[Correspondent] All the nuclear waste storage problems of northwest Russia are concentrated in Andreyev Bay.

This is where the shore engineering base for nuclear submarines and the nuclear waste storage facility are located. The storage conditions of these potentially dangerous materials do not comply with modern requirements.

[A. Zolotkov, captioned as chemical engineer, Murmansk Shipping Company] You only need to think back to the accident in Andreyev Bay in the 1980s, which led to quite a large amount of radioactive water entering the bay. As a result of this, the entire storage facility had to be refilled.

[Correspondent] Nuclear specialists and the command of the Northern Fleet never tire of saying that the amount of spent nuclear fuel here poses a threat to us all.

The fleet is finding it increasingly difficult to maintain control of written-off submarines - it has neither the manpower nor the resources.

Keeping just one nuclear submarine afloat costs the fleet 4,500m roubles a year. And there are about 100 written-off submarines on the Kola peninsula.

It would only take one of them to sink and the result would be a tragedy more terrible than Chernobyl and would clearly affect not only the peninsula.

The lack of funds has brought yet another problem - the inability to remove radioactive waste on time.

Temporary storage points are now full to bursting point and it would take over 150 special trains to have the waste sent off for reprocessing.

But there is only one such specially-equipped train, with four to six wagons, in all of Russia. The removal process is therefore proceeding at a snail's pace.

Russia has signed the START-2 treaty, under which many more nuclear submarines will have to be taken out of service and have their weapons removed.

The professionals think it will cost over 20,000bn roubles to put the treaty into effect.

Source: Russia TV channel, Moscow, in Russian 0800 gmt 4 Nov 97