Fincantieri Launches Nuclear Waste Transport Vessel for Russia

On November 19, representatives from Rosatom, the Russian state-owned nuclear corporation, and RosRAO, the Russian agency for radioactive waste management, attended the launch of their new reactor transport platform Itarus at the Fincantieri Muggiano yard in Italy.

The unit’s construction contract was signed by the Italian Ministry of Economic Development, RosRAO and Fincantieri in November 2013. It follows a 2003 cooperation agreement between the Russian and Italian government.

The Itarus, described by Russian media as a floating dock, has a cargo capacity of 3,000 tons. It will be used for the transportation of decomissioned Soviet submarine reactor cores from a storage area at Sayda Bay to the Nerpa Naval Shipyard.

But it is also designed for assisting a more complex cleanup mission: the recovery and transportation of sunken reactor cores and nuclear waste from the frigid waters of the Kara Sea.

In July, Rosatom engineer Anatoly Zakharchyov told media that company employees were to be trained in the use of the vessel “for raising reactor blocks, and their further transportation to Sayda Bay for dismantlement.”

The task is not a small one, according to a detailed survey released by Russian authorities in 2012.

The report estimated that the Kara Sea – between the former nuclear test sites on Novaya Zemla and the huge LNG project on the Yamal Peninsula - contains 17,000 radioactive waste containers, 19 ships with waste aboard, 14 reactor cores, 700 pieces of contaminated machinery, and one nuclear submarine. Environmental groups say that it's impossible to rule out more.

Previous media sources have suggested that Russian authorities have an interest in finding and removing submerged nuclear waste in the Kara Sea in preparation for further offshore energy exploration.