Scientists Locate Lost Radioactive Barges and Submarine Reactors in Arctic Sites

The Akademik Ioffe research vessel uncovered a previously unknown burial site of radioactive waste in the Barents Sea during its Arctic expedition. The newly identified complex lies in the Bay of Currents, a location absent from all public sources and missing even from Soviet-era inventories of nuclear legacy objects in the Arctic.

Photo: commons.wikimedia.org by Ryan Sharpe, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Akademik Ioffe – Bird Island, NS – (2018-07-16)

Scientists Pinpoint Coordinates of Long-Lost Radioactive Barges

For the first time in twenty years, specialists confirmed precise coordinates of two vessels long submerged with radioactive materials. The Nikel barge, resting near Kolguyev Island, contains roughly 580 tonnes of solid radioactive waste, according to the Institute of Oceanology. Until now, its location was known only approximately, but it has now been mapped with meter-level accuracy.

The second discovery is the vessel Likhter-4, scuttled in 1988 in the same Bay of Currents. It holds two reactors with unloaded nuclear fuel from the submarine K-22, along with other radioactive waste. The research team not only identified the exact position of Likhter-4 but also carried out partial radiation surveys of the hull and the surrounding seabed.

Inspection of Submarine K-27 and Expansion of Arctic Search Zones

Beyond the newly identified sites, the expedition conducted a planned inspection of another Cold War legacy object — the sunken nuclear submarine K-27 in Stepovoy Bay near Novaya Zemlya. Measurements show that protective barriers isolating the nuclear fuel from the marine environment still remain intact. Based on these findings, specialists selected a coastal area for a future underwater station designed to provide continuous 24/7 radiation monitoring of the K-27 reactors.

In the Novaya Zemlya Trough, researchers simultaneously searched for additional submerged objects such as containers, reactor sections and vessels loaded with solid radioactive waste, dumped across the northern seas from the late 1960s to the early 1990s. Several coordinates were refined, and new search polygons were marked for the 2026 season. However, the exact locations of nine vessels carrying radioactive waste remain unknown, and they continue to represent one of the most significant environmental risks in the Arctic.