The K-84 Yekaterinburg submarine was caught in fire on Decembe r 29 (Thursday) while it was in dry-dock at an Arctic shipyard in northwest Russian Murmansk Region. The fire begun at the wooden scaffolding and scattered to the rubber coated outer hull. Authorities saw that the cause of the fire was the Fire Safety Violation done by the workers.
The fire was put out Friday.
There was no report of injury or death but at least 9 people were brought to the hospital due to smoke inhalation. There were also people inside the sub while the outer hull was still on fire but it was not yet determined whether the people inside couldn’t get out of the sub or they might be advised to stay inside.
It was noted that the nuclear reactor of the submarine was shut down and the nuclear-tipped missiles were unloaded before the repair started. So, the authorities confirmed that there was no radiation leak.
The Russia’s Yekaterinburg submarine is a nuclear-powered submarine that belong to Delta IV Class. It is built on 1984 and is designed to carry nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles. It’s outer hull is coated by anechoic rubber that helps the submarine from being detected by sonar. The rubber absorbs the sound from the sonar which makes the sonar to detect it harder.
I thought that nuclear weapons are now starting to banish especially that the US and the allies are doing steps so that other nations like Iraq, Iran, North Korea and others will not manufacture the weapons. But this news just tell us that nuclear tipped missiles are still there. I just don’t know if it is similar to the two bombs used by the US in bombing Japan’s cities during the second world war.