Russians Release Greenpeace Ship That Tried to Inspect Atomic Dumps

Russian authorities Wednesday released a Greenpeace ship they had detained nine days earlier after environmentalists aboard the vessel tried to investigate secret nuclear dumps on the floor of the Arctic Sea.

The ship sailed out of Murmansk under Russian escort late Wednesday afternoon, ending a standoff with Russian border guards who accused Greenpeace of violating territorial waters.

Satisfied that the Greenpeace crew did not damage state interests during the vessel’s brief foray into Russian waters, security forces released the boat without pressing charges, Yevgeny Znamensky, a spokesman for the border guards, told the Itar-Tass news agency.

The detention forced Greenpeace activists to cancel their mission--measuring radiation levels around a scuttled K-27 nuclear submarine that the Russians sank in the shallow waters off Novaya Zemlya in 1982 after several accidents had damaged the submarine’s reactors.

“We weren’t able to take any samples of radiation on the sea floor,” Greenpeace spokesman Chris Zimmer said. “But we were able to publicize the extent of the contamination in the area and call attention to the fact that a survey needs to be done.”

Russian authorities had denied Greenpeace’s repeated requests to explore the Arctic Circle dumping grounds, and when the group’s ship cruised within 20 miles of Russian land Oct. 12, coast guard vessels fired several warning shots across its deck. Later that day, they seized the ship, the Dutch-registered Solo, and ordered both crew and boat to remain in Murmansk.

The Rainbow Warrior, which has undertaken several high-profile missions for the international environmental group, is monitoring deforestation in eastern Russia and studying the decline of fisheries in the waters off Vladivostok.