Russia denies radiation leak after submarine inferno

A MASSIVE fire engulfed a Russian nuclear submarine in an Arctic shipyard yesterday, but there has been no radiation leak or injuries, officials said.

The fire on the Yekaterinburg nuclear submarine occurred while it was in dock for repairs at the Roslyakovo shipyard in the Murmansk region, said Irina Gretskaya, a spokeswoman for the Emergencies Ministry’s branch in the area.

“No-one has been hurt and there has been no radiation leak,” she said.

Spokesman for the defence ministry Igor Konashenkov told The Associated Press that all weapons had been unloaded from the sub and its reactor had been shut down before the repairs. He said the fire had started on the wooden scaffolding and then engulfed the submarine’s outer hull. Most modern submarines’ outer hulls are covered with rubber to make them less noisy and more difficult to detect.

The Yekaterinburg is a Delta-IV-class nuclear-powered submarine which carries 16 nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles. It was built in 1984.

Russian television stations showed footage from the scene, with flames reaching far into the night skies over the massive dock.

The fire sparked radiation fears and talk of the possible evacuation of local residents, but officials insisted it posed no danger. A dozen firefighting crews and a fire boat were fighting the flames.

Military prosecutors have launched an investigation into the causes of the fire.

Meanwhile, Russia’s deputy prime minister vowed yesterday to punish “sleepy” security officials after bloggers posted dozens of photos of an apparently unguarded strategic military rocket motor factory near Moscow.

Blogger Lana Sator said she and friends met not a soul, much less any security guards, as they roamed around state rocket-maker Energomash’s plant, snapping pictures, on five separate night-time excursions in recent months.

She posted almost 100 pictures of decrepit-looking hardware from inside a rusted engine-fuel testing tower, the plant’s control room and even its roof at lana-sator.livejournal.com

Russian media cited a senior space agency official who described the breach as a shock of the same scale as German pilot Mathias Rust’s brazen Cessna flight under Soviet radar to land on Red Square in 1987.

— Reuters