Bowermaster’s Adventures — Russia’s nuclear legacy

by Jon Bowermaster on

Just around the corner from Petropavlovsk, ten miles by land or sea, located across Avachinskaya Bay on a small peninsula called Krasheninnikova sits Russia’s largest nuclear submarine base. It is off limits to outsiders and a shell of what it was during the Soviet Union’s heyday. Today – judging by a simple Google map search – there are just a half-dozen active nuclear subs sitting at its docks. Worrying to those who pay attention to such things are the shadows on the far edge of the docks on the same map, indicating somewhere between a dozen and twenty subs piled up next to each other. They are said to be at varying degrees of decommissioning.

For decades the submarine station and a couple nearby support bases provided good jobs for locals and drew many Russians and Ukrainians to live in this easternmost outpost. They are also the reason that until the end of the Cold War Kamchatka was off-limits to the rest of the world. Even today, twenty years later, Russia continues to maintain a heavy military presence here.

The operation of nuclear-powered submarines generates considerable amounts of nuclear waste. Liquid and solid radioactive wastes need to be removed from submarines and stored. In addition, periodically the submarine needs to be refueled, thus spent fuel needs to be removed from the submarine and also stored. Decommissioning a nuclear submarine generates these streams of waste and in addition, the refueled reactor compartment must be dealt with.

It is a little worrying to me, an outsider, that the region’s two biggest industries overlap: Nuclear sub decommissioning and fishing. If the same worries locals, I can’t get it out of them during my day wandering the streets of Petropavlovsk. Most likely they are concerned too but are not going to share their feelings with a stranger.

Occasional testing of local air and water for radiation is done and recent tests suggest levels of both near the Rybachiy base had “slightly-elevated-levels. How much radioactivity is too much? One expert told me a story of some smalltime crooks who broke into the subs waiting to be decommissioned to steal gold used in their construction; stashing the goods under their beds was apparently not a very wise thing to do, given their radioactivity, which extracted the ultimate payback.

There are other concerns. In recent years there have been a handful of accidents involving Russian subs, fires, mostly and a couple very publicized sinkings. The Russian Northern Fleet’s main storage for nuclear waste at Kola Peninsula is reportedly leaking radioactivity. During 1997 all spent nuclear fuel, which was sent to Andreeva Bay, was stored in the open, without protection. At other big submarine bases, including the big one at Murmansk, there have been reports of nuclear subs being scuttled – sunk to the bottom of the ocean – without proper clean-up of the nuclear reactors aboard. Russians have previously admitted to dumping nuclear waste at sea, off the coast of Japan. The future of Ribachiy remains a big question.

This is from a U.S. State Department report: “In Russia every step of the process is facing problems. The support complex which was already in poor shape and accident-prone during Soviet times has been particularly burdened in the last few years. Shore-side waste sites are full of low-level radioactive waste and spent fuel. Shipments of the spent fuel for reprocessing have been delayed due to lack of funds and equipment. The service ships, which unload the spent fuel from submarines, are also full and in poor shape (and some have suffered accidents). The shipyards where the work is done are facing financial shortages, power blackouts and strikes. There are no final land-based storage sites for decommissioned reactor compartments removed from submarines, so they are being stored afloat in bays near naval bases. Finally, contamination is widespread at waste storage sites in the North and Far East due to accidents. Lower-level contamination is thought to plague virtually every support facility for the fleet. In addition, accidents on submarines have lead to contamination of the surrounding area.

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“The massive retirement of nuclear powered submarines has further aggravated this problem. The number of nuclear-powered submarines has declined substantially since the end of the Cold War as many first and second-generation nuclear powered submarines have been decommissioned. Also, due to lack of financing and arms control treaties, even third generation submarines are being removed from service. The Soviet Union/Russia constructed some 248 submarines by 1996 and some 150-170 have been removed from service. Only some third of these have had their spent fuel removed. Of the fifty or so submarines that have had their fuel removed only some 20-25 have been partially scrapped and their reactor compartments removed, sealed up, stored afloat. A particular problem is that at least one submarine in the Northern Fleet and three submarines in the Pacific Fleet were retired due to nuclear accidents. They have damaged spent fuel on board and the Russian Navy is uncertain about how to decommission them.

“Another concern with decommissioned submarines which still have their spent fuel onboard is accidents. Naval officers fear another major accident could occur, like what transpired on 10 August 1985 when an Echo II nuclear-powered submarine reactor exploded during a refueling at the Chazhma Bay shipyard. Another worry is that a decommissioned nuclear submarine could sink at dockside. On 29-30th May 1997, this happened when a decommissioned submarine sank at the submarine facilities in Kamchatka. Reportedly a vessel collided with the moored submarine, and it sank. The Russian Navy claimed all fuel had been offloaded from the submarine, and it posed no environmental hazard. However, such reports are not reassuring.

“The most acute problem today is that of the decommissioned submarines and the shore-side support facilities and maintenance ships. Little thought or planning had gone into what to do with retired submarines prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Since 1991, a lot of thought has been devoted to this problem, but the absence of finances has meant serious environmental problems continue, and will probably continue for a decade or more to come. The Russian Navy and surrounding countries remain concerned that a major accident could ensue.

“In March 1993, after several years of revelations about the dumping of radioactive waste at sea, the Russian government released a White Paper describing some 30 years of the dumping of radioactive waste at sea. The so-called Yablokov report detailed how 18 damaged naval nuclear reactors and two internal reactor screen assemblies were dumped in the seas around the Soviet Union. Sixteen reactors were dumped in the Kara Sea and 2 in the Sea of Japan. One reactor screen assembly was dumped in the Kara Sea and one off Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in the northern Pacific Ocean.

“Several scientific expeditions to the dump areas in the Arctic found local contamination from dumped materials. But there is no evidence of migration so far. However, all dump sites were not found and fully investigated.”

After reading various high-level reports, and looking out over what would appear to be a beautiful northern Pacific seascape from the hills above Petropavlovsk … I don’t think I’ll be buying second-home property here.

Drug tourism and cocaine bars

by Brenda Yun on

What fun is travel without a little excitement? Rest and relaxation is a given, but excitement? That you have to look for, and it appears excitement for many is found in drugs.

I came across an article yesterday that made me cringe. The world’s first cocaine bar, it read. And while I have to admit it picqued my interest, I must also say the thought of sitting in a bar with nearly everyone high on cocaine scares me — beyond belief. I wonder, though, whether this cocaine bar in La Paz, Bolivia is on to something. There are heaps of traveling hedonists, eager for a new high, and while I don’t find that high in drugs, I’m almost positive many travelers in Latin America — and all over the world, for that matter — do.

If you think about it, drug tourism has been around for decades. It was no secret that drugs came easy at Studio 54, and it wasn’t really a surprise to me when I heard recently of Kokie’s, a bar in Manhattan that sold cocaine on the down low. I guess the name gave Kokie’s away, because it’s now closed.

And cocaine’s not the only thing people travel for in the world. Consider all the cheap prescription drugs you can get in Tijuana. I even took advantage of that and bought a bottle of Cipro. Or what about the opium dens in Laos. There were all kinds of “special” pizzas on the menu in Vang Vieng. In a lot of ways, drugs and travel mix perfectly, and in a lot of ways, it’s not wrong to mix them unless you’re over-using and forgetting about reality — or not even bothering to understand the place you’re in.

Nevertheless, could this cocaine bar in La Paz be a sign of the times, and will drugs be the new draw for certain destinations abroad? Only time will tell…

Bowermaster’s Adventures — Kamchatka, Russia

by Jon Bowermaster on

This land of volcanoes and earthquakes — the western frontier of the literary “Ring of Fire” — is still a month away from true spring. Dirty, crusted snow lies beneath the leafless trees and in the gutters along Petropavlovsk’s main streets, which already look pretty grim, lined as they are by Soviet-era buildings. The only hints of color in town are the red-and-yellow hot dog-beer-and-coffee stands across from Lenin Square and the colorfully painted walls of a local gym. Otherwise, from the bottle-strewn banks of the fishing harbor to the top of the hills looking out over Avachinskaya Bay, the operative description of this city at the tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula is … grey.

Long a place shrouded in secrecy, Kamchatka was until recently known to Westerners only as a closed military region or as a name on the Risk board. We are at the very edge of the Russian Far East, a region known locally as “the back of the beyond.” The seven hundred and fifty mile long peninsula is lined by a pair of mountain ranges – the Sredenny (Central) and Vostochny (Eastern) – and from the air looks like a big fish. The Kamchatka River fills the trough between the two ranges. Encircling the city are snow-capped volcanoes, nearly 300 dot the peninsula, a tenth still active. When I ask the first people I meet — two young journalism students, Victoria and Ivan – if they remember the last eruption they smile, wracking their memories.

“I think it was like two weeks ago,” says Victoria. “But they happen so often, it’s hard to be sure. And earthquakes, too. But we are used to them. Why do you think the buildings are so … solid?”

Three-quarters of the peninsula’s 400,000 people live in Petropavlovsk, the capital city founded by Russian explorer Vitus Bering and named after his two ships, the St. Peter and St. Paul. The Russians and Ukrainians here mostly came to work at its once-booming navy station; ten miles across the bay sits Russia’s second largest nuclear submarine base. The indigenous Itelmen and Koryaks are still mostly nomadic reindeer herders. Judging by the attire of the locals waiting in long lines at bus stops, the biggest imports are patent leather jackets and boots with spiked heels (for women) and camouflage (for men).

The peninsula is known for an amazing diversity and abundance of wildlife: Sable, ermine, Siberian bighorn (or snow) sheep, the Kamchatka brown bear, crab and, of course, salmon in large quantities. Today it’s said that Kamchatka’s industries can be divided into two categories: fishing and those that support fishing, though some are at risk of being over-fished. At the dock I eat thick slabs of brown bread slathered with red caviar.

As I munch at the dock I watch big fishing boats readying to head back out to sea. When I ask what they fish, the answer is simple: “Whales.”

“But isn’t whaling illegal?”

“Listen,” says a fisherman in blue rubber bibs hosing down the back ramp of one of the gunmetal grey boats. “I know in Alaska it is illegal to shoot even a bird. But here, this is Russia. Nothing is illegal.”

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Fish are ninety-three percent of Kamchatka’s exports, particularly salmon and king crab (though after walking the city for a day, I have to say it was very, very difficult to find either … or even a restaurant to ask for them. “Eating out is not popular,” admits the only guidebook reference to food I could find). Kamchatka’s biggest import is fuel, which in the recent past led to some trouble. I ask why there appear to be so many burned-out homes along the main hills. “About ten years ago we did not receive enough coal,” says a man drinking coffee across from Lenin Square. “People were using open fires to heat inside. Obviously there were some … problems.”

The fall of the Soviet Union in 1990 opened the region to the outside world and there is something of a tourist industry here, though small. A land still being born, thanks to the near-constant volcanic activity, Kamchatka can be a place of breathtaking beauty and unique wildlife; this afternoon when the sun pops out and the sky clears a perimeter lined with snow-capped mountains is revealed across the wind-swept bay.

There is a saying here which loosely translates as, “In the winter it’s not too cold, but in the summer it’s not very warm!” Pharmacologists are on record that a cup of fresh Kamchatka water drunk in the morning heals the liver and stomach, cleans the blood vessels and prohibits bacteria. Other scientific studies detail increased levels of radioactivity in both air and water, thanks to the decommissioning of nuclear subs taking place just across the bay. Which makes me somewhat reluctant to drink from its taps or, if I could find one, eat one of those giant king crabs.

The only Russian phrase I pick up during a day of wandering PK? “Kamchatka, ehto strannoe mesto” (It’s a strange place).

Cosmetic surgery tour group stopped at the border

by Scott Carmichael on

A group of 23 Chinese women became stranded at the border of their own country when they tried to return home from a “cosmetic surgery vacation”.

The women had been visiting a Korean institute to get some work done on their eyes, nose and chin.

Obviously, they had not realized that this kind of work would make them look significantly different than their passport photo, and the entire group was stopped by immigration officials.

Eventually, document specialists were called in to examine their passport photos, and compare them with parts of their faces that had not had any work done. Of course, the healing wounds and stitches probably didn’t make things any easier. After several hours, the group was cleared to enter their own country.

Apparently, cosmetic surgery is becoming increasingly popular with Chinese women, who pay upwards of $3000 to have their faces altered to look more “western”.

Bowermaster’s Adventures — Welcome to squid city!

by Jon Bowermaster on

For the past couple nights I’ve dreamed about being attacked by giant calamari; not the fried variety, but the long, gelatinous species, which wrap me up in big squid rings and push me into the sea. Which I’m sure has everything to do with spending the day in Hakodate, on the big island of Hokkaido, Japan’s squid capital.

The streets leading to the morning market are heavy with restaurants, each featuring an illustration of a squid on its awning, billboard or even in neon. At open-air shops, tanks of still swimming squid are surrounded by trays of squid on ice, squid wrapped tight in plastic, dried squid, hammered squid, all cut, sliced and diced. Souvenir shops feature plastic squids, squid pens, even drinking cups made from … squid. You won’t be surprised that squid have been a staple here for thousands of years.

(The biggest squid ever caught? Twenty-four feet long. The largest invertebrate on the planet, they are thought to grow to as long as sixty feet but because they live at such great depths have never been studied in the wild.)

My question for these shopkeepers and restaurant owners, of course, is: Are they at risk of taking too many squid from the sea? Long thought beyond risk of being over fished – they don’t live long anyway, are a very prolific species and fluctuate naturally – the reason they seem to be safe will surprise you.

Normally at home along the coast from Mexico to Chile they are deep-sea creatures, living at depths of 3,000 to 5,000 feet they’re increasingly being found in the colder waters off California, Canada and Alaska. Jumbo squid, six to eight feet long, are booming in areas where they have not previously boomed. The reason for the boom takes us back to Japan, especially the big market at Tuskiji in Tokyo where we were a few days before. Guess what is the main predator of squid? Blue fin tuna. Which are now being badly over fished and sold by the thousands a day in Japan’s markets.

Lots of fingers point to Japan as the greatest threat to the depletion of fish around the world. The Japanese are the world’s biggest consumer of fish; Tuskiji is like an extraordinary mortuary for global sea life. Not only do the Japanese pose a problem for other countries’ fish stocks, but also threaten the world’s fish stocks as a whole. Each day, tens of thousands of tons of marine life, clawed from rocks and scooped from oceans by factory ships working 24 hours a day, are auctioned in the early hours. Japan’s taste for seafood only appears limited by price and availability. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates Japan devours 30 percent of the world’s fresh fish, close to 170 pounds a year for each man, woman and child. Australians, by comparison, manage just 40 pounds.

Some conservationists and marine scientists are increasingly raising questions about how long Japan’s appetite can be accepted as an unquestioned cultural imperative. The constant plundering of the ocean is devastating fish stocks and destroying ecosystems. While we ponder that, there remains one good thing in the sea: There are plenty of squid … so get out the calamari recipes.