The explosion that killed five Russian nuclear specialists at a military test range on the White Sea coast happened during tests of a new weapon powered by a small nuclear source, Russian officials confirmed after days of conflicting statements.
The accident took place on 8 August 2019 at the navy’s Nyonoksa range in the Arkhangelsk region of northern Russia, not far from the city of Severodvinsk.
What officials said
The Ministry of Defence first reported that two people had been killed and six injured in the explosion of a liquid-fuelled rocket engine, and said that background radiation levels were normal. Two days later the state nuclear corporation Rosatom said that five of its employees had died and three more had been injured while providing engineering support for work on an isotope power source inside a liquid propulsion system.
Senior figures at the Russian Federal Nuclear Centre in Sarov, where the five specialists worked, later described the accident as an explosion during tests on a small nuclear power source and said a state commission was investigating its causes. They also acknowledged that radiation had briefly risen twice after the blast, adding that their own measurements found no lasting contamination.
Radiation readings
Severodvinsk authorities reported a short-lived rise in background radiation on the day of the accident. The city’s notice was later removed from its website, and residents queued at pharmacies for iodine. Russia’s weather and environmental monitoring service subsequently published readings that showed gamma radiation in the city had risen above normal levels for a short time before returning to the usual range.
A planned evacuation of the nearby village of Nyonoksa was announced and then cancelled by local officials within hours.
The weapon question
Russia did not name the system that was being tested. Western officials and arms control experts linked the accident to the Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile, known in NATO terms as SSC-X-9 Skyfall, which President Vladimir Putin had presented in 2018 as a weapon with practically unlimited range.
The five specialists were buried in Sarov, the closed city that houses Russia’s main nuclear weapons research centre, where thousands of people attended the funerals. Russian officials said the victims would receive state awards.
Sources: statements by Rosatom and the Russian Federal Nuclear Centre in Sarov (August 2019), the Russian Ministry of Defence, Severodvinsk city administration, international news agencies.