Word: kursk
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...Captain Gennadi Lyachin and nearly a score of others crowded into the control room of the nuclear submarine Kursk, Saturday, Aug. 12, was to be a day of pride and triumph. The vessel, one of the Russian navy's newest and most powerful cruise-missile submarines, was at periscope depth during the second day of a 30-ship exercise in the Barents Sea, about 90 miles northeast of Murmansk. These were the biggest Russian naval maneuvers in several years, and it was a rare opportunity for Lyachin to put his boat through its paces with a full-scale task force...
...noon, the Kursk had successfully completed a torpedo-firing run and was preparing for another. Lyachin, 45, one of Russia's most experienced submarine officers, radioed the task-force commander for permission to fire. The transmission was monitored by the American surveillance ship U.S.N.S. Loyal, lurking about 186 miles west-northwest of the Kursk, as was the commander's "permission granted." But instead of the sounds of torpedoes being blown from launch tubes, sonar operators aboard U.S. submarines working with the Loyal heard two explosions, one short and sharp, the second an enormous, thundering boom. A Norwegian seismic institute also...
Even so, there would be no salvation for the men whose duties placed them in the reactor control rooms and the turbine and machinery spaces behind the reactors. The flash flooding in the forward part of the Kursk would have caused the bow to drop, pitching the 14,000-ton boat into a steep dive with steam turbines still delivering power to its twin screws. In seconds, the sub would have pounded into the seabed some 350 ft. beneath the storm-driven surface of the Barents Sea with a shock that would have hurled survivors against equipment and bulkheads. Finally...
...Information is sketchy about the fate of the Kursk: Although Moscow insists that the vessel's two nuclear reactors hadn't failed, they've clearly been shut off, leaving the vessel unable to generate the ballast to surface. The use of the world collision, of course, begs the question of what exactly the Kursk is supposed to have struck. The Barents Sea's strategic location makes it one of the world's most heavily trafficked submarine routes, but there's no indication thus far that the stricken vessel was hit by another...
...Russian authorities report that the Kursk represents no nuclear danger to the region - its reactors were shut down, and it wasn't carrying nuclear weapons. But even if it is rescued, that won't make Scandinavia a whole lot safer from the risk of nuclear disaster in the Murmansk region, where a full fifth of the world's nuclear reactors and fuel are concentrated, often aboard decrepit vessels that don't exactly inspire confidence. After all, one came close to meltdown in 1995 when an unpaid bill prompted a utility company to shut down its port electricity supply, disabling...