Soviet Submarine K-159 - Decommissioning and After-service Life

Decommissioning and After-service Life

K-159 was decommissioned on 30 May 1989 and laid up in Gremikha; her reactors were not defuelled. She remained in layup with little or no maintenance for 14 years. Her outer hull rusted until in many places it had "the strength of foil".

The poor condition of Russia's fleet of decommissioned nuclear submarines concerned many other countries, and in the summer of 2003, five countries made a combined donation of more than US$200 million in support of decommission and disposal of those hulks. In anticipation of receiving those funds, Admiral Gennady Suchkov, Commander of the Northern Fleet, decided to tow all the 16 laid up submarines from Gremikha to shipyards where they would be dismantled. K-159 was the 13th hulk to be towed.

Because K-159's hull was rusted through in so many places, it was kept afloat by spot-welding large empty tanks to her sides as pontoons. Those tanks, however, were manufactured in the 1940s, were not air-tight, and were no better maintained than the submarine's hull.