Word: subs
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...until 80 minutes later did an answer arrive at Bodo: the Soviets declined help, obviously not eager to have foreigners, especially military men from a NATO country, clambering on their sub or plucking their sailors from the sea. Later in the day, Soviet officials revealed that an air seal in the cooling unit of one of the vessel's nuclear reactors had ruptured. By that time, the stricken sub, an Echo II-class vessel with a crew of about 90 and believed to be carrying eight nuclear missiles, had begun crawling eastward under auxiliary diesel power, escorted by a Soviet...
...modern engineering achievements, few are as complex as the nuclear submarine; only manned space vehicles come close. And as is the case in space flight, accidents are bound to happen in a global armada of about 367 N-subs -- 195 Soviet, 133 U.S., 19 British, nine French and at least one Chinese. In the 1980s alone, according to a recent report by Greenpeace and Washington's Institute for Policy Studies, about 60 -- the number is a minimum due to spotty disclosure records -- nuclear sub accidents have been logged, including fires, collisions and leaks of radioactivity...
During the 1960s, both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. lost two subs. Neither side is known to have lost a sub during the '70s, though the Soviets had several fatal accidents, some of the deaths caused by radiation poisoning from reactor malfunctions. Then the Soviet navy ran into a streak of bad luck. In 1983 a Charlie I class with a crew of 100 went down in the Pacific off the Kamchatka peninsula. In 1986 a Yankee I-class boat was lost east of Bermuda. With the sinking of the Mike-class vessel in April, a prototype that is believed...
...expects sub mishaps to occur at a rate of one every three months, but naval experts predict the troubles will continue. "The incidents were coincidental," says James McCoy of London's International Institute for Strategic Studies, "but the problem is that the frequency of this sort of incident is higher in the Soviet navy per reactor than anywhere else." Admiral Sir James Eberle, a former NATO commander, agrees: "There are indications that their engineering is not of the standards needed in the nuclear business, that their attitudes to safety means their training standards are not adequate. Soviet subs are more...
Western experts have long had reservations about Soviet reactor design, but deficiencies may be even worse in the areas of fire prevention, systems monitoring and damage control. The most recent accident indicates that the Soviet navy may be facing another problem common to all sub fleets: long-term stress in aging vessels. The Echo IIs were built in the early and mid-'60s; last week's accident could point to insufficient maintenance...