past 20 years.

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