Radioactivity - The Changing Arctic Environment: The Arctic Messenger - page 63

The following will give you an idea of the broad scope of international cooperation
involved in this effort up to 2008 (It is illustrative and not a summary):

· France provided the design of a new incinerator subsequently built at Zvezdochka

near Arkhangelsk, without which decommissioning of the submarines would have
been very difficult.

· Norway financed the decommissioning of four submarines, including Victor I, II

and III submarine types.

· The United Kingdom financed the decommissioning of another three submarines.

· Norway and the United Kingdom shared the costs of dismantling another submar-

ine.

· The United States has assisted Russia with the dismantling of more than 31 sub-

marines, including at least one of the Typhoon class.

· Canada has funded the dismantling of one submarine and has joined other coun-

tries in funding the dismantling of others.

· Germany funded the building of storage facilities that enable the safe onshore stor-

age of sections of dismantled submarines.

Many of these projects were considered to be demonstration projects. For each project, a
class of submarine was selected that would provide blueprints for future work on that class.
Cooperation has not been strictly limited to submarine demolition. For example, in 2008,
the European Bank forReconstruction signed acooperation andimplementation agreement
with the Russian Rosatom's Centre for Nuclear and Radiation Safety. The projects include:

· Defuelling and decommissioning the Lepse floating base that stored spent nuclear

fuel from nuclear icebreakers. It had long been identified by AMAP and others as
being a major potential source of radioactivity to the Arctic environment. The
2012 annual review of NEFCO reported that all spent nuclear fuel had been re-
moved and that the Lepse had been towed to the Nerpa shipyard - 40 kilometres