The Arctic region is also a graveyard for waste and nuclear waste. Leaving this environmentally destructive waste in the sea is ecological suicide, writes Roviomaa.
Johannes Rovioma is a freelance journalist
Humanity’s sorrows are as long as funeral processions or bread lines. Friendly wars are being fought in Ukraine and Palestine and in different parts of the world. War destroys life, but it also leaves traces for centuries on the environment – on the ground, water and air.
Remnants of old wars, i.e. destruction and debris, can be seen all over the globe. There are wars that we can read about in history books and there are wars that we watch in despair on the media today and tomorrow.
No other sea in the world has as much radioactive nuclear waste as the Kara Sea.
In the Arctic region, the remnants of the war are visible as abandoned military bases, nuclear breakers’ cemetery and war junk. The most dangerous nuclear waste lies on the seabed.
No other sea in the world has as much radioactive nuclear waste as the Kara Sea. Barents Observer –magazine more than 17,000 radioactive objects lie on the seabed, which the Soviet Union dumped there from the 1960s until the 1990s.
There should be very strong cooperation in the region, so that the most dangerous waste could one day be raised from the bottom of the sea.
The Arctic region is warming three or four times compared to other regions of the planet. What all might still be revealed under the ice when it melts.
Some of the dangerous reactors have been deliberately sunk in shallow waters, about 50 meters deep, because perhaps it has been thought that one day there will be the willingness and the necessary technology to raise them.
Containers containing radioactive waste rest at the bottom of the seas of the Kola peninsula, which originate from Severodvinsk shipyards. Part of the waste has ended up in the sea in connection with maintenance work on nuclear-powered icebreakers. These devices are not made to last forever at the bottom of the sea. A wolf has run away, but a bear is waiting.
There are numerous risk factors associated with liftingbut leaving this environmentally harmful waste in the sea would be ecological suicide.
One ticking time bomb is the K-159 nuclear submarine sunk in tow on the Kola peninsula at a depth of a couple of hundred meters, with a contaminated reactor inside that uses uranium as fuel.
At the bottom of the Kara Sea there are at least six that are extremely dangerous for the environment reactor. Raising them from the sea is estimated to cost around 300 million euros. The costs of a radioactive spill are difficult to estimate, as they could affect the marine ecosystem for thousands of years.
“No one seems to know what will happen if they are not raised. Before long, there will inevitably be a radioactive leak in those fish-rich and sensitive Arctic regions,” writes Markku Heikkilä In the track of the Arctic world. He has followed the development of the Arctic region for more than thirty years as a journalist and currently works as the head of science communication at the Arctic Center.
The mental strategy of the Soviet Union, like today’s Russia – “out of sight, out of mind” has meant that radioactive waste has been thrown wherever it hurts.
In addition to war crimes, Russia should also be held accountable for its crimes against the environment.
The intention of the Russian Foreign Ministry was to hold a joint meeting in June 2022where there would have been discussions with other Arctic states about how to get the radioactive waste out of the Kara Sea.
Russia decided to forget all cooperation and instead destroy life outside its own borders.
Wars will end one day. In addition to war crimes, Russia should also be held accountable for its crimes against the environment.
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Johannes Roviomaa
The author is a freelance journalist and visiting researcher at the Arctic Center.