Abstract
More than 150 Russian Naval nuclear submarines of the “November,” “Echo,” “Alpha,” “Delta,” “Yankee,” “Charlie,” “Oscar,” “Hotel,” “Victor,” and “Typhoon” classes have been removed from active fighting status due to their age and as a result of the international treaties on a reduction of armaments. In conditions of mass withdrawal from exploitation the nuclear submarines not provided demanded financial and material resources for their salvaging long enforces station afloat with not unloaded nuclear reactors become inevitable. The majority of these submarines contain two nuclear reactors for supplying power.
Nuclear submarines with reactors removed from active service are in emergency state and they can be sunken in any time near the quay or create a threat of radiation pollution. Most of nuclear submarines couldn’t be towed to the decommission areas because of probability to be sunken in transition. An Experimental Transportable Polystyrene Plant (ETPP) used for production and insertion of polystyrene has been developed and successfully applied to a limited number of intact submarines to ensure their ability to remain afloat. This system could also be applied, to sections of decommissioned submarines, such as reactor compartments, currently floating in unstable conditions in bays in Northwest Russia.
The main advantages of this polystyrene system are modular construction permitting to accumulate its power and output, high mobility permitting to deploy and to start work with different objects located in different regions, using different equipment for accommodation: a pier, off-shore line, vessel deck.
The polystyrene system application let to reduce expenses for nuclear submarine preparing to transportation to the places of industrial decommission and also let to avoid great costs at probable submarine sinking.
The applied method of frothed polystyrene usage for guaranteed maintenance afloat of different objects including potentially dangerous will not make the next demission more expensive and won’t produce padding wastes arising with decommission.
Technologies applied on SUE “Severny Reid” allow to execute ecologically safe outloading of frothed polystyrene from decommissioning nuclear submarines and it’s second usage.