More than 20 people were killed and another 21 injured in an accident aboard a Russian nuclear submarine in the Pacific Ocean, the navy said on Sunday, in the worst submarine disaster since the Kursk sank eight years ago.
A Russian naval spokesperson said 208 people were on board the submarine when an accident involving the activation of a fire extinguishing system occurred during sea trials. He said the nuclear reactor was intact and radiation levels were normal.
The death toll makes it the worst mishap for the accident-prone Russian navy since the Kursk nuclear submarine sank in the Barents Sea in 2000 with the loss of all 118 sailors.
”More than 20 people were killed on a nuclear submarine in the Pacific Ocean during routine testing as a result of the unsanctioned functioning of the fire extinguishing systems,” the navy spokesperson, Igor Dygalo, said by telephone.
”The reactor section [of the submarine] is working properly,” he said. ”The radiation levels on the ship are normal.”
Dygalo did not give the name or class of the submarine or specify where it was located. Some of those killed were from a shipbuilding company, he added. He said a Russian destroyer had brought the injured to Vladivostok, on Russia’s Far East coast.
President Dmitry Medvedev ordered the Defence Ministry to carry out a full inquiry into the causes of the accident, the Kremlin press service said.
Former Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin, who had been president for just a few months at the time of the Kursk disaster, was criticised at home for his slow reaction to that incident.
Russia’s navy has suffered a string of fatal accidents, despite sharp increases in funding and Kremlin attempts to use its largely Soviet-era fleet to project an image of strength abroad and at home.
Russia’s navy said a Russian anti-submarine destroyer, the Admiral Tributs, had taken the injured from the submarine to Vladivostok for treatment.
”The injured have been brought to the coast where they are receiving qualified medical assistance in the naval hospital,” Dygalo said.
The agency quoted a source in the Amur Shipbuilding Enterprise as saying the accident occurred aboard the Nerpa, a Project 971 Shchuka-B attack submarine, known inside Nato as an Akula-class submarine.
The Nerpa — which has been modernised in recent years — embarked on trials on the open seas late last month, according to local media.
Construction of the Nerpa was started in 1991 but funding dried up in the chaos of the 1990s.
RIA quoted a highly placed official in the Pacific Fleet as saying the accident happened in the bow of the submarine, which the navy said was making its way back to the coast after the accident.
In August 2005, seven Russian sailors were freed with help from a British rescue crew after three days trapped inside an AS-28 mini-submarine 180m down in the Pacific with dwindling air supplies. – Reuters