Mysterious missile explosion in Russia raises questions

MOSCOW» A deadly explosion Aug. 8 at a naval weapons testing range in northwestern Russia. A brief spike in radiation levels. An evacuation order issued, then rescinded, for a nearby village.

Last week’s mysterious accident on the White Sea, along with changing or contradictory information from Russian authorities, has led to speculation about what happened and what type of weapon was involved, and has even raised comparisons to the 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

A testing range was set up near the village of Nyonoksa, about 615 miles north of Moscow on the White Sea in 1954, when the Soviet Union’s missile program was still in its nascent phase. It has served as the main ground for testing a variety of missiles used by the Soviet and then Russian navy ever since.

They included anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles of various types, as well as intercontinental ballistic missiles intended for the nation’s nuclear submarines.

The authorities routinely have closed various parts of the White Sea’s Dvina Bay to navigation during missile tests, and the 500 residents of Nyonoksa regularly have been asked to leave their homes, usually for a few hours at a time, apparently as a routine precaution during military activity.

The area has been off limits to the outsiders, but tourists who ask for advance permission have been allowed to visit Nyonoksa, the site of a beautiful 18th century wooden church.

The village is connected by rail to Severodvinsk, a city of 183,000 people about 19 miles to the east.

First word of the explosion came from the Russian Defense Ministry, which initially said the Aug. 8 blast of a liquid-propellant rocket engine killed two people and injured six others. It said in a statement that no radiation had been released, although the city administration in Severodvinsk reported a brief rise in radiation levels — a contradiction that recalled Sovietera coverups of disasters such as Chernobyl.

Two days later, Russia’s statecontrolled nuclear agency Rosatom acknowledged that the explosion occurred on an offshore platform during tests of a “nuclear isotope power source” and that it killed five nuclear engineers and injured three others. It’s not clear whether those casualties were in addition to the earlier dead and injured.

Russian authorities then closed part of Dvina Bay to shipping for a month, an apparent attempt to keep outsiders from seeing an operation to recover the missile debris.

On Monday, the five engineers were buried in Sarov, a city that hosts Russia’s main nuclear weapons research center.

The city administration in Severodvinsk, which has a huge shipyard that builds nuclear submarines, said the radiation levels there rose to 2 microsieverts per hour — approximately 20 times the area’s average reading — for about 30 minutes Aug. 8. It then returned to the area’s average natural level of 0.1 microsieverts per hour.

Emergency officials issued a warning to all workers to stay indoors and close the windows. Frightened residents rushed to buy iodine, which can help reduce risks from exposure to radiation.

On Monday, Nyonoksa residents were asked to leave the village for several hours, causing new worries. The order was quickly rescinded.