Regardless of these assurances, other crew members reported that radioactive particles had been detected on board the submarine from the very beginning.

Nonetheless, despite these difficulties, the K-27 achieved remarkable milestones during its service in the Soviet Navy, including the distinction of being the first Russian nuclear attack submarine to remain submerged for a continuous period of 50 days.

The Tragedy Of Soviet Nuclear Submarine K-27 

Despite a somewhat impressive service record, the operational lifespan of the K-27 submarine was tragically brief. The vessel’s time on active duty came to an abrupt end due to a catastrophic reactor accident.

On May 24, 1968, a severe malfunction occurred in one of the submarine’s VT-1 reactors, leading to a dramatic power drop from 87 percent to a mere seven percent. This sudden decrease in output was accompanied by an alarming surge in gamma radiation that inundated the reactor compartment.

As the situation worsened, gas began to vent from the reactor, permeating other compartments of the submarine. Vyacheslav Mazurenko, a 22-year-old chief warrant officer at the time, later recalled the moment the gravity of the situation became apparent.

“We had a radiation detector in the compartment, but it was switched off. To be honest, we hadn’t paid much attention to the radiation dosimeters we were given,” he explained to the BBC.

“But then, our radiation supervisor switched on the detector in the compartment, and it went off the scale. He looked surprised and worried,” Mazurenko said.

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Unfortunately, the crew did not grasp the full extent of the reactor’s failure until it was too late. Two hours after the initial alarm sounded, several crew members had to be physically carried out of the reactor compartment, suffering from severe radiation sickness.

Despite the dire circumstances, the crew managed to bring the beleaguered submarine to the surface. The journey back to Gremikha (Ostrovnoy) on Russia’s Kola Peninsula was a grueling one, taking over five hours.

“When the sub surfaced to make the trip back to the docks, the division ordered it to cut its engines and await special instructions,” Mazurenko recounted. “The captain [Pavel Leonov], however, decided to keep going because if the sub stopped for several hours, nobody would survive long enough to get it back to base.”

Tragically, every one of the 144 crew members was exposed to radiation, resulting in nine fatalities due to radiation poisoning linked to the incident. The K-27 was permanently removed from active duty in June 1968, although Soviet authorities carried out a range of experiments aboard until 1973.

The submarine was officially decommissioned in February 1979 and was later sunk in the Kara Sea on September 6, 1982, coming to rest at a depth of just 33 m (108 ft), near position 72°31’28″N., 55°30’09″E.

A Ticking “Nuclear Time Bomb”

Russian divers’ inspection of the K-27 submarine highlights Moscow’s worries regarding the substantial risks linked to the vessel. For years, Russian authorities have been exploring whether the sunken K-27 can be safely raised to remove the uranium from its reactors.

Moscow’s latest Arctic development plan includes ambitious initiatives aimed at retrieving various types of nuclear waste that were previously disposed of by the Soviet Union in the Barents and Kara Seas.

This plan aims to recover the K-27 and K-159 nuclear submarines by 2035. Due to their hazardous nature, both submarines present formidable challenges for cleanup efforts.

Combined, the K-27 and K-159 contain approximately one million curies of radiation—equivalent to about a quarter of the radiation released during the first month of the Fukushima disaster.

The K-27 was deemed too radioactive for conventional dismantling, so it was towed to the Arctic Novaya Zemlya nuclear testing range in 1982 and subsequently scuttled in one of the archipelago’s fjords.

The process of sinking the submarine to a depth of just 33 meters required considerable effort. The vessel was weighed down with asphalt to seal its fuel-filled reactors, and a hole was drilled into its aft ballast tank to facilitate the sinking.

However, this solution is not a long-term fix. The sealant around the reactor was intended only to prevent radiation leaks until 2032. Even more concerning is the potential for the K-27’s highly enriched fuel to trigger an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction under certain conditions, posing a serious risk of localized radiation release.

In 2012, Radioactive Contamination experts explained to RT that their main challenge was to find a method for removing radioactive materials without causing too much disturbance to the reactors.

If the reactors are shaken excessively, this could lead to an uncontrolled chain reaction, which would significantly release radioactivity into the fragile Arctic marine environment.

Thomas Nilsen, editor of the Independent Barents Observer and former member of the Bellona Foundation, stated, “Radiation leakages will come sooner or later if we just leave the K-27 there. The sub has already been on the seafloor for 30 years, and it was rusty even before it was sunk. Leakages of radioactivity underwater are nearly impossible to clean up.”

The ambitious project to recover the K-27 and K-159 submarines is estimated to cost over 300 million euros (approximately $326 million).

This project had earlier garnered attention from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), which, along with Norway and other European nations, was developing a feasibility study for this complex and technologically demanding retrieval operation.

However, the outbreak of the Ukraine war led the EBRD to suspend these considerations, resulting in minimal progress from Moscow on this front.

In September 2022, a group of Russian officials, engineers, and nuclear scientists convened to discuss ways to salvage the operation, but discussions were halted by a critical issue: Russia currently lacks the necessary technology to undertake such an operation.

A Dutch salvage vessel successfully recovered the Kursk submarine in 2001, but given the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, it is unlikely that the Netherlands would assist again.

This situation leaves the environmental conditions in the Russian Arctic in a precarious state, with unpredictable outcomes. Russia cannot navigate this challenge alone; global cooperation will be essential for addressing the pressing issue of nuclear waste recovery and ensuring the safety of the Arctic environment.