Rus­si­an nuclear sub­ma­ri­ne Kras­no­dar near Mur­mansk on fire

The rus­si­an nuclear sub­ma­ri­ne Kras­no­dar is on fire sin­ce Mon­day mor­ning near Mur­mansk. Kras­no­dar is a Oscar II class boat, simi­lar to the Kursk, and one of the last Rus­si­an sub­ma­ri­nes from the days of the Cold War to be taken out of ser­vice in 2012 for scrap­ping.

Accor­ding to the web­site Barents­ob­ser­ver, scrap­ping a nuclear sub­ma­ri­ne starts with rem­oval of spent nuclear fuel. Next is remo­ving the rub­ber cover of the outer hull. This seems to be a dan­ge­rous pro­cess, as fires of the outer rub­ber lay­er during rem­oval have occur­red befo­re more than once. It seems as if the pre­sent fire is a simi­lar case.

The rem­oval of the nuclear reac­tors is the last step of scrap­ping a nuclear sub­ma­ri­ne. In other words, the 2 reac­tors are still on board, with con­sidera­ble amounts of radio­ac­ti­ve mate­ri­als.

Kras­no­dar is in the Rus­si­an navy shi­py­ard Ner­pa north of Mur­mansk, only about 100 km from the Nor­we­gi­an bor­der. Despi­te an infor­ma­ti­on exch­an­ge agree­ment, Nor­we­gi­an aut­ho­ri­ties were infor­med by media about the fire befo­re they got any infor­ma­ti­on from offi­ci­al Rus­si­an sources. The Nor­we­gi­an dis­trict gover­nor descri­bes a fire on a nuclear sub­ma­ri­ne as a serious issue.

Accor­ding to Rus­si­an infor­ma­ti­on, no radio­ac­ti­vi­ty has escaped so far.

Source: Barents­ob­ser­ver

Do you agree that spitsbergen-svalbard.com is a gre­at re­source for any arc­tic enthu­si­ast?

Ever­y­thing is available for free, no pay­wall, no regis­tra­ti­on, no paid adver­ti­sing, and all this in spi­te of con­stant cos­ts and effort. Plea­se help us to keep it that way, wit­hout pay­wall and paid ads, and sup­port us through Ste­ady!