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Earth The Military

A Sunken Cold War Nuclear Sub Is Leaking Radiation At Levels 800,000 Times Normal (gizmodo.com) 149

Posted by BeauHD from the be-afraid-be-very-afraid dept.
Using a robotic sub, a team of investigators has detected traces of radiation leaking from Komsomolets -- a Soviet nuclear submarine that sank 30 years ago in the Norwegian Sea. The recorded radiation levels are unusually high, but scientists say it's not threatening humans or marine life. Gizmodo reports: On April 7, 1989, while cruising at a depth of 380 meters (1,250 feet), a fire broke out in the aft section of Komsomolets, a Soviet nuclear-powered attack submarine out on its first patrol. Its captain managed to bring the beleaguered sub to the surface, but it sank about five hours later. All 42 sailors were killed in the incident, known as the Komsomolets disaster. The 120-meter-long (400-foot) nuclear submarine still rests some 1,700 meters (5,575 feet) below the surface of the Norwegian Sea, about 320 kilometers (200 miles) north of the Norwegian mainland.

And it's leaking radiation, according to a press release issued by Norway's Institute of Marine Research (IMR). The amount of cesium radiation leaking from the wreck is significant, at about 800,000 times the typical reading for the Norwegian Sea, but it "poses no risk to people or fish," according to a collaborative research team involving IMR and the Norwegian Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (DSA). A leaking radioactive sub certainly sounds scary, but this research suggests the wreck is not currently endangering the Norwegian Sea and outlying areas. Normally, radiation levels in the Norwegian Sea are at 0.001 Becquerel (Bq) per liter. Around the wreck, however, they are as high as 100 Bq per liter. For reference, the acceptable amount of radiation in food is 600 Bq per kilogram, as established by the Norwegian government in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster.
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A Sunken Cold War Nuclear Sub Is Leaking Radiation At Levels 800,000 Times Normal More

A Sunken Cold War Nuclear Sub Is Leaking Radiation At Levels 800,000 Times Normal

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  • Nice headline (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Friday July 12, 2019 @03:05AM (#58912188) Journal
    So the news really is: "Radiation from sunken cold war nuclear sub well below safe limits, below even the limits set for food that we ingest" But who would publish that?

    • Re:Nice headline (Score:4, Informative)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Friday July 12, 2019 @03:38AM (#58912266) Homepage Journal

      The story is that a Russian sub is now forcing Norway to monitor it indefinitely for leaks, a costly operation.

      • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

        by DNS-and-BIND ( 461968 )
        I don't know what story that is, but it's certainly not the one the media chose to cover. I wonder why they got the reputation for being untrustworthy?

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          What's untrustworthy about TFA? It says several times that the levels are not dangerous, and quotes one of the Norwegian scientists making the measurements saying it's not dangerous, and clearly explains that the level is six times below the government threshold and the material is being dissipated by the ocean.

          Come on, we all know that headlines have been designed to be eye catching since the dawn of print.

          • Eye catching is one thing. The kind of titles such as this story's is another.
            These titles are crafted in such a way that they make you read the article out of fear, not out of curiosity or excitement. The emotional effect remains even after realizing there is nothing to be afraid of. To make an analogy, when you scare someone as a prank, it takes a fraction of a second for them to become scared, and minutes at least for them to go back to normal again, even if they realize in a second there's no actual dan

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              This is starting to sound like an argument for suppressing news because it might be upsetting to people. I know you aren't going that far, but you are complaining about a fairly moderate headline in an article that is overall quite a decent explanation of the situation and the level of risk.

              It's not like a Daily Mail article where 98% of it would be fear-mongering and then the last sentence would say "it's 1/6th the maximum level established as safe by the government".

              • God forbid news should be suppressed. On the other hand, I despise misuse of data and retarded headlines.
                Just analyze the title: "A Sunken Cold War Nuclear Sub Is Leaking Radiation At Levels 800,000 Times Normal"
                There are so many things wrong in there, I wouldn't know where to begin.
                - Radiation is emitted, not leaked. Radioactive material is leaked.
                - "800,000 times higher than normal" means nothing if there is no frame of reference. Yesterday there were infinitely more bananas in my car than normal, what do

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                  Well in this case it is leaking. They collected samples and measured emissions from them, i.e. the material leaked from the sub into the water which was then collected and removed for analysis.

                  I agree that 800k times normal is just the usual clickbait stuff. But really, compared to the standard Daily Mail type stuff or the outright fabrications out there, this is extremely mild. Pick your battles, deal with the really bad stuff because you are never going to get much more than a few up-votes on Slashdot for

    • Re:Nice headline (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dunkelfalke ( 91624 ) on Friday July 12, 2019 @03:59AM (#58912314)

      More like "Radiation below safe limits yet but the submarine already started leaking".

      • Not sure what your rephrasing is attempting to capture.

        Radiation is below safe limits.
        The sub has been down for 30 years, and the amount of radiation leakage at any meaningful distance from the actual radioactive source is vastly below anything any human should give a shit about.

        So what was your point, exactly?

        • Radiation is below safe limits for now. The submarine has been down for 30 years and its internals have corroded enough for it to finally start leaking. Are you seriously expecting the corrosion to magically stop at the current levels?

    • I'm only skimmed the article, but I'm not sure they know the difference between radiation and radioactive material.

    • When I fart, the concentration of NaS rises 800,000x the background concentration! Someone write me up a scare article!

      I'm sure msmash will publish it.
  • 100Bq ... Not great, not terrible

  • Translation (Score:1, Interesting)

    by DNS-and-BIND ( 461968 )
    "So it's not a big deal, but we gave it a misleading headline to make it look like it was, and also to smear nuclear power at the same time." Good old media. I wonder why anyone ever lost trust in them?
  • It's comparing concentration of man made isotopes, no shit you get super high multiplier, these isotopes don't occur naturally. That's like comparing number of manufactured smartphones to ones organically growing on trees, infinitely many more are man made!

    • It is a good way to stop Russians from claiming the higher radiation has nothing to do with the sub.

      • It's clickbait. 0.001Bq/L comes from the sub(measured right out of the cooling port), but 11Bq/L is naturally occurring Potassium-40 concentration in seawater.
        • Oh, right sorry, 0.001Bq/L is concentration of man made isotopes in general seawater - mostly from nuclear testing decades back. Cooling port is 100Bq/L, or about 10X over background radiation of seawater. Still, the leak is nothing to worry about, after few more decades of rusting it might be different story, but it's still at the bottom of the ocean so meh.

        • I was talking about the measurements and the original report, not the headline.

  • Basic web search... (Score:5, Informative)

    by thegreatbob ( 693104 ) on Friday July 12, 2019 @03:44AM (#58912278) Journal
    ... suggests 42 of 69 crewmen died. Way to go, gizmodo.

  • May not apply to this situation, but should generally apply given the unit of measure is centimeters.

    https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/ [xkcd.com]

    Key sentence:
    For the kinds of radiation coming off spent nuclear fuel, every 7 centimeters of water cuts the amount of radiation in half.

    Why aren't we dropping spent nuclear fuel into deep ocean dead spots (not around thermal vents which have really cool and strange life forms)?

    Oh, buy the book (What If), it's fantastic, I got it a couple of weeks ago!

    • Re:Oblig - From What If by XKCD/Randall Munroe (Score:4, Interesting)

      by r2kordmaa ( 1163933 ) on Friday July 12, 2019 @05:31AM (#58912472)
      That was the standard of dumping low level radioactive waste not long ago, soviets even dumped spent fuel that way. But then Greenpeace got all up in arms about it and it was internationally banned. Sticking it in a deep borehole or other suitable deep repository is better, but it'll take decades to sort out the "not in my backyard" problem. On the other hand, it's no issue to keep the dry casks out in the open for decades or even centuries, it's just not a permanent solution, doesn't mean it's not long term. You can't stop guarding the site, walk away and forget about it, but you can store the waste that way indefinitely.

    • Why aren't we dropping spent nuclear fuel into deep ocean dead spots

      Because while water is very good at attenuating radiation, it's also very good at dissolving all manner of materials, including uranium and its fission products. So once the container rusts through, uranium gets into the water.

      Water being a liquid, it doesn't stay in one place. So the water with uranium dissolved in it, will spread out. Slowly perhaps, but it will get everywhere eventually.

      Deep-sea dumping of nuclear waste was done until 1993 [wikipedia.org], when an international treaty ended the practice.

      • It should be noted, that the problem with the uranium getting around isn't the radiation from the uranium. It's that uranium and several of it's byproducts are chemically toxic.

    • The radiation doesn't penetrate the water very much, but radioactive particles could be transported by currents, or end up in the food chain.

      Also, we may want to use the spent fuel at a later time.

  • Maybe the rest of them were just doing an awesome job.
  • If I recall, the nuclear reactors in naval vessels contain uranium enriched to much higher levels than civilian reactors. And here, in water that is not all that deep, is a substantial cache of that material. What would it take for a foreign power to, say, scoop up the reactor chamber of the sub, or even the whole damn thing, and spirit it away for later processing? Sure, doing so covertly while in Norwegian waters would be difficult, but would it be impractical?

    • Re:Salvage Operation (Score:5, Informative)

      by Zocalo ( 252965 ) on Friday July 12, 2019 @08:04AM (#58912894) Homepage
      The Norwegian Sea is a large body of mostly open ocean in international waters, with only a small part of it being Norwegian territorial, and since the wreck is in international waters there's nothing stopping a ship from any other nation from going there. However, 1,700m is hardly a trivial depth for marine salvage (it's been done [wikipedia.org] though), you'd also have to deal with the arctic weather conditions, and almost certain monitoring of shipping traffic loitering in the area by both the Russians and Norwegians. Then there's the small matter of extracting the reactor (that might not be structurally sound) from the sub's titanium hull, or at the very least cutting the hull into pieces so you can just raise the section containing the reactor, or even just the fuel rods and their housings. The number of countries that could even consider a viable attempt to raise the sub under those conditions, covertly or otherwise, already have access to enriched uranium far more readily than it would take to make off with the Komsomolets or have no use for it, so no, it's not likely to happen.
      • What about the hull? Is titanium sufficiently valuable to treat this as an undersea mining target?
      • Hear me out: Salvage the thing, but only bring it up to 500m or so.
        Now tow the thing to the marianas trench and dump it there. THat way its under 6 miles of water instead of just one

    • Re:Salvage Operation (Score:4, Insightful)

      by CrimsonAvenger ( 580665 ) on Friday July 12, 2019 @09:43AM (#58913240)

      What would it take for a foreign power to, say, scoop up the reactor chamber of the sub, or even the whole damn thing, and spirit it away for later processing?

      A big ship, some deep-sea diving gear, a couple of colossal winches, and a metric fuckton of money.

      And then they'd have a few hundred kilograms of U235. Note that the only bomb in history to use U235 was used on Hiroshima. ALL other nuclear weapons were made with Pu239, so what you recovered from the sub would basically be useful for...are you ready for this?...powering a nuclear reactor....

      • "ALL other weapons made of Pu239"-- simply not true

        the US had additional U235 gun-type bombs designed and deployed as late as the 60's.
        Also it is possible to make an implosion type bomb with u-235 as well as plutonium (the other way round doesn't work though).

        And in fact, now that centrifuge technology has matured, in countries that aren't swimming in plutonium (like the original "big 5" nuclear powers) spinning up a quantity 80%+ u235 out of u238 is seen as more practically achievable than all that is

  • All sailors did not die (Score:3)

    by guacamole ( 24270 ) on Friday July 12, 2019 @08:28AM (#58912964)

    Almost all crewmen escaped the burning submarine when it surfaced, but 42 (most of the crew) died from hypothermia.

  • What is the normal rate for a cold war nuclear sub to leak radiation?

  • I guess since the well was drilled I used it for about 15 years. My mother for longer.

    Showered and drank it.

    Pretty cool that leaking nuclear submarine water would had been safer.

  • Rust through and leak out?

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