KOMSOMOLSK-ON-AMUR: A senior Russian official suggested yesterday an atomic-powered submarine could have been carrying nuclear weapons when it was engulfed by fire during repairs at a dockyard in December.
Authorities initially said all nuclear weapons aboard the submarine Yekaterinburg had been unloaded well before a fire broke out on December 29th, and that there had been no risk of a radiation leak. Last week, respected magazine Vlast quoted Russian navy sources as saying the submarine was carrying 16 R-29 intercontinental ballistic missiles, each armed with four nuclear warheads, during the fire set off by welding sparks.
Deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin yesterday said that under instructions from 1986, five years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the removal of weapons is not required during minor repairs. “Was the kind of repair that was being done on the Yekaterinburg such that it required the removal of torpedoes and ballistic missiles?” Mr Rogozin told reporters without answering that question directly.
But he added: “It was not a medium-sized repair, when a boat goes in for medium-sized, capital repair, of course everything is removed; when a boat goes in and they say we have some small problem, it is never removed.”
The fire started when welding sparks ignited wooden scaffolding around the 18,200-tonne submarine at the Roslyakovo docks, 1,500km (900 miles) north of Moscow. Vlast said Russia had been “on the brink of the biggest catastrophe since the time of Chernobyl”. Mr Rogozin said federal investigators were expected to issue a report on the fire on Friday. – (Reuters)