Nikolay Kalistratov takes a look at the risk of spent nuclear fuel for the Arctic Region.

Nikolay Kalistratov is Director General of the Zvezdochka Shipyard.

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A Borderless Risk 3:45 Windows Media | QuickTime

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Transcript:

A Borderless Risk

I have worked here for 33 years. For the last 14 years I have been Director General of this shipyard. Before becoming Director General, I served as chief engineer of this shipyard for six years. In the early 1990s, dozens of nuclear submarines with spent fuel still in their reactors were just part of the fleet in various naval bases. They represented a great terrorist risk as well as a potential threat to the environment. This threat was not only to the city of Svederovinsk; it was an environmental risk for the entire northwest region of Russia and even to the Arctic as a whole.

Svederovinsk is here on the White Sea. Svederovinsk is quite near to here, and you understand that the ocean currents are very strong in this region. If something happens and the environment is contaminated, this is a danger, or a hazard, not only for Russia, but also for Norway and in principle for the entire Arctic region, because ocean currents and fish do not recognize any borders. And Canada is quite near to our North.

So we were tasked by the highest body of state power in Russia to perform the dismantlement or decommission of nuclear submarines. Some funds were allocated for this purpose by the Russian government, and the G8 took the strategic and very important decision to take part in the nuclear-propelled submarine dismantlement effort, at the G8 summit in Kananaskis in Canada. That was a really good decision.