TL: A VISIT TO THE BALTIC FLEET NAVAL BASE IN ST. PETERSBURG
SO: by Jochen Vorfelder (GP)  May 1992
DT: May 1992
Keywords: ussr russia navy nuclear waste weapons bases radiation
/

The heavy iron gate swings on rusty hinges; the clock on the
sentry house has stopped meaningfully at five to twelve. But the
signs are misleading. A fresh wind is blowing through the
headquarters of the St. Petersburg Fleet Base on Oleko-Dunditsch-
Street. The historical brick building, dating from Peter the
Great, has been promised to a Swedish-Russian joint venture hotel
enterprise; in two years at the latest the navy personnel must
move out and the rooms now floored with run-down linoleum will be
renovated to standards of elegance.

Even Alexander Pavlovich Slavgorodsky, vice-commander of the base
and a soldier for 35 years, appears transformed; he routinely
handles the fact that researchers from Greenpeace are sitting in
his room asking uncomfortable questions over cookies and warm
Pepsi. No, the Baltic Fleet no longer deploys nuclear weapons;
no, there aren't any more nuclear capable submarines either, but
yes, the weapons systems were taken to Russia. No danger anymore,
everyone's a democrat. "Down to the last man, the St. Petersburg
Base supported Boris Yeltsin during the coup", the old-time
communist assures us. No, times have changed, the navy doesn't
have secrets anymore. And to show us how open things are he tells
us an unbelievable story: for thirty years, drinking water for
the five million inhabitants of St. Petersburg came from Lake
Ladoga via the Neva River, although a radioactive contaminated
shipwreck was lying at the bottom of the lake. Not until 1991 did
the navy remove it. "You see, we take environmental protection
seriously".  What did he say?  Wait, wait, Alexander Pavlovich,
please tell your story from the beginning.

At the end of the 1950's, when the Cold War was underway, the
Soviets were working on the development of their nuclear weapons
and using a Baltic Fleet ship to test the effects of
radioactivity. Dogs, cats, plants and food were given different
doses of alpha, beta and gamma radiation. A captured ship from
World War II was used as a secret and very hidden test station in
Lake Ladoga, about 90 kilometers from St. Petersburg: it was a
German torpedo boat about 90 meters long with 1500 registered
tons.

"We don't know any more exactly what kind of tests were done. The
files have disappeared", Slavgorodsky assures us. The only thing
for sure was that the radiation levels were so high after the
tests were over that the floating laboratory was to be gotten rid
of as soon as possible - and it was sunk in the middle of Lake
Lagoda, 12 sea miles west of Valaam Island. Slavgorodsky: "The
area was relatively unpopulated at the time, but I'm not sure if
it was done on purpose. There was still diesel in the tank, maybe
the ship was just left behind and sank by itself."

Sunk or dumped, for three decades the radiating torpedo boat
contaminated Lake Ladoga and the Neva, whose waters flow through
St. Petersburg into the Baltic Sea. The condition of the river is
very worrying. The river water washes highly toxic chemicals out
of paper and fertilizer factories and cattle farms around Lake
Ladoga and carries them through the city.  In St. Petersburg's
state-run hospital, a number of patients are treated every month
who have eaten fish from the Neva or drunken tap water. The city
is supplied totally by bank-filtered river water or directly from
the river; the purification plants can hardly filter the mess
anymore.

"To the best of my ability, I really can't tell you how high the
contamination was that finally reached St. Petersburg. But we can
say it was surely more than ten times the international limits",
Slavgorodsky excuses himself. "But people here were worried, and
the fleet dealt with it."  He smiles again.

Within 12 months the radiating wreck was salvaged by scientists
and specialists from the Baltic and Black Sea Fleets, pumped out
and sealed with a coat of synthetic resin in a floating dock. The
superstructure and the rooms where the experiments had been done
were specially sealed; the pumped out water and the fuel on board
were filtered, thickened and burned. "That the operation could be
carried out without any problems is due to a specially developed
technology of the Navy", the vice-commander tells us.

Greenpeace research has found out that this kind of care in
dealing with radioactive waste has not always been the case. When
a reactor melted down on board the nuclear-powered icebreaker
Lenin during a maintainence routine in 1967, the radiating clump
of metal was dumped in shallow waters off the coast of Novaya
Zemlya. The island in the Barents Sea, north of Murmansk, had
been used by the Soviets as a nuclear testing site for years. On
October 30, 1961, a 58 megaton bomb was exploded there, until
then the largest that had shaken the earth. The results of the
more than one hundred nuclear tests: on the mainland across from
the island the mortality rate due to cancer of the esophagus is
the highest in the world, cancer of the liver occurs 10 times
more often than the Russian average.

Slavgorodsky looks at his watch; the audience is over: "I hope
we've answered your questions."  Another toast to the Fleet,
another vodka, we all go to the door. "Tell us one more thing,
Alexander Pavlovich. What ever happened to the ship from Lake
Ladoga?"  Slavgorodsky hesitates, then points his finger at a
huge map: "Here it was towed through these canals to the north."
Where to, where is it now?  "It's been disposed of. We dumped it
again. Near Novaya Zemlya."

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[Greenbase Inventory July 1, 1992 ]

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