Nine die in Russian submarine sinking

Nine of the crew of an aged Russian nuclear submarine which sunk while being towed to a scrapyard in a gale in the Barents Sea died today.

The accident has raised concerns of environmental damage and further dented the deteriorating navy’s prestige.

The storm tore off pontoons attached to the K-159 submarine for its trip to the dismantling point.

Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov also said the ship’s conning tower had been left open and he fired the commander of the submarine division that included the K-159.

“In addition to objective factors – sea waves – there were subjective ones: technical standards of towing were ignored during the voyage,” Ivanov said.

The two nuclear reactors of the 40-year-old submarine have been shut down since it was decommissioned in 1989 and radiation levels remained normal after it sank about three nautical miles (5.5km) north-west of Kildin Island near the entrance to Kola Bay, Russian military officials said.

Navy deputy chief Admiral Viktor Kravchenko said one sailor was rescued and the bodies of two others were pulled out of the 10 degrees C (50 F) waters.

Ivanov said that ”I’m forced to recognise ... that it is impossible to find any of the remaining seven crew members alive”.

The Chief Military Prosecutor’s Office said Navy officials were being charged with violating navigation rules and “it is already obvious that the Northern Fleet Command broke the law and didn’t show enough resolution in carrying out rescue operations,” the Interfax news agency reported.

Although the navy insisted that the K-159’s nuclear reactors posed no environmental hazard, environmentalists quickly warned of a possible radiation leak that could contaminate the busy fishing area.

“The risks are very high,” said Alexander Nikitin, a retired Russian navy captain who heads the St Petersburg branch of the Bellona Foundation, a Norwegian environmental group.

Nikitin said that the uranium fuel, which was loaded into the submarine’s reactors some 30 years ago, was far more radioactive and dangerous than a fresher load would be.

He harshly blamed the navy for moving the crumbling, leaky submarine to the scrapyard some 350km (190 miles) away from its base, saying that its nuclear reactors should have been removed prior to the journey.

“They have chosen the cheapest and the worst option,” said Nikitin, whose report on nuclear risks posed by the Russian navy led to his arrest in 1996 and 11-month imprisonment on treason charges. He was acquitted in 1999.

Retired Admiral Eduard Baltin recalled that the K-159 was already taking water when it made its last mission in 1983.

He said on Echo of Moscow radio that the navy should not have placed the crew on the submarine, saying that “it was like putting them in a barrel full of holes”.

President Vladimir Putin was informed of the accident while on the island of Sardinia for a three-day meeting with Italian leader Silvio Berlusconi.

The tour was apparently intended to boost the prestige of the Russian navy, badly hurt by the August 2000 sinking of the Kursk nuclear submarine which killed all 118 men on board.

In contrast to the Kursk disaster, when the government issued scarce and conflicting information, the Defence Ministry quickly reported the K-159 accident.

“Our military and political leadership has at least learned some lessons from the Kursk tragedy,” said retired Captain Igor Kurdin, the head of the St Petersburg-based Submariners’ Club.

The Kursk was raised from the Barents Sea floor in October 2001 by a Dutch consortium in an unprecedented salvage effort. Ivanov said the K-159 would also be raised.

The condition of Russia’s ageing nuclear submarine fleet has long raised international concern.

Russian officials said it will cost billions to scrap over 100 mothballed nuclear submarines that await destruction.

The K-159 entered service in 1963. A November-class submarine, it was intended for attacking enemy ships with conventional or low-yield nuclear torpedoes.

“It was a workhorse of the Cold War,” Kurdin said.

A submarine of the same type, the K-8, caught fire and sank in April 1970 in the Bay of Biscay during naval manoeuvres, killing 52.