The Russians have more to think about than the nuclear pollution all around them. Their main concern is where their next meal is coming from. If you are in charge of a laid-up nuclear submarine and you are now into the fifth month of not being paid, your mind is not on the job. To make the current crisis worse there has been a bad potato harvest in the rest of Russia. Potatoes are now better guarded than nuclear materials.
Dangerous sites lie close to dwellings.
From the foot of a giant concrete statue of a Soviet soldier that commemorates the defeat of Germany in the Second World War you can look down on one such hazard. An ageing Hotel-class submarine at a quayside in Murmansk fjord is so dangerous that no one dare move it for fear of causing a nuclear explosion. The submarine is only 300 meters from a block of flats. The population of Murmansk is 370,000. Further down the fjord is the Lepse, a retired service ship on which 640 spent nuclear fuel assemblies are stored.