Russian Nuclear Submarine Catches Fire During Repairs
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Version 0 of 1. MOSCOW — A Russian nuclear submarine caught fire while undergoing repairs in a dry dock outside the city of Arkhangelsk and smoke billowed from it through the day on Tuesday. But emergency officials told Russian news agencies that the submarine posed no risk of leaking radiation because its nuclear fuel and armaments had been removed before the work began. Ria, a state news agency, reported that sparks from welding most likely set off the fire on the vessel, an attack submarine of the same type as the submarine Kursk that sank in the Barents Sea in 2000. In the Kursk sinking and subsequent accidents on Russia’s nuclear submarines, the Russian Navy has been slow in acknowledging the gravity of emergencies. Firefighters planned to flood the dry dock to extinguish the fire, the news agency said. |