[Several articles below]
MOSCOW—An aged Russian nuclear submarine being towed to a scrap yard sank in a gale in the Barents Sea Saturday, killing nine of the 10 crew aboard in an accident that raised concerns of environmental damage and further dented the deteriorating navy's prestige.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov
The storm tore off pontoons attached to the K-159 submarine for its trip to the dismantling point. Defense 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 one: 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 3 nautical miles northwest of Kildin Island near the entrance to Kola Bay, Russian military officials said.
Navy deputy chief Adm. Viktor Kravchenko said one sailor was rescued and the bodies of two others were pulled out of the 50-degree waters. Ivanov said Saturday evening that "I'm forced to recognize ... 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," Alexander Nikitin, a retired Russian navy captain who heads the St. Petersburg branch of the Bellona Foundation, a Norwegian environmental group, told The Associated Press.
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 scrap yard some 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.
The K-159 sank about 4 a.m. local time in waters 560 feet deep after four pontoons attached for the towing operation were ripped of the sub during a battering storm.
Retired Adm. 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 shouldn't 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 sinking "testifies to how the sea demands discipline, it does not forgive any kind of blunder or mistake," Putin said while conducting Berlusconi on a tour of a Russian missile cruiser anchored off Sardinia.
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 Defense Ministry quickly reported the K-159 accident. "Our military and political leadership has at least learned some lessons from the Kursk tragedy," retired Capt. Igor Kurdin, the head of the St.Petersburg-based Submariners' Club, said in a telephone interview.
The Kursk was raised from the Barents Sea floor in October 2001 by a Dutch consortium in an unprecedented salvage effort that cost the Russian government about $65 million. Ivanov said the K-159 also would be raised.
The condition of Russia's aging nuclear submarine fleet has long raised international concern. Russian officials said it will cost an estimated $3.9 billion to scrap more than 100 mothballed nuclear submarines that await destruction. Yet last year, the Russian government budgeted just $70 million for improving nuclear safety in the country as a whole.
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 maneuvers, killing 52.
Nine of 10 in Russian ship die en route to scrap yard
MOSCOW - Russian authorities abandoned hope yesterday of finding survivors among seven missing crew members of a nuclear-powered submarine that sank before dawn as it was being towed to a scrap yard.
One survivor was plucked from the Barents Sea shortly after the accident, and two bodies were recovered. There is no likelihood of finding additional survivors, Defense Minister Sergei B. Ivanov told reporters after arriving in Severomorsk, the main base of Russia's Northern Fleet.
"The sub went to the bottom ... with an open deckhouse," Ivanov said, which meant seawater would have flooded the ship. "It is impossible to find any of the remaining seven crew members alive."
Adm. Viktor Kravchenko, the Russian navy's chief of staff, said earlier that the sea was so cold that any crew members who made it out of the sinking vessel could not have survived more than 40 minutes.
"While listening to the hull of the submarine with the rescue vessel's equipment, there were no sounds coming from inside," Kravchenko said.
Officials said there were no weapons aboard the submarine, which was decommissioned in 1989.
Russia's last major submarine accident was the sinking of the Kursk on Aug. 12, 2000, after a torpedo exploded on board. That disaster, also in the Barents Sea, took the lives of all 118 crew members. Twenty-three of those men survived in the sunken vessel for hours, perhaps longer, waiting in vain for rescue.
While bad weather played a role in yesterday's sinking of submarine K-159, Ivanov placed primary blame on those involved in the towing operation.
The 1960s-era attack submarine was being towed on four pontoons from its base in the town of Gremikha to a dismantling plant in Polarnyy, nearly 200 miles to the northwest. The pontoons tore off in a storm, and the submarine sank in water that was 560 feet deep, the Defense Ministry said. It went down about 3 miles off Kildin Island.
Ivanov said he had been informed that "all the imaginable safety rules were broken during the towing," and also blamed a poor job of fastening the vessels to the pontoons.
"Technical standards of towing were ignored during the voyage, and there was no prompt reaction to the severance of the submarine from the tugboat," he said.
The crew was warned to abandon the submarine 40 minutes before it sank, the Russian news agency Interfax reported, quoting a Northern Fleet spokesman. But K-159 was one of two nuclear submarines being towed at the time, and the presence of the second vessel confused rescuers, the agency reported.
Ivanov said that Sergei Zhemchuzhny, commander of the submarine unit based in Gremikha, was being relieved of his duties pending an investigation. "I'm not a judge," he said. "A court will determine who is guilty of the tragedy."
But he pointedly added that he supported suspension of the commander. "The investigation will be conducted very thoroughly and scrupulously, and it has begun," he said.
Russian President Vladimir V. Putin was on board the Russian missile cruiser Moskva off the coast of Sardinia, accompanied by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi during a summit.
"The tragedy in the Barents Sea once again brings out the fact that seagoing requires discipline, that the sea doesn't forgive mistakes," Putin told the ship's crew.
"There will be a thorough investigation of the wreckage."
At the time of the Kursk sinking, Putin was on vacation and drew criticism that he did not respond quickly enough to the disaster.
K-159 is only one-quarter the size of the Kursk, so it is realistic to raise it from the seabed to scrap it properly, Ivanov said.
Because the submarine's two nuclear reactors were shut down when the ship was decommissioned in 1989, the nuclear materials on board pose no environmental threat, authorities said.
The Norwegian environmental group Bellona, however, questioned that assumption.
"It is clear that the old reactor of the submarine is not waterproof, as it should be," Igor Kudrik, an expert with the foundation, which has long studied Russia's nuclear arsenal, said in a telephone interview from Oslo. "So to our mind, the radiation leaks started right after the vessel sank."
About 140 decommissioned Russian nuclear submarines are awaiting dismantling, and "such incidents cannot be excluded in the future," Kudrik said.
LA Times staff writer Yakov Ryzhak in Moscow contributed to this article.
Russian officials say that only one person survived when a submarine with ten crew on board sank in stormy waters in the Barents Sea this morning. One person was rescued, when the Russian submarine sank at 4 am about five kilometres off Kildin Island. Officials say the vessel was being towed on four floating hulls, when one tore off in stormy weather and destabilized the the submarine. Its nuclear reactor had already been neutralized before it went down because the sub was about to be scrapped. Three years ago, the nuclear submarine Kursk sank in the Barents sea with 118 crew, who all perished in Russia's worst naval disaster.
source: http://www.dw-world.de/english/0,3367,4789_W_959264,00.html 1sep03
SEVEROMORSK, Russia (AFP) - Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov said negligence was to blame for the sinking of a nuclear submarine that left nine seamen dead as authorities declared a day of mourning amid echoes of the Kursk disaster just three years earlier.
Speaking after the wreck of the K-159 submarine which foundered early Saturday was located on the seabed at a depth of 238 metres (780 feet), Ivanov denounced what he described as a long-standing Russian habit of ignoring orders.
"This was yet another example of the Russian habit of relying on chance and hoping that things will work. It confirms once again the simple truth that all instructions and orders must be taken seriously," he told reporters aboard the cruiser Marshal Ustinov while monitoring search operations in the Barents Sea.
"If they are not observed," the Interfax news agency quoted him as saying, "sooner or later tragedies involving the death of innocent people occur."
President Vladimir Putin on Saturday said the incident highlighted the need for strict discipline in the armed forces.
The tragedy "shows the need for discipline. The sea does not pardon mistakes or inexactitude," he said.
The Northern Fleet observed a day of mourning in line with instructions issued by Ivanov late Saturday after it was confirmed that all but one of the submarine's 10 crewmembers had perished in the sinking.
The governor of the Murmansk region where the Northern Fleet is based also declared a day of mourning in his region.
The K-159 nuclear submarine sank three miles (five kilometres) off Kildin island in the Barents Sea, northwestern Russia, early Saturday after one of the four pontoons towing it to port to be scrapped broke away in a storm, causing it to founder.
The submarine is "lying horizontally with a three-degree list to starboard, and its conning-tower hatch is open," he said.
He said searchers would continue their work "to help prepare an operation to raise the submarine and the seven crewmembers who are most probably inside."
No change has been observed in the levels of radiation in the waters in the vicinity, Ivanov added.
Ecologists have expressed fears over possible radiation leaks, but Ivanov said there were "no grounds for concern either now or in the future."
Defence ministry officials in Moscow said the 40-year-old submarine's nuclear reactor had been shut down in 1989 when the sub was decommissioned, that the sub was not carrying any weapons and that there was no danger of pollution.
Russian navy commander Vladimir Kuroyedov, accompanying Ivanov, blamed the accident on "disregard for instructions and orders by those responsible for the submarine and by the fleet commanders."
"The sea never leaves such negligence unpunished," Interfax quoted him as saying.
On Saturday Ivanov suspended the naval captain who was in charge of towing the K-159 to the Polyarni shipyard, on the Kola peninsula.
The accident was a bitter reminder of the tragedy of the Kursk nuclear submarine which sank in the Barents Sea on August 12, 2000, after a fuel leak from a torpedo caused an explosion. All 188 crew on board perished.
Putin was strongly criticised during the Kursk disaster for the sluggish response of the government and naval authorities and the secrecy in which the affair was shrouded.
The Russian president, who is holidaying in Sardinia as the guest of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, has promised a "thorough investigation" into the sinking.
His prompt reaction with the immediate sending of Ivanov to the scene contrast sharply with the events of August 2000, when he avoided commenting on the disaster for days.
source: http://www.pacific.net.sg/article.php?id=211412 1sep03
If no one died, it would not be considered as an accident
Russian nuclear submarine K-159 sank in the Barents Sea. The tragedy took place at 4 a.m. three miles north-west of Kildin Island, as the cruiser was being towed to a scrapyard. The submarine sank at the depth of 170 meters. Members of the towing crew were killed, one submariner - Maksim Tsibulsky - managed to stay alive.
According to the information from KSF.Ru online news agency, the temperature of the water on the site of the accident is ten degrees above zero [50°F]. A human being can stay safe for ten minutes in such cold water without protective gear, the maximum is 45 minutes. There is practically no hope to save anyone else of the crew. The number of victims reportedly counts nine men.
K-159 nuclear-powered submarine (project 627A, Kit (Whale), "November" on NATO-s classification, class SSN) was built in 1962. The nuclear fuel from the reactor's active zone was unloaded 15 years ago, the sub was removed from the Russian Naval arsenal on July 16th 1989. The towing of the submarine to SRZ-10 factory (to be dismantled there) started on August 28th 2003. The sub was being towed on four pontoons from its base in the town of Gremikha. The pontoons were torn off by the fierce storm on August 29th overnight. "The submarine lost steadiness and sank," a spokesman for the Russian Defense ministry said.
There were ten crewmembers on board the submarine. One of them was saved, two dead bodies were found, according to the latest information. Rescue works are continuing. Russian Naval Commander Vladimir Kuroyedov left for the headquarters of the Northern Navy. Vessels the Pamir and the Altay, An-26 and Il-38 aircraft are conducting the rescue works.
Several high-ranking officials have already commented on the accident. "There is no need to raise the submarine urgently, because the active zone of the nuclear reactor was unloaded," Naval Admiral Vladimir Chernavin stated. The submarine did not carry nuclear weapons aboard, the nuclear reactor is safe. Most likely, the submarine will remain on the sea bottom, because the sub is useless and it does not pose an environmental danger. In fact, it was the metal scrap that sank, and the state will not have to pay to dismantle it.
Project 627A is the project of the very first domestic nuclear-powered submarines. If no one died, it would not be even considered as an accident. Even if crewmembers managed to jump overboard, they would not be able to stay alive for long in the freezing and storming water of the Barents Sea. K-159 is the first sunken submarine of the mentioned project.
The fate of another nuclear Soviet submarine of the same project, K-8, was dramatic as well. According to the information from Arkhangelsk-based NOMKA news agency, the first breakdown on board the submarine took place in October of 1960, when the leaking reactor radiated 13 crewmembers. K-8 sank on April 12th 1970, during a large-scale military exercise. The vessel was not prepared to participate in the exercise. A fire broke out on board the sub, the electric power was lost, but the cruiser surfaced. Diesel generators were out of order, it was impossible to use them. The crew was doing its best to save the submarine, but the efforts failed. The cruiser sank at the depth of 4,680 meters, 52 members of the crew were killed, others were saved. All 627A project submarines were removed from the naval arsenal in 1989-1992.
source: http://english.pravda.ru/main/18/87/343/10799_submarine.html 1sep03
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