The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) granted Russia over 70 million euros to tackle the legacy of nuclear ships and submarines in north-west Russian navy bases, the bank said in a statement Thursday.
"The largest contract worth 43 million euros is related to the former service ship Lepse, which contains damaged spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste and is moored in Murmansk," the statement read.
The grant would fund the retrieval of fuel from the ship, management of the waste and the ship's dismantlement within the next five years, the bank explained.
Another project, worth 20 million euros, would finance a local system for spent fuel transport and buffer storage in Andreyeva Bay, where "some 22,000 spent nuclear fuel assemblies from nuclear-powered submarines and icebreakers are kept in unsafe conditions."
The third, 5.6-million-euro project would fund the defueling of Papa-class submarines, and another, worth over five million, would help improve the radiation monitoring and emergency response system in the Arkhangelsk region, the bank said.
Western countries and the EBRD have long been involved in trying to resolve the northern fleet's nuclear problems. In 1999 Britain's then foreign secretary, Robin Cook, paid a visit to Murmansk to highlight the problem.
