"There has not been any formal communication from Russia to us about this," Per Strand, a director at the Norwegian Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority, told Reuters when asked if it had been informed that the submarine was nuclear-powered.
"We understand that they brought the situation under control quickly, under difficult conditions, and there was, as such, no nuclear incident that they were obligated to tell us about," he added.
"Still, we would have been happy to have been informed of such incidents."
Shoigu, a close Putin ally, told the Russian leader that the secretive submarine, which authorities said had been operating in the Barents Sea area, could and would be fully repaired.
"In our case, this is not just possible but obligatory," Shoigu said of the submarine's repair. "Right now, we are assessing how long it will take, how much work there is, and how we can carry it out."
A photograph of the deceased sailors circulated on social media on Wednesday. Its authenticity could not be immediately confirmed by Reuters, but it appeared to have been hung on the wall of a Russian military facility.
A tribute to the men accompanying the photograph called them heroes and said they had served on board a nuclear-powered deep-sea submersible known by the designation AS-31.
Russian media have previously reported, without official confirmation, that the vessel is designed to carry out special operations at depths where regular submarines cannot operate.
Made out of a series of inter-connected spheres, which are stronger than the conventional submarine construction and allow it to resist water pressure at great depths, Western military experts have suggested it is capable of probing and possibly even severing undersea communications cables.
Shoigu told Putin that the families of the dead sailors would be fully provided for, while the Russian leader, the commander-in-chief of the country's armed forces, ordered him to draw up proposals to posthumously grant those who were killed state awards.
An official investigation into the accident, likely to be shrouded in secrecy, is already underway.
The Kommersant business daily, citing unnamed sources familiar with the situation, has reported that it looks like the deadly fire was started by a powerful electrical short circuit.
You would think they would mention any readings from radiation detectors in Europe. Now dont tell us they all went inoperable lol. A simple, no abnormal levels have been detected in the region, would suffice.
At first I’ve read at DebkaFile Russian spy submarine inside Alaska’s U.S. territorial waters in firefight with a U.S. submarine the Russian submarine fired some Balkan torpedoe and dunk sunk the U.S. submarine, it said 14 Russian sailors killed bla-bla-blah... The Navy Times only mentioned 14 Russian sailors perished but didn’t say a U.S. submarine sunk. I speculated if 14 Russian sailors killed, U.S. submarine might had torpedoed the Russian submarine instead.
Here is the “hair on fire” thread from a couple days ago.
“Urgent consultations in Washington, Moscow on reported US-Russian submarines in firefight”
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3761147/posts
Most FReepers figured “Ah, it’s Debka. Not likely much accuracy here.”
A couple did the ususal “This sounds bad!!!!” or “Well, Debka is right at least 20% of the time! Could be big!” nonsense.
Thank you for that report. I can only imagine in my worst nightmares what those men must have gone through. And then to be able to save the boat - and the majority of the crew.
RIP.
Otto fuel? Runaway torpedo?
You are supposed to load the fish in the tube before it tries to swim.
“We understand that they brought the situation under control quickly, under difficult conditions, and there was, as such, no nuclear incident that they were obligated to tell us about,” he added.
OK, sure. I’m pretty sure nearly those exact phrases were spoken at Chernobyl.
“Moscow’s slow release of information about the incident has drawn comparisons with the opaque way the Soviet Union handled the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power station disaster...”
Moscow Times is very much against Putin, so they’d say something like this. But think about it, we knew with hours that 14 Russians were dead on a top secret nuclear submarine...getting information that quickly about an accident like that would be impressive, even if it was our sub.
Our irresponsible media always calls them nuclear submarines, even when they are only nuclear powered.
There is a huge difference in a nuclear powered spy sub and a sub carrying nuclear armaments.
It’s a silly pet peeve of mine.
Does this move the timetable to the end of the world as we know it to.. 10.2 years?
After 5 days we know more about a Russian nuke spy sub than we do about the biggest mass-shooting in US history after two years.
YOU live in Russia but just celebrated your freedom, btw...
The world’s first operational military submarine, the CSS Hunley, also carried the designation ‘AS-31.’