Patten urges nuclear cleanup

Special report: Russia
Ian Traynor in Moscow 

Around 300 nuclear reactors and thousands of spent nuclear fuel rods dumped in the Russian Arctic are an immediate danger to Russians and Europeans alike, and require urgent action, Chris Patten, the European Union's external relations commissioner, warned yesterday. 

Speaking to Russian officials and diplomats in Moscow, Mr Patten called on the western European nuclear engineering industry to start cleaning up the world's biggest nuclear graveyard in Russia's far north. But he also feared that Brussels' bid to persuade Moscow to allow in outside remedial teams had run into opposition, not least because of Russian military secrecy. 

Russian admirals, in particular, are against external assistance with problems that involve military resources. 

The risk of wide-scale radioactive contamination from the reactors in dozens of abandoned submarines, formerly part of Russia's northern and Baltic fleets, were highlighted by Moscow's laboured response to the Kursk tragedy last summer. But Mr Patten, the EU's foreign policy supremo, pointed to a problem that could dwarf the Kursk disaster in its scale. 

"In the seas and the shores surrounding the Kola peninsula, there are some 300 nuclear reactors - about 20% of the world's total - and thousands of spent nuclear fuel elements," he said. "The lack of adequate storage or disposal facilities for spent fuel and radioactive waste from the reactors of nuclear vessels is a sword of Damocles hanging over all our futures." 

The fjords of the peninsula are littered with scores of inoperable nuclear submarines, abandoned like beached whales. Their hulks lie as testimony to the disastrous decline of the once mighty Soviet navy. The navy dockyards are crumbling, the sailors go hungry and unpaid. 

Mr Patten said the problem of nuclear safety in the far north was the most "dramatic" of all the issues on which Brussels and Moscow should seek enhanced cooperation during Sweden's term in the EU presidency. 

EU countries are being asked to make a hefty contribution towards the estimated 47m needed to raise the stricken Kursk and its two nuclear reactors next summer. Mr Patten was expected to discuss the Kursk with Russian officials during his two-day trip. 

It appeared that Sweden, in particular, was pushing for more ambitious nuclear safety programmes and cleanup operations in the Arctic in return for agreeing to fund the Kursk salvage operation.  Mr Patten's speech, Sweden's emphasis on nuclear safety in the Arctic, and the incoming Bush administration's declaration that American aid to Russia will be sharply cut back and focused on stabilising Russia's nuclear arsenal, all suggest that areas such as the Kola peninsula are moving up in priority on the international agenda.