A fire burned for five hours on an atomic-powered submarine undergoing repairs near Russia's eastern port of Vladivostok on Monday, but naval and shipyard officials said there was no risk of a radiation leak and nobody was hurt.
Black smoke poured from the submarine Tomsk, which is powered by two nuclear reactors, after it caught fire at the Zvezda shipyard in Bolshoi Kamen, about 25 km (15 miles) across a bay from Vladivostok on the Sea of Japan. The fire was the second on board a Russian nuclear-powered submarine in less than two years.
When a blaze engulfed the atomic-powered Yekaterinburg at a shipyard in northwestern Russia in December 2011, official statements said there had been no nuclear missiles on board the sub, but a respected magazine later cited several unnamed sources as saying this was untrue.
Navy sources said on Monday that, in addition to two firefighting vessels, a ship that monitors radiation levels had been sent to the area. The fire started in a ballast area of the submarine during welding works after an acetylene torch was used to cut through a grate, setting a rubber seal, cables and paint on fire.
Russia's navy has suffered several fatal accidents since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The nuclear-powered submarine Kursk sank in the Barents Sea in 2000, killing all 118 crewmen aboard, and 20 people died aboard the submarine Nerpa in 2008 when its fire extinguishing system went off, flooding compartments with deadly gas.
