During the Cold War, as part of the nuclear arms race the Soviet Union built about 250 nuclear powered submarines and 5 nuclear powered surface ships. Poor environmental practices during the 45 years that the Soviet Union operated nuclear submarines polluted the fragile arctic environment. The Soviet Union has dumped more than twice as much. radioactive waste from nuclear submarine operations in the sea as other countries. The collapse of the Soviet Union led to the decommissioning of many submarines simultaneously and the large influx of radioactive waste overwhelmed the system with large quantities of spent nuclear fuel, solid and liquid radioactive waste

When the Arctic Military Environmental Cooperation (AMEC) Program was established in 1996 Russia, Norway, and the U.S. agreed to collaborate in addressing military-related environmental concerns in the arctic region. Priority consideration was given to demonstrate technologies that would eliminate bottlenecks in the dismantlement of decommissioned Russian nuclear submarines and to make this process safer and more efficient. These included development of a cask that could be used for the transfer and storage of spent nuclear fuel (SNF)– a first for Russia, construction of a SNF trans-shipment facility was constructed in Murmansk to facilitate rail transport to a fuel reprocessing center in the Urals and reduced the time from three months to three weeks, the first integrated Solid Radioactive Waste (SRW) processing and storage complex was constructed near Murmansk and ecological monitoring systems were developed and installed at the trans-shipment facility SRW complex. Ongoing projects are designs to keep decommissioned Russian nuclear submarines from sinking while awaiting dismantlement and to safely transport them to their dismantlement site.