Along the bay from the main naval shipyard at Murmansk is a huge, specially constructed pontoon known as "The Giant". If all goes according to plan, by mid-September this monster will have hauled the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk up from the depths of the Barents Sea, where it sank last August with 118 crewmen.
A team of British, Norwegian and Russian divers were expected to begin work this week end, 300ft below the Arctic waves. Their first task is to saw off the submarine's badly dam aged bow, which is to remain on the ocean floor, and cut 26 holes in the main hull.
Lifting cables, each capable of carrying 900 tonnes, will subsequently be lowered from the pontoon and secured in the holes with steel plugs. The Kursk will then be towed into the port of Murmansk and hoisted into a dry dock to yield up its corpses. But we are unlikely to learn why disaster struck this supposedly unsinkable submarine.
"The secrecy regime will be observed in full," said a spokesman for the Northern Fleet. "This is a military operation, not a civilian one, and security will be a prime concern." It is also an operation fraught with danger. There are 18 torpe does and 24 cruise missiles packed into the bow end: what if they are disturbed by vibrations from the massive robot chain saw?
The sub carries two unstable nuclear reactors: what if it falls on its side while being winched to the surface? Mr Alexei Yablokov, president of Russia's Centre for Environ mental Policy, has warned that "the reactors' emergency systems could stop functioning. An uncontrolled atomic reaction cannot be ruled out".
His misgivings are shared by the government of Norway, whose trawlers fish in the area where the Kursk lies _ and by the three international salvage firms which were originally hired to retrieve the wreck. In May they asked the Russian government to postpone the work until next summer, to allow more time for safety preparations. Moscow promptly sacked the consortium and hired two Dutch companies willing to start at once. Why the haste? It is hard to avoid the conclusion that President Vladimir Putin hopes to redeem his reputation from the battering it suffered at the time of the sinking.
While his grief-stricken citizens gazed at their TV screens, desperate for any sign that the sailors might be alive, the president continued to improve his suntan at the Black Sea resort of Sochi for almost a week before flying to Murmansk and offering belated condolences. To make up for his earlier nonchalance, he pledged to raise the Kursk and its crew as soon as weather permitted, regardless of cost.
According to recent opinion polls, many Russians believe that salvaging Mr Putin's pride is the main purpose of the exercise. Some also accuse him of neglecting the old tradition of allowing drowned mariners to remain in a common grave under the sea. One leading journalist declared on television this month that the money invested in recovering the Kursk _ estimated at US $84 million _ would be better spent on compensating the victims' families. Nevertheless, unless there is a nuclear accident, the Kremlin may yet turn the event into a PR triumph.
Regional officials, who are rather less excited by the imminent TV extravaganza, hope that at least a few visiting journalists will ask a question that has hardly been mentioned in the past year: if the Russian navy's most advanced atomic-powered attack submarine was not immune from disaster, how safe are its more primitive predecessors?
While attention turns once again to the Kursk, the governor of Murmansk, Mr Yuri Yevdokimov, accuses the West of ignoring a far greater potential catastrophe which would threaten the whole of northern Europe. He presides over the most radioactive region in the northern hemisphere, per haps even the most dangerous place on the planet.
In this Arctic peninsula, which includes the gigantic Kola power station, there are no fewer than 200 nuclear reactors _ some of them still aboard the 100 decommissioned sub marines which are laid up awaiting the removal of their spent nuclear fuel. Only eight will be dismantled this year, and the figure is unlikely to rise by much until extra money can be found.
According to Mr Alexander Ruzankin, a former nuclear sub marine commander who now leads the Murmansk committee for nuclear conversion and radiation safety, the total cost of dealing with radiation problems in the peninsula will be $1.5 billion.
"Although state financing is up, foreign assistance has actually fallen since 1999," he told me. "About 75 per cent of our financing is lacking. So we need help. But the international community has lost interest."
Meanwhile, dozens of decrepit submarines from the Northern Fleet are moored in the waters off Murmansk, looking like dead whales. They are in an alarmingly poor state of repair, but the spent nuclear fuel is still loaded in their reactors.
"`floating Chernobyls". Mr Pavel Steblin, director of the Nerpa shipyard, prefers a different analogy. "With each of these subs, we're talking about 200 Hiroshimas," he says. "And then there's the danger of radio active waste leakage, which could turn into an ecological disaster. If a tragedy occurs here, God forbid, the whole world will be affected."