Russian blast victims mourned
Deaths of 5 nuclear engineers who were testing a new rocket raise questions about weapons program.
MOSCOW — Thousands of Russians attended the funerals Monday of five nuclear engineers killed by an explosion as they tested a new rocket, a tragedy that fueled radiation fears and raised new questions about a secretive weapons program.
The engineers, who died Thursday, were laid to rest Monday in Sarov, which hosts Russia’s main nuclear weapons research center, where they worked. Flags flew at half-staff in the closed city 230 miles east of Moscow, which has served as a base for Russia’s nuclear weapons program since the late 1940s.
The coffins were displayed in Sarov’s main square before being driven to a cemetery.
The Defense Ministry initially said the explosion at the navy’s testing range in Nyonoksa in the northwestern Arkhangelsk region killed two people and injured six others, but the state-controlled Rosatom nuclear concern acknowledged over the weekend that the blast also killed five of its workers and injured three others.
Rosatom director Alexei Likhachev praised the victims as “true heroes” and “a pride of our country.”
“Our further work on new weapons that we will certainly complete will be the best tribute to them,” Likhachev said during the funeral, according to Rosatom.
“We will fulfill the motherland’s orders and fully protect its security.”
Rosatom said the explosion occurred while the engineers were testing a “nuclear isotope power source” for a rocket engine. Authorities in nearby Severodvinsk reported a brief rise in radiation levels after the explosion, saying it lasted only about 30 minutes and didn’t pose any hazard.
Still, the statement from Severodvinsk’s administration came just as the Defense Ministry insisted that no radiation had been released, a claim that drew comparisons to Soviet-era attempts to cover up catastrophes.
Residents rushed to buy iodide, which can help limit the damage from radiation exposure.
After the explosion, authorities also closed part of Dvina Bay on the White Sea to shipping for a month, in what could be an attempt to prevent outsiders from seeing the recovery of the missile debris.
Neither the Defense Ministry nor Rosatom mentioned the type of rocket that exploded during the test, saying only that it had liquid propellant.
But Rosatom’s mention of a “nuclear isotope power source” led some Russian media to conclude it was the Burevestnik, a nuclear-powered cruise missile first revealed by President Vladimir Putin in March 2018 during his state of the nation address.
The U.S. and the Soviet Union considered nuclearpowered missiles in the 1960s, but they abandoned them as too unstable and dangerous.
Putin said the new missile would have an unlimited range, allowing it to circle the globe unnoticed, bypassing the enemy’s missile defense assets to strike undetected.
The president said the missile had successfully undergone the first tests, but observers were skeptical, arguing that such a weapon could be very difficult to handle and harmful to the environment.
Sergei Kirienko, Putin’s deputy chief of staff who previously led Rosatom, said at the funeral that the victims were aware of the danger but “took the risk, realizing that no one else would do the job better than them.” He said they would be posthumously honored.