According to the Russian magazine Vlast, “Russia [was] … on the verge of the largest man-made disaster since Chernobyl”  when a fire broke out on December 29th, 2011 on the K-84 Ekaterinburg, a Russian nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine, in a dry-dock in Murmansk.  Sparks from welding were reported to have set fire to wooden scaffolding which spread to the rubber acoustic coating on the submarine’s hull. After several hours of fire fighting the sub was partially sunk to control the fire. At the time the damage to the submarine was played down. As reported by the BBC, “The Russian defence ministry said the nuclear reactors on the vessel were already shut down when the fire broke out. All weapons had also been removed from the submarine before it entered the dock, the ministry said.”  According to Vlast, however, “K-84 was in the dock with missiles and torpedoes on board.”   

The standard armament for the submarine is 16 R-29 intercontinental ballistic missiles, each armed with four nuclear warheads.  The submarine is also armed with up to 12 torpedoes and anti-submarine missiles, each tipped with either 300 kilograms of high-power military explosive or a nuclear warhead.  The submarine is powered by two 90 megawatt water-cooled nuclear reactors each containing about 70 kilograms of uranium-235.  Vlast points out that if any of the torpedoes had exploded, it is likely that they could have set off fuel on the ballistic missiles or damaged the nuclear reactors.  In the worst case, roughly 400,000 people would have had to have been evacuated from the Kola peninsula, the region around the shipyard.

Submarine was armed with nuclear weapons – magazine 

Thanks to Alaric Bond for contributing articles to the post.