Original subtitles

If the world were to end in nuclear holocaust, these behemoths would survive

it. Nuclear-powered submarines, indestructible, undetectable, able to

strike from anywhere in the world's oceans.

This was the logic of the Cold War.

An era that has ended.

but whose deadly legacy threatens more urgently today.

Nearly 200 Soviet Empire nuclear subs and their reactors are rotting away in

the fjords of northern Russia. An environmental nightmare and the perfect

ingredient for a terrorist bomb.

A team of engineers must act now to safely bring about

the end of Red October.

For 40 nerve-wracking years, the world lingered on the brink of nuclear

annihilation. It was called the Cold War, a constant game of military and

political one-upmanship between the communist-dominated Soviet Union and the

United States.

All-out nuclear war wasn't just a threat.

It could wipe out human civilization at any moment.

The two superpowers engage in a secretive battle of underwater titans.

Bigger is better, especially when it comes to nuclear missile-carrying

submarines. And Russia commands the biggest.

Longer than a football field, with two nuclear reactors churning out more than

100,000 horsepower of thrust.

Able to dive for months, each submarine carries more than a dozen nuclear

missiles. Enough to annihilate the United States several times over.

But living underwater poses threats to more than just the enemy.

Should the sub's nuclear reactor melt down, there's little chance of escape.

In this deadly standoff, nuclear submarines are the strategic asset.

Stealth is everything.

A game of cat and mouse.

To track and eliminate enemy subs before they eliminate you.

By the 1980s, at the height of the Cold War, the US and Russia are in full

preparation for the day no one ever wants to dawn.

It's the possibility of mutual annihilation that ensures peace and

deters war.

Cold War logic?

that possessing such deadly power is its self-insurance against ever unleashing

it. Nuclear-powered missile submarines became a key part of Western

and Soviet deterrence.

Few Americans know Russian subs better than naval historian Norman Polmar.

You could never find and destroy all the nuclear missile subs.

This couldn't be done on either side.

Hence, they became the reserve, the strategic reserve, what both countries

called the deterrent factor.

The Soviet Empire's nuclear arsenal was concentrated in the far north, the Kola

Peninsula, a landmass reaching out into the Barents Sea.

Nowhere else on Earth has a greater concentration of nuclear material, and

at its center, the world's northernmost city, Murmansk.

Two degrees north of the Arctic Circle, a hotbed of the Cold War.

In the fjords flooded by the Barents Sea, the warm waters of the Atlantic

current never freeze.

It's the perfect hideout.

Anchored here around Russia's most important top-secret nuclear submarine

bases are the pride of the Navy, its mobile nuclear deterrence.

But overnight, The mighty Soviet Union suffers a financial meltdown.

Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate.

The fall of the Berlin Wall marks the end of the Cold War.

With the end of the Cold War and the financial situation, suddenly the

military were starved for funds. Of course, that included the Navy.

The Navy suddenly found they could not keep ships in commission, could not keep

submarines in commission, could not keep their personnel, the numbers they

needed. So the Navy, to some degree, fell apart.

The chaos of the 1990s still reverberates here today.

These Arctic fjords, the arteries of the Soviet Navy, are clogged with

shipwrecks, rusty reminders of a long-gone era, former legends.

now environmental liabilities.

It is a place still surrounded by secrecy and with good reason.

These are the reactors of Soviet nuclear super subs, able to generate 190

megawatts each, enough to accelerate a 10,000 ton sub to a cruising speed of 50

miles an hour underwater.

Now they are separated from their bodies, but still alarmingly

radioactive, threatening an environmental nightmare and the perfect

ingredient for a terrorist dirty bomb.

I think that took years for the magnitude of the problem to sink in and

their lack of ability to handle it.

In 1990, no one in the Soviet Navy expected in the next year to

decommission a...

to begin decommissioning 100 nuclear submarines.

The thought just never occurred to them.

So it's taken time to realize we had to help because it was a problem that

didn't affect just the Russian people, but the whole world.

Murmansk, the epicenter of this nuclear nightmare, is one of the most forbidding

places on the planet.

During winter, in the eternal Arctic night, temperatures drop to more than 40

degrees below zero.

Such harsh weather is a huge impediment to cleaning up the nuclear heritage of

the Cold War.

But in fact, it is just one of several major obstacles for the team of uniquely

skilled German engineers tasked with this monumental job and led by Detlef

Mietan.

We are operating in a high security area that is close to the outside world.

When we began our work here, this had been a huge problem.

But I think that we have built enough trust so that the Russians don't suspect

us spying for military secrets.

Instead, they know that we are here to get the job done.

The job.

decommission over 200 nuclear submarines and icebreakers a multi-million dollar

project in large part accomplished by hand a fusion of crude and clever

these former east german engineers spent half their lives within the soviet

empire they know the language the customers the germans bring unique

engineering know-how

while the Russian contractors put ideas into practice.

And here, man cannot touch everything.

Scrapping a nuclear sub presents two fundamental problems.

First, we have to see the reactor compartment and find a way to store it.

And second, we have to safely store all the radioactive material that

accumulates during the scrapping process.

A submarine, in essence, is nothing more than a submerged tube of steel.

Large parts can be recycled, even resold.

Welding through thousands of tons of steel is simply a question of labor.

The size of the job doesn't worry me Todd's team, but something else does

something invisible to our senses emanating from these reactor

compartments radioactivity Cutting the reactor out of a nuclear sub isn't the

challenge Tightly sealed the compartment even floats

But floating nearly 200 of these reactor compartments is no way to store

radioactive material What if they leak or sink or even worse fall into

terrorist hands for me time and the world?

Time is ticking

At

the height of the Cold War Russian subs carried enough warheads to wipe out

whole parts of the U.S.

Today, these largest submarines ever built are nothing more than radioactive

junk. Scrapping a nuclear sub requires a unique set of skills.

A team of German and Russian engineers has taken on this monumental job.

At this nuclear power plant in northern Germany, on the fringe of the former

communist empire,

The world's biggest decommissioning effort has been underway since 1995.

Here Detlef Mitton and his company have learned how to handle the force hidden

behind walls of concrete and steel, the nuclear reactor, a source of

unimaginable power and radioactivity.

These are the highly contaminated parts of five Russian-style nuclear power

plants. They emit so much radiation, decades must pass before they can be

disassembled. A job that will extend beyond METON's lifetime.

Actually, our philosophy here, as in Russia, was to hand over something later

generations could work with.

Mitan's unique, communist-era knowledge of Russian reactor design is a dying

art.

We must solve the problem now.

What we pass on can then be safely finished by future generations.

Back in Russia, winter's stark, snowy darkness has given way to lush green and

sunshine during the brief Arctic summer.

Miton and his team head back to outer Murmansk's Dnieper shipyard in the high

-security military zone.

There's a ton of work ahead, literally.

This is a nuclear-powered Victor-class submarine built to hunt and destroy U

.S. subs.

Today, these two men are its chief undertakers, Miton.

and Rostislav Rimdzono, his Russian engineer colleague.

Before any work can begin, there is a step, so top secret, even these men are

not allowed to witness it.

The first really delicate steps are disarming the sub and defueling the

reactors. This has been done.

Next, the team will work around the reactor compartment, handling lots of

radioactive material.

Of course, the radiation protection team is monitoring very closely so that no

contamination occurs.

This submarine had two layers of pressure-resistant hulls.

Both have been cut open, revealing the tangle of steel pipes and cables in the

stern section of the sub next to the reactor.

But blowtorching this steel hulk apart brings the constant risk of fire, if not

immediately dealt with.

Radioactive ash can poison the workers.

The plan is to scrap this submarine from both ends, steadily working towards the

center, the compartment housing the reactor.

It emits so much radiation that simply cutting it into pieces would be

suicidal. Handling the highly radioactive core of a nuclear submarine

presents the greatest engineering challenge.

Without question, it is absolutely much more difficult to break down a nuclear

powered submarine than it is to build one.

It's the fact that you have all that radiation.

The radiation in the beginning of the nuclear reactor process is pretty

negligible compared to the radiation that you have with all of the

radioactive waste that was generated during its operation.

This is why the engineers have come up with an ingenious idea.

The submarine is dismantled so that only the compartment housing the reactor and

the two neighboring compartments remain.

The sub's pressure hull is turned into a container with enough room for all the

contaminated material.

The closed bulkheads at each end act as a seal.

Nearly 200 of these nuclear submarines have been reduced to such three-section

units. There is enough air trapped inside for these several hundred-ton

reactors to float.

But this is no long-term solution.

It is just a first step to secure the compartments within a small area.

The reactors of an entire nuclear fleet need a final resting site decades must

pass. for their radioactivity to decay.

When it comes to the factors that would govern how

safe or unsafe the dismantlement process is,

It would probably be safe to say that it's a function of the space that's

available, because you have to have a place to store this material. There's no

question. The facilities that are available, you know, how safe and how

radiation-proof, if you will, are the facilities and the security that's

available. There is no alternative.

These 1,600-ton units must be lifted out of the water and further reduced so that

only the reactor remains.

The bulk of radioactive material is concentrated at the bottom, so a sheet

of concrete and lead is attached as a shield.

This is all that remains of Red October, ready to join the other subs at their

final resting site, some 20 miles by sea from the shipyard.

Here inside a bay, the reactors are stored on a concrete foundation three

feet high, so that no radioactivity can escape.

But the job doesn't end there.

Next steps hope to decontaminate any radioactive material once attached to

the reactors.

Valuable know-how gained in Eastern Germany.

Another high-security zone few can visit.

Sandblasting off radioactivity can often make components safe for recycling or

using chemicals.

60% phosphoric acid dissolves sheets of contamination.

It's labor-intensive.

Each radioactive part needs special attention to salvage and recycle as much

as possible.

Sida Bay will become the autopsy lab for radioactive carcasses and the graveyard

for Red October.

Back at the Neerpa shipyard, dock workers are still gutting the colossal

Victor-class submarine.

These men will be the last to remember its might before it's reduced to mere

heaps of junk.

The sub is history. Few will remember its role.

Because even in death, Russia avoids talk of its nuclear fleet.

Well... The Russians surely won't tell us where this sub was operating or what

its role was.

It surely roamed the world's oceans for more than two decades.

Now its last voyage is to the storage site.

This is the death of a Victor-class sub.

But naval historian Norman Polmar has access to Cold War intelligence about

its birth.

This is a Victor-class nuclear submarine that was just partially completed in

St. Petersburg, then Leningrad. It's launched into a floating dry dock

covered with camouflage netting so that U.S. surveillance satellites can't

identify features of it.

the dry dock will then be towed to the kola peninsula to be completed again

just really impressive really impressive the way the soviets handled this

russia's atomic fleet is disappearing fast in less than two decades

the last nuclear submarine and its reactor will be dismantled including the

reactor of russia's most famous sub whose disaster would ultimately sink the

entire russian navy

it's

summer of the year 2000 after a decade of political chaos and economic meltdown

russia once again is flexing its muscles with the northern fleet's biggest

maneuver since the collapse of the soviet empire russia is back and with it

The world's most modern, gigantic, unsinkable nuclear sub, the Kursk.

Built post-USSR, it is the most expensive, most advanced nuclear sub

Russia has ever designed.

These are rare images from inside the Kursk. Captain Lieutenant Dmitry

Kolesnikov takes his wife Olga on board.

The sub is so big, it even houses leisure facilities for its sailors.

Dmitry Kolesnikov is proud to serve on the Kursk, although his service earns

him a mere $1,000 a year.

He and 117 sailors are on board during the maneuver in August 2000.

They are closely watched, not only by the Russian Navy Command, but also...

by their fiercest enemy.

The U.S. Navy was monitoring the exercise.

We had one, possibly two nuclear submarines in the area.

At the same time, the Soviets had a ballistic missile sub that they were

trying to sneak out of the area without us following it. So there was a lot

going on, you could say, behind the scenes or, more accurately, underwater

than met the eye.

The Kursk's mission was to show that its torpedoes can be fired with deadly

precision. That destroying a U.S. aircraft carrier takes only a matter of

minutes. At around 8 a.m., technicians in the bow section of the Kursk start

loading torpedoes.

For any submarine, its own torpedoes are its greatest danger. They contain an

extremely explosive fuel.

If not handled with care, they are bound to explode.

But the Kursk sailors did not know is that their torpedoes hadn't been

maintained properly.

At 8.51 a.m., the signal, ready for torpedo firing, is the last message

sent from the Kursk.

There are two explosions of such magnitude that they are registered in

Alaska, 3,000 miles away.

A truly seismic event, the Kursk.

to the bottom of the Barents Sea.

What was planned in the naval exercise as a major demonstration that the

Russian Navy was still on the map, that Russia was still a great military

international power, turns just totally around with a major disaster.

Surprisingly, the Russian Navy does not make much of the explosion.

Only at the end of the day, after failing to contact the Kursk, do naval

officers begin to worry.

Hours are lost in search of the stricken sub.

After all, the Kursk was built to be undetectable.

Then, a sonar echo in shallow waters.

The Kursk lies at a depth of only 300 feet.

Divers could quite easily reach it.

But the Russians' rescue equipment is so old and badly maintained, it cannot make

contact with the Kursk.

If there are survivors, every minute counts.

But the Navy refuses to admit defeat and firmly rejects foreign help.

The Soviets in general were able to bring their damaged submarines up to the

surface and most of the people were able to get off.

The major exception was the Kursk.

And that was because of the type of damage where a torpedo had exploded in

the bow and just blown the whole bow section off.

Running out of options, the situation escalates.

The authorities try to silence angry wives and mothers with very dubious

methods indeed.

It takes the president to intervene.

The Russian military is still split whether to accept foreign assistance.

Vladimir Putin's still young presidency is threatened by the crisis.

There are rumors that some of the sailors are still alive.

Putin now wants help from abroad.

Almost a full week after the Kursk was lost, divers from Norway are able to

reach the submarine.

Everyone is shocked by the scale of the damage to the sub.

The whole bow section is destroyed.

But in the stern, there is little destruction.

There could be still.

some sailors alive.

Maybe they are even strong enough to respond.

Divers are banging on the hull, eagerly awaiting a response from the sailors

inside.

Captain Lieutenant Dmitry Kolesnikov and 22 other sailors did indeed survive the

initial blast.

We know this because he left a message saying they had little hope.

The sailors were alive at least 24 hours after the explosion and possibly much

longer. But by the time the divers make contact with the Kursk, there is nothing

but silence.

Dmitry Kolesnikov, along with 117 sailors, are dead.

When the escape hatch is opened, a last gulp of air marks the end of all hope.

This coffin of steel at the bottom of the Barents Sea is a tragedy for the

entire nation.

The irony of the Kursk being lost during a major exercise is that the Russian

Navy was trying to demonstrate to the Russian leadership how powerful it still

was. And here, the second largest type of submarine in the world suffers

an internal

disaster, which kills the entire crew, 118 men.

And because it was drawn out with some people alive in the stern section of the

submarine, it showed how incapable the Russian government, the Russian Navy was

with handling a disaster of that type.

To save face and retrieve the bodies, Russia decides to lift the Kursk.

It is the heaviest object ever to be raised from the sea floor.

Inch by inch, the Kursk is raised to the surface.

Over a year after the accident, the submarine, icy grave to 118

submariners, is retrieved. For the men inspecting the wreckage and retrieving

the bodies, it's almost too much to bear.

Fear turns into certainty.

Had the Navy accepted foreign help, Some of the sailors could have been rescued.

This is the worst of all possible outcomes for the once proud northern

fleet. Its flagship lost, the crew left to die at the bottom of the Barents Sea.

The tragedy of the cursed disaster still echoes across Russia today.

It towers over the end of an empire's once giant nuclear age.

Pride has turned into a problem.

A colossal problem that now must be dealt with.

This is the reactor compartment of the Kursk, another dangerously rotting

carcass. It must be scrapped and prepared for its final journey, like all

the other reactor compartments of Russia's nuclear fleet.

This journey is the most delicate, the most dangerous step in the long end of

Red October.

At the shipyard, Final preparations are underway for the only reactor transport

this year.

The workers' time frame is short.

A few weeks of summer when the weather is less unforgiving and the seas are not

so rough.

Only a dry dock can move such precarious cargo through the fjords of the high

Arctic.

The Dnieper shipyard where subs are dismantled is some 20 miles from the

Saida interim storage site.

It is a treacherous route dotted with top secret military installations.

Calm seas are absolutely crucial.

If this dock sinks, these waters will forever be contaminated with highly

toxic radioactive waste.

Any change in weather is an invitation for disaster.

Soviet nuclear subs, the invisible terror of the Cold War, are today just

problematic rotting hulks.

In a monumental effort, almost 200 subs are being scrapped, their reactors

sealed and prepared for a final dangerous journey.

The majority of Russia's atomic subs has been reduced to this, the unit housing

the highly contaminated reactor.

Workers at the Neerpa shipyard in Murmansk, Russia, prepare for an

extremely dangerous task, transferring these reactors over water to their final

resting site some 20 miles away.

This dry dock will ship seven reactors at once.

It took a year to seal them, to make the reactors safe for their final journey.

These compact nuclear power plants are no ordinary cargo.

Their radioactivity limits the time humans can safely spend in their

vicinity. The outer steel layer of each reactor is three inches thick.

This puts the total weight of each reactor at 1,600 tons, the equivalent of

four jumbo jets.

Moving them is a near impossible task.

Even the most powerful tools, hydraulics, sometimes fail.

At this stage, even the most minute problem can endanger the whole effort.

For loading, tracks have been laid onto the dock.

The workers are doing double shifts to be finished and ready for today's high

tide.

These last hours, the culmination of a year's work, are a race against time.

The biggest worry is the weather. In the high Arctic, nothing is more

unpredictable. It is a factor that rules the decision-makers, Detlev Mitan and

his Russian engineering colleague, Lada Gajuchenko.

They cannot ignore a bitter fact.

The weather has started to turn against them.

We have seen today how rapidly the weather can change here.

It got very windy and that is a big danger for the transport.

Movement is only permitted to a certain wind force.

They have now reached a critical point. If the wind doesn't subside, the

transport won't happen today.

As you can see, the dock has a huge area where the wind can attack.

This and the waves out in the fjords will prevent us from transporting the

dock safely.

A disaster.

It has also started to rain.

But the workers carry on anyway, to finish their job and hope for better

weather.

Massive steel buttresses will keep the reactors in place.

Three on each side of every single unit.

The buttresses are welded onto the dock.

But even these structures will start to crack if the sea is not totally calm.

The dock workers are racing to meet their deadline.

There are only a few hours left before the tide comes in.

But still, the wind hasn't subsided.

The sky's not cleared.

Tugboats will pull the floating dock.

The Russians' machines are often in a dire state.

Detlef Mithand's company has bought tugboats abroad.

He's also supervised the modernizing of local ones.

It will be his responsibility that the tugboats' diesels won't fail.

But the decision about today's transport lies with the Russians.

More tugboats are called in. The transport will happen.

It will take seven tugboats to transport this dock, two to pull and five to

stabilize, to help keep the dock and its precious cargo from capsizing.

This is the last chance for the contractors at the Dnieper shipyard to

deliver the reactors fully sealed and ready for storage.

Now, good news starts to arrive.

The skies have cleared.

But unless the strong winds subside, this dock and its dangerous cargo

threaten an environmental disaster.

The seaward transfer of seven Russian nuclear sub-reactors is about to begin.

Water's pumped out of the dock. It starts to float on the high tide.

Seven powerful tugboats must push and pull the huge, loaded floating dock out

into the Arctic Fjord.

They can move only at a snail's pace.

At two knots, it will take them almost nine hours to their destination some 20

miles away, the storage site at Saida Bay in far north Russia, soon.

it will be impossible to turn back.

You really have to know what you're doing when you're working with one

decommissioned reactor, let alone multiple.

let alone on water, trying to transport them. That is a major engineering feat.

It's one of those things where, you know, if things work out well, then you

can take a sigh of relief.

But if they don't go well, you know, the consequences, of course, could be, you

know, pretty severe.

Certainly, if you wanted to say, well, let's go ahead and try to pick them back

up. Well, that might not be too easy, trying to pick a reactor up off the

bottom of the sea.

But at last, the weather is on their side.

Bright sun and calm seas promise safe passage for the reactors.

After nine hours, SIDA is in sight.

The tugboats guide the dock to the landing site.

Inch by inch, the dock is moved to its destination.

The dock is secured, but not its cargo.

The total weight of almost 12,000 tons must now be moved off the floating dry

dock and join the other 33 decommissioned sub-reactors already

moved here over the last four years, as time slowly renders them all

inert. It is up to these men to direct this final step.

choosing the exact place for each to permanently rest.

1,600 tons is not something to move twice.

Vazgen Ambatsumyan is the director at the Cytosite and a former submarine

officer. Among these reactors, there are two which Vazgen remembers very well.

He has served on the submarines they once powered.

If I remember correctly, it was back in 1982.

This was a very good submarine, very reliable.

It was the best sub I ever served on.

The service passed without any major disturbance.

The former submariner sees his duty in safely putting to rest what was once a

menace to the Western world.

The giants of the Cold War, stranded on a concrete foundation deep in the Arctic

hinterlands.

This is the best of all outcomes, for Vazgen as much as the rest of the world.

I have the privilege of knowing several Soviet submariners.

now retired, a number of Soviet, now Russian, submarine designers.

And these people, as individuals, are talented, dedicated, and really nice

guys.

So when you talk about a Soviet or a Russian submariner,

you're talking about a real person that you could probably get along with great.

Because of the complexities of decommissioning a nuclear sub, reactors

arrive here to Sida just once a year.

It will take the remainder of these men's careers to put to rest all of

Russia's once mighty northern fleet.

In fact, the long story of Red October won't end for another 70 years.

Only then will radioactive levels have dropped enough for the reactors to be

opened. Handled and fully disassembled. An inheritance for future generations.

But will these casings last that long?

After decades of waiting and dangerous indecision, these nuclear sub-reactors

have reached their final destination.

But they cannot be fully broken down for another 70 years when their potent

radioactivity has diminished.

Between now and then, the burning question, are they really sealed and

will they stay that way?

Today, Detlef Mithon and his team of German engineers will find out whether

the Russian reactors are properly sealed or emitting more

radiation than they calculated.

It is not enough to technically solve the problem to store the reactors.

They also must be kept safe from terrorists.

And nobody should accidentally take contamination out of this area.

This is why every visitor to this high-security zone is carefully

monitored.

A dosimeter will register the radioactive load accumulated in Mitan's

body when he is inside the nuclear storage site.

Mitan and his Russian colleague Vazgen Ambatsumyan will limit the time they

spend right next to the reactor.

Otherwise, they will accumulate more than their permitted dose of radiation.

But going in and going close to measure the radiation levels of each reactor is

vitally important.

We have 35 microsievert per hour here. That is almost a magnitude below

the permitted maximum level.

It means the units are absolutely tight.

Still we should leave this area now. We should not expose ourselves

unnecessarily to this level of radiation.

Nature dictates that radioactivity decreases with distance.

Here, around 100 feet distant from the reactor units, we have 170 nSv per hour.

That's a little more than natural background radiation levels.

You will find this in most parts of Europe, even without reactors.

In fact, this level of radiation you will measure in any town center.

The reactors are tight.

If they are properly serviced, They will remain tight for another century, when a

future generation will finish this job.

But they might ask about why so much effort was put into building these

nuclear subs in the first place.

I believe that missile submarines on both sides did have a role in preserving

the peace through deterrence, that neither side could risk going to nuclear

war or pushing the other to a point where it might go to nuclear war.

These behemoths of the Cold War, able to destroy the world in seconds, now will

take decades to be destroyed.

But maybe these submarines fulfilled their role.

Perfect killing machines.

maintaining peace with the threat of mutual annihilation.

This was the Cold War.

Today, hopefully, just a monument, suggesting that the nuclear threat of

Red October was all just practice.