493 



Mr. Handler. What I want to underscore is our concern for the 

 future in regards to the naval nuclear propulsion program in Rus- 

 sia and other nuclear activities. They are four-fold. One, as Mr. 

 Rogne mentioned earlier, is the decommissioning of Russian nu- 

 clear submarines and the disposal of their nuclear waste. Currently 

 the Russian navy has some 60 to 80 nuclear-powered submarines 

 that are taken out of service. They basically don't know what to do 

 with them. Thirty-five of these are in the Pacific. There will be 150 

 that are up for disposal by the end of the century. They have no 

 final disposal plans and these must be considered a lingering re- 

 gional environmental threat until a final solution is found for these 

 submarines. 



Second, our concern is accidents on nuclear submarines. The sit- 

 uation is quite serious. I was particularly interested that Director 

 Gates said earUer that large numbers and the advancing age of 

 these reactors on the submarines will increase safety risks. I find 

 the situation, as I said, quite serious. I have visited personally the 

 spot near Vladivostok where the submarine exploded in 1985 that 

 Director Gates referred to. And just in my last trip, which I re- 

 turned fi*om last Sunday, I found out about two more nuclear melt- 

 downs in Russian submsirines, one that occurred in 1979 and one 

 in 1985. Clearly, in the good times when Communism was working, 

 things were quite bad in the Russian navy. Now that the bad times 

 are upon the Russian navy, this does not auger well for the future. 



Second, in terms of accidents, we are concerned about collisions 

 of nuclear-powered submarines at sea. In February 1992 a U.S. 

 submarine collided with a CIS submarine off the Kola Peninsula. 

 As a senior admiral explained to me in Moscow, this could have 

 taken hundreds of men and three nuclear reactors to the ocean 

 floor. I think we must do everything in the next five years in this 

 period of chaos to reduce or stop nuclear-powered submarine oper- 

 ations, particularly in the Arctic region and Pacific region, to en- 

 sure we don't have another Chernobyl at sea. 



Third, we have a concern about nuclear testing in Novaya 

 Zemlya. And fourth, we have concerns about the construction of 

 new civil nuclear power plants in the Far East. Rather than ad- 

 dressing these other questions specifically, I'd like to return to the 

 decommissioning problem. I think this country needs to do some- 

 thing to help out the Russians in this score. And in fact, steps have 

 been taken in Congress to address this question. Unfortunately, the 

 administration of the U.S. Navy has refused to be helpful. Rep- 

 resentative Charles Bennett, Chairman of the House Sea Power 

 Subcommittee, has been very active in trying to put language into 

 the Russian Aid Bill and raise a separate bill, as I understand, in 

 Congress and the House side, to get money funneled to helping the 

 Russians decommission their submarines and safely store the reac- 

 tor compartments on land. The administration has not been helpful 

 and particularly the U.S. Navy, the Naval Nuclear Propulsion peo- 

 ple, have been adamant in opposing any information or assistance 

 be given to the Russians in this regard. I think we need to change 

 our perspective in this situation. I've sent a letter to President 

 Bush about this in early April. I again submit that for the record. 



Senator Murkowski. It will be entered into the record as if read. 



