K-159: Rotting Hulk of a Soviet Nuclear Submarine

Laid down at Severodvinsk shipyard, Russia, in August 1962 and launched the following year, K-159 was a Project 627A Soviet nuclear-powered submarine, known to NATO as the November class. Her career was beset by problems practically from the outset, beginning in 1965 when radioactive discharges leaked into the steam generators and contaminated the vessel’s propulsion system. K-159 was patched up, but the 107.4 metre-long Soviet submarine would find itself docked for repairs several more times over the next 15 years. She was finally decommissioned in May 1989, and abandoned to the elements. Left to rot for more than a decade thereafter, the rusting K-159 was one of several abandoned nuclear submarines slowly decaying in the shipyards of Gremikha Bay, Murmansk Oblast, much to the concern of the international community. As part of a $200 million effort to decontaminate and dispose of the derelict Northern Fleet hulks, K-159 was toward for Polyarny for scrapping, with large tanks serving as pontoons to keep her rusting hull afloat. Unfortunately the move didn’t go to plan. The makeshift pontoons were just as decayed as the abandoned nuclear submarine herself. On August 28, 2003 a storm ripped one of the pontoons from K-159 and the deteriorated submarine later sank in the Barents Sea, killing nine of the 10 mariners onboard and reportedly spewing 800 kilograms of spent nuclear fuel into the water. The commander of the Northern Fleet was court martialled and a law suit followed. Scottish company Adus was brought in to evaluate the wreck, which lay on the seabed. The photograph (top) of K-159 shows the abandoned submarine while she was still moored in Gremikha.