AFP May 05, 2011
Nuclear leak forces Russian icebreaker back to port
By Dmitry Zaks
MOSCOW — Russia launched an urgent rescue mission on Thursday after one of its atom-powered icebreakers developed a nuclear leak in the frozen seas of the Arctic and was forced to abandon its mission.
The Rosatomflot nuclear fleet said in a statement that an "insignificant increase in activity" had been reported on board its 21,000-tonne Taimyr icebreaker.
But the incident was serious enough to force the vessel to abandon its mission and begin a five-day journey back to its home port in the northwestern city of Murmansk.
"What we are most concerned about right now is movement along the waterways," the state-run RIA Novosti news agency quoted top Rosatomflot official Andrei Smirnov as saying.
The fleet official said another icebreaker was being dispatched to the region to help the Taimyr's journey back to port. But it was not clear how far it remained from the stricken craft.
The incident was reported in the Kara Sea -- a part of the Arctic Ocean about 2,000 kilometres (1,300 miles) east of Norway's border.
The Taimyr has a single 171-megawatt reactor that generates about one-third of the energy of the Fukushima 1 reactor that suffered in the Japanese earthquake and tsunami disaster in March.
Rosatomflot officials said the increased levels of radiation were initially detected in the air ventilation system surrounding the 23-year-old icebreaker's reactor core.
They added that air quality remained normal outside the outer protecting covering.
But other details -- including how many people were on board the ship -- remained unclear and the statement suggested that the crew was looking into the possibility of the leak becoming more serious.
"If the situation deteriorates, the reactor system will be shut down and the cooling process will begin," Rosatomflot said.
It stressed however that the incident at the moment could be registered as a zero on the seven-point International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale -- a level officially defined as "bearing no safety significance".
The Arctic sea accident revived memories of the loss of the Kursk nuclear submarine after an accidental torpedo explosion that claimed the lives of 118 Russian sailors in August 2000.
Russian officials were painfully slow to acknowledge the scale of that disaster and state television only began devoting full attention to it nearly 48 hours after the Kursk sank.
No information about the Taimyr's nuclear leak had appeared on national state television within eight hours of the initial RIA Novosti report and fleet officials took pains to downplay its importance.
"This is not an emergency situation. These types of incidents happen -- not often, but they do occur," Smirnov told the state-run RIA Novosti news agency.
But military analysts said the incident as described thus far -- while posing no serious environmental danger -- put the crew's lives at risk.
"Even a small radiation leak inside the reactor structure is a serious event," said independent military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer.
"If the leak is small, they might be able to repair it. But it is hard to do because the reactor is hot," Felgenhauer noted.
"They could lose the ship if they fail to get it under control -- which is exactly what happened at Fukushima," he added in reference to the Japanese nuclear power station incident.
The Taimyr is one of two icebreakers built for the Soviet Union by Findland's Wartsila shipbuilder that are still operated by Russia.
Its hull was built in Finland and the reactor installed in Russia.
The US-based GlobalSecurity.org research organisation said the ships were "originally designed for 100,000 hours of reactor life, but this was extended first to 150,000, then to 175,000."
© Copyright 2011, AFP
