#5486
[Second Issue of the Day]
#8
Russian Navy Prepares to Move Kursk
October 11, 2001
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV
MURMANSK, Russia (AP) - Clamped beneath a giant barge, the gutted wreck of
the Kursk nuclear submarine has pulled into the waters of a Russian shipyard,
where the navy cautiously begins the weeklong process of putting it into dry
dock.
The Kursk's two 190-megawatt nuclear reactors and an arsenal of powerful
cruise missiles have been a concern since the vessel exploded and sank during
naval exercises Aug. 12, 2000, killing 118 sailors aboard. In an
unprecedented operation, the battered submarine was raised from the floor of
the Barents Sea by a Dutch consortium on Monday.
The experts at Roslyakovo ship repair plant near Murmansk expected to spend
Thursday attaching the first of two pontoons needed to hoist the barge with
the submarine into dock. After the second pontoon is attached the next day,
the Giant 4 barge with the Kursk clamped underneath will be slowly pushed
into the dock - the largest the Navy has.
The pontoons will be filled with water and then drained, creating the lifting
force to raise the barge and the submarine by about 26 feet for the docking,
set for Saturday afternoon.
Once the awkward unit is docked, it could take another five days to remove
the barge and pontoons and raise the dock with the submarine out of the
water.
The 18,000-ton, 508-foot-long Kursk is one of the world's largest submarines,
made larger by the huge barge and pontoons. The docking operation a difficult
and risky undertaking since any sharp move could destabilize the Kursk's
nuclear reactors and missiles.
``The docking requires a lot of thorough analytical work,'' Northern Fleet
spokesman Capt. Vladimir Navrotsky said. ``People concentrated all their
efforts.''
Throughout the docking, officials will constantly monitor the condition of
the Kursk's twin nuclear reactors to make sure they don't leak any radiation.
Officials have said the reactors were safely shut down when the disaster
occurred and leaked no radiation. But the risk of a potential radiation leak
in the rich fishing grounds of the Barents Sea was a key reason the Russian
government cited for the costly, precarious operation to lift the Kursk.
Concern about a possible radiation leak prompted Roslyakovo officials to work
out contingency evacuation plans and boost stocks of iodine.
Another reason for concern was the condition of the Kursk's 22 supersonic
Granit cruise missiles. If it proves impossible to safely lift the missiles
out of their containers, the navy is prepared to cut them out of the Kursk's
hull along with containers, said Russian Northern Fleet commander Adm.
Vyacheslav Popov. He estimated that it would take at least a year to
dismantle the submarine along with its nuclear reactors and missiles.
Once the Kursk is put in dry dock, officials will remove the remains of the
crew. Navrotsky said officials only expect to find 30 or 40 bodies, because
the others were likely pulverized by the powerful explosions that sank the
submarine.
Inspecting the submarine could be difficult even for the navy's seasoned
forensic experts, he added.
``We have picked the strongest men for the job, but it's hard to say whether
they will be able to endure the mess inside,'' Navrotsky told reporters.
It took the Dutch Mammoet-Smit International consortium just over 15 hours to
lift the submarine, which was lying 356 feet below the surface, on steel
cables lowered from the Giant 4 barge. The operation cost the Russian
government $65 million.
The government hopes to determine the cause of the Kursk's sinking. Skeptics
say key clues to what caused the disaster are in the Kursk's mangled bow,
which was sawed off and left on the seabed out of fear it could destabilize
the lifting. The navy plans to raise all or part of the bow next year.
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