When the Soviet Union collapsed, the Russian Navy was left with roughly a hundred decommissioned nuclear submarines and no money to deal with them properly. This Timeline film follows the decades-long effort to dismantle those vessels and secure their reactor cores, many of which sat rusting in Arctic ports like Andreyeva Bay, leaking radioactive material into the surrounding water and soil. Engineers, naval officers, and environmental specialists explain the scale of the problem: spent nuclear fuel that stayed dangerous for generations, submarines scuttled or abandoned, and an international cleanup effort that eventually drew in funding and expertise from Western nations wary of what an unsecured Cold War arsenal could mean. Archive footage of Soviet submarine fleets at full strength contrasts with present-day shots of hulks being cut apart and reactor cores extracted for storage. The film treats the submarines as both military relics and a live environmental hazard, tracking the practical, unglamorous work of making them safe long after the Cold War that built them ended.