A fire on board a Russian nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea killed two crew members but there was no threat of a radiation leak, the Defense Ministry said.
The fire in an electrical equipment room late on Wednesday was away from the submarine’s reactor and was put out by the crew, officials said. The vessel is being towed back to port.
The Russian navy’s safety record has been under scrutiny since the Kursk atomic submarine sank in the Barents Sea six years ago, killing all 118 crew members.
“Our initial information is that the fire broke out in a power distribution panel in compartment No. 6,” said a spokesman for Russia’s Northern Fleet.
“The crew did everything within their power to put out the fire. Two people suffered smoke inhalation from the thick smoke. They were evacuated from the submarine but it was not possible to save their lives.”
The submarine, the St. Daniel of Moscow, was a Viktor class attack submarine which would likely have been carrying torpedoes but not nuclear weapons, said Defense experts.
It entered service in 1990, making it one of the fleet’s more modern submarines.
The vessel was north of the Rybachiy peninsula near Russia’s border with Finland when it caught fire, Interfax news agency quoted navy sources as saying.
It was being taken to Vidyayevo, a Russian submarine base in the Barents Sea, the agency said. Vidyayevo is about 30 miles north of the Russian city of Murmansk, where just under one million people live.
Interfax quoted a navy source as saying: “The device protecting the nuclear reactor was activated. There is no radioactive contamination threat whatsoever.”
Safety worries
Russia has the second largest submarine fleet in the world after the United States. Many of its atomic submarines date to the Soviet Union.
Environmental campaigners -- and governments in some neighboring states -- worry about the condition of some of the vessels, especially decommissioned atomic submarines that are rusting in docks as they wait to be dismantled.
The same submarine had a fire in its torpedo compartment in 1994, said Nils Bohmer with the Norwegian environmental group Bellona, which tracks Russia’s submarine fleet.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if the reason for this fire is faulty equipment. The maintenance of the Northern Fleet is slightly neglected because of economic problems,” said Bohmer.
Russia’s navy has been dogged by accidents, of which the Kursk sinking was the worst in recent years.
Last year, the British navy helped rescue the crew of a Russian navy mini-submarine that was stranded 600 feet down in the Pacific with dwindling air supplies.
In July, the navy reported a spill of radioactive water on one of its submarines during repairs at Vidyayevo.
“This incident shows once again that we are faced with a very serious question: should we have these reactors at sea at all?” said Vladimir Tchouprov, head of the energy unit at Greenpeace Russia.
Bellona said its records showed the St. Daniel of Moscow had a crew of between 85 and 100 men.