Many of the submarines have been withdrawn from service under the Start International disarmament treaties. In accordance with Start, the submarines are cut in two, the missile compartments removed and the two halves welded loosely together. Air is pumped in to keep the submarines afloat, but tell-tale bubbles rising to the surface around them show that many are leaking. In addition to the submarines themselves, nuclear rubbish is stored at 11 sites in the Kola peninsula. Crews stationed on laid-up submarines are often unfit, untrained or incompetent.
Security is lax.
If you mixed two kilograms of strontium-90 with Semtex and exploded it in London most of the city would have to be evacuated for two to three years. The despair in the Russian submarine fleet has produced a disturbing increase in incidents. On 11 September a sailor went berserk on a modern Akula-class nuclear submarine and killed eight people before shooting himself. Six days earlier three people were taken hostage at a nuclear test site at Novaya Zemlja in the Arctic. Two weeks ago two people were killed in an incident on board a Russian submarine in the Black Sea and an interior guard at Russia's nuclear reprocessing plant at Mayak in Siberia killed three colleagues.