Text 5. Fire aboard Russian submarine kills two

September 7, 2006

A fire on board a Russian nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea killed two crew members but there was no threat of a radiation leak, the Defence Ministry said.

The fire in an electrical equipment room late on Wednesday was away from the submarine's reactor and was put out by the crew, officials said. The vessel, the St Daniil Moskovsky, is being towed back to port.

The Russian navy's safety record has been under scrutiny since the Kursk atomic submarine sank in the Barents Sea six years ago, killing all 118 crew members.

"Our initial information is that the fire broke out in a power distribution panel in compartment No. 6", said a spokesman for Russia's Northern Fleet. "The crew did everything within their power to put out the fire. Two people suffered smoke inhalation from the thick smoke. They were evacuated from the submarine but it was not possible to save their lives".

The vessel is a Viktor class attack submarine which would likely have been carrying torpedoes but not nuclear weapons, said defence experts.

It entered service in 1990, making it one of the fleet's more modern submarines.

The vessel was north of the Rybachiy peninsula near Russia's border with Finland when it caught fire, Interfax news agency quoted navy sources as saying.

It was being taken to Vidyayevo, a Russian submarine base in the Barents Sea. Vidyayevo is about 50 km north of the Russian city of Murmansk, where just under one million people live.

Interfax quoted a navy source as saying: "The device protecting the nuclear reactor was activated. There is no radioactive contamination threat whatsoever".

Russia has the second largest submarine fleet in the world after the United States. Many of its atomic submarines date to the Soviet Union.

Environmental campaigners – and governments in some neighbouring states – worry about the condition of some of the vessels, especially decommissioned atomic submarines that are rusting in docks as they wait to be dismantled.

The same submarine had a fire in its torpedo compartment in 1994, said Nils Bohmer with the Norwegian environmental group Bellona, which tracks Russia's submarine fleet.

"It wouldn't surprise me if the reason for this fire is faulty equipment. The maintenance of the Northern Fleet is slightly neglected because of economic problems", said Bohmer.

Russia's navy has been dogged by accidents, of which the Kursk sinking was the worst in recent years.

Last year, the British navy helped rescue the crew of a Russian navy mini-submarine that was stranded 600 feet down in the Pacific with dwindling air supplies.

In July, the navy reported a spill of radioactive water on one of its submarines during repairs at Vidyayevo.

"This incident shows once again that we are faced with a very serious question: should we have these reactors at sea at all?" said Vladimir Tchouprov, head of the energy unit at Greenpeace Russia.

Bellona said its records showed the St Daniil Moskovsky had a crew of between 85 and 100 men.

Text 6. Soldiers and emergency workers are battling to clean
up an oil spill that has reportedly killed some 30,000 birds
in the Kerch Strait, by the Black Sea

13 November, 2007

Alexander Tkachev, governor of Russia's Krasnodar region, said the incident was an "ecological catastrophe".

Some 2,000 tons of fuel oil leaked into the straits between the Black Sea and the Azov Sea after a fierce storm broke a tanker apart on Sunday.

About 10 ships sank or ran aground in the region and 20 sailors are missing.

So far, 35 crew members from the stricken vessels have been plucked to safety by rescue teams. The bodies of three sailors were found on Monday morning.

At least two other ships were carrying potentially hazardous cargo when they sank, including nearly 6,000 tons of sulphur.

The Russian tanker Volganeft-139, with more than 4,000 tons of fuel aboard, came apart after it was smashed by 108 km/h (67 mph) winds and 5 m (16 ft) waves in the narrow Kerch Strait between Russia and Ukraine.

Officials estimate that nearly half the tanker load has already leaked out in the water.

"The damage is so great that it's hard to assess. It can be equated with an ecological catastrophe", the governor said.

Oil-soaked birds have been seen struggling in the polluted water, and
a number of them have been found dead on the sandy shores. Others have been seen hopping weakly along the beaches, weighed down by a thick coating of fuel oil.

Hundreds of Russian soldiers have deployed to clean up the spill, but the operation is being hampered by stormy weather. Soil-excavating vehicles have been sent to clear affected beaches around the Russian port of Kavkaz.

Helicopter and ships equipped with tackling the oil spill at sea have been hampered by more stormy weather.

The heavy oil was sinking to the seabed and could take years to clean up.

Russian prosecutors say they are investigating whether the ships' captains ignored warnings of the approaching storm.