Evgeny Kuznetsov. Barentsevo. "Kursk" at the bottom

Barentsevo. "Kursk" at the bottom
Evgeny Kuznetsov

Publication date: August 22, 2000

Instead of a preface

All the officers who were able to understand and comment on the situation with the Kursk boat thought not about causes and consequences, but about the guys sitting in the dark and cold and recalled situations in which they themselves said goodbye to life. Many times, under many circumstances, accidents or mistakes, the terrible power of mighty technology has thrown courageous people into sweat and pain, ignorance and despair. This cannot be conveyed or described; fragments of stories give rise to a feeling of insignificance of all other troubles and adversities. This is the cutting edge, this is not a reason for speculation and no place for weakness. They have no time to talk.

This article was not written to take advantage of the situation or use an excuse. Despite the reluctance of submariners to talk about their pain, it is written from their words only so that the Kursk tragedy is not used for political games or for bargaining. So that the culprits of the tragedy do not become those who fought to save the lives of the crew, who were ready to die in order for their comrades to be saved. Surely the press will not write about those sailors who risked their lives in the northern storm. I probably shouldn't say this, but it's true...

Radiation background is normal

The gloomy summer of 2000 continues to bring bad news. Against the backdrop of the search for “enemies of the people” and after-the-fact reports about the successes of the Russian special services, information about the sinking submarine at first did not cause much indignation in the news feeds. Media managers did not work according to the “hot news” scenario immediately as soon as the naval press service informed them that there were no nuclear weapons on board and “the radiation background was normal.”

This ritual formula (like a Freudian slip) is a cast of that crippled and monstrous logic of our life, in which there is everything: enemies, wars, bombs, summits, statements and successes of presidents - except for what is most important. Except human lives.

Hundreds of these lives in the Barents Sea. But at first, only one thing aroused interest - whether Norway or other progressive humanity would present us with another bill to pay off environmental damage. Will the appearance of another underwater source be a trump card in the long-term bargaining, or will everything work out? Will radiation in the Arctic Ocean in the measurement zone of world observers increase by a few fractions of a percent? Nothing else matters. Including the fact that on the boat itself the radiation may have been growing by the minute.

On the first day, the scant information struck specialists with its strangeness and inconsistency.

Every evening the submarine must go on air and report that everything on board is normal. Then there is a pause until a request for permission to launch, and then until the results of the exercise are received. After the torpedo leaves the apparatus and rushes to the target, and the boat turns around and follows it (to pick it up and use it again), a new signal comes - everything is fine. However, after the supposed launch, no signals were received from the Kursk boat. There was no time for that - water flowed into the first compartment, with its gigantic volume, which was physically impossible to stop.

The message that the boat had sunk to the bottom shocked experts. The boat has a pressurized water nuclear reactor. The first circuit of such a system - which contains the highest radiation - is securely locked with protection. But on other circuits - directly cooling the entire system - sea water is used. In normal mode, this is not dangerous to anyone - neither sailors nor fish. But this is precisely why a nuclear boat cannot lie on the bottom - silt and bottom turbidity can clog the system, stop circulation and cooling and actually become a radiation accumulator inside the boat. Already without any reliable protection.

The actual nuclear reaction in this situation is not so dangerous - the triggered automatic protection reliably stops it, so a nuclear explosion is practically unrealistic. All that remains is high temperature and high radiation from the “burnt-out” components of nuclear fuel. A reactor is much “dirtier” than nuclear weapons, which can lie peacefully at the bottom of the sea, even gradually collapsing. A reactor is a concentration of unstable atoms with a short half-life, that is, constant and large radiation. And it may have accumulated in the clogged circuits of the Kursk boat.

The meager reports confirmed that the situation was extremely difficult. The main power plant is not working - this may mean that the boat has taken a sip of mud and the described scenario is developing in full. The Russian boats' life-saving equipment is not very functional - it is likely that the 107-member crew will be brought to the surface by a rescue boat that can accommodate several people, and each lifting and lowering cycle can take about an hour. Yes, and this may not help, or there may not be enough time. The scale of the damage (it is possible that 4 compartments are flooded, about 50% of the boat’s volume) is such that standard rescue methods are difficult to apply. We can only hope that a way of salvation will be found and pray that it will be effective. This is what experts thought then, at the very beginning of the tragedy.

Circumstances and versions

The particular mystery of the disaster is explained by a number of contradictory circumstances.

Nuclear-powered ships do not sink to the bottom for the reason described above. The boat can maintain buoyancy when flooded up to 30% of its volume - the highest figure in global fleet construction. Therefore, any need or awareness of immersion is excluded - this is the result of an accident that could not be neutralized. This is a completely atypical and abnormal situation, which indicates a large scale of damage.

The situation was developing rapidly, and therefore it is unlikely that any explosions occurred several hours before the nuclear-powered ship made contact. In this case, the commander would not have requested permission to launch torpedoes, but would have transmitted information about problems - exercises in case of an emergency on board are excluded. Therefore, the accident occurred either during the exercise or immediately after it.

In general, the causes of the disaster can be divided into “external” and “internal”.

External - all types of external damage to the body. This explains the rapid flow of water into the compartments, as well as the external damage that was recorded by observers. The overwhelming number of explosions inside the hull do not lead to damage not only to the outer lining (light hull), but also to the internal (strong hull). However, neither a mine explosion nor a collision with a foreign submarine looks possible. Mines are extremely unlikely in that area. And in the event of a collision, the second submarine would receive greater damage both because it has less mass and strength, and because all foreign boats have a lower buoyancy reserve (flooding occurs when water enters a maximum of 20% of the volume). This group of versions also includes those that talk about hitting the ground. Such an impact could have caused external damage and the influx of large amounts of water, but it was unlikely to be the root cause.

Internal - all types of explosions. The first version that comes to mind is an explosion of batteries. This could lead to a fire and the death of everyone in the compartment, but the explosion would not be able to break through the pressure hull. In the event of any fire, large-scale flooding is under no circumstances undertaken. The boat floats to the surface and the crew fights the fire on the surface. The only probable version is a torpedo explosion directly in the torpedo tube, which would lead to the appearance of damage that could explain the rapid (tens of seconds) flooding of the first compartment. However, its volume (about two thousand cubic meters) is not enough to cause loss of buoyancy, and therefore, again, this version does not fully explain the reasons for the sinking of the submarine.

The most difficult question is whether the torpedo exploded accidentally - if this was the root cause of the accident.

It is difficult to explain what happened on the basis of the most likely scenarios of an emergency situation, which explains the discrepancy between official and unofficial versions.

Some complex version looks like this. As a result of the torpedo explosion and the resulting list, the boat began to sink. At the same time, the crew had to begin purging the first compartment. At this moment, the horizontal rudders jammed or something else happened. The boat did not level out the bow, reached the bottom and received significant additional damage, as a result of which water began to flow into the second, and also, possibly, into the following compartments. The fact that the boat lies with a strong list indicates that the reserves of compressed air for purging were exhausted and it was impossible to correct the situation.

Everything happened within a few minutes, during which any decision could save or could destroy. Anyone who understands what it’s like to be on a boat at this time will not have the strength to look for someone to blame. Even if he was.

Thus, there is a complex complex accident that cannot be explained by any one cause, but occurred when several unfavorable factors and scenarios were combined. Each decision brought both salvation and death. Every flaw could be fatal. Consequently, there is no reason to look for direct culprits either among the designers or among the crew members, whose mistakes or behavior would explain the cause of the disaster.

This is the most complex equipment, which is operated by good, but forgotten and abandoned specialists, whose safety the state has forgotten about. In such a situation, any surprise or mistake can develop into a stream of overlapping consequences.

And the emergency buoys most likely did not surface for a simple reason - as a rule, they are welded, since their loss is followed by a strict and very responsible investigation. After all, the loss of material assets...

Guilty market

The terrible specificity of the Soviet-Russian bureaucracy will certainly determine the situation again. While everyone who was involved in saving the boat probably did more than possible and were ready to exchange their lives for the lives of their comrades, the search engine for the most convenient culprits was already in full swing. In the most complex solitaire of political-military showdowns that have engulfed Russia, the army and the navy, the tragedy of the boat will certainly become a convenient card.

In this situation, there is no need to ask the eternal question of Russian idlers - “who is to blame.” A special commission will answer dry professional questions, conclusions and adjustments will be made, and additions will be made to the instructions and rules. All these documents are written in blood - each point of them was bought by dozens of destinies, such is the very nature of the millennia-long war between man and nature. This is not a reason for humanistic provocations or ritual ecological dances. But perhaps this is a reason to remember that the sunken Kursk boat is just a small reflection of our great misfortune, which is much more dangerous than terrorists so “convenient” for politics.

Russian technology can be proud of many great achievements. Most of them were bought at a high price - including the cost of the lives of those who continue to exploit it in an era of general decay. Unlike a modern, freshly renovated office, in which the most difficult thing is consumer goods in the form of computers and simple security equipment, a nuclear boat, a station, a missile complex are dozens of unique technological solutions brought together. It was very difficult to create them - but no less difficult to maintain them now in a state safe for the world.

Such a threat, incomprehensible to many, as “depreciation of fixed assets,” which is firmly included in the arsenal of now unfashionable politicians, rarely comes to the attention of society. A standing factory or a leaking pipe may be bought on the market of political provocations, but it is unlikely to excite in the same way as pieces of human bodies shown in detail after another terrorist attack. It is easier for society to solve eternal questions and not ask actual ones: how to prevent a “rebellion of machines” caused not by their sharp decline, but by their aging and breakdown? If even elite equipment in the hands of submariners abandoned to the mercy of the cold northern fate can injure or kill hundreds of them at any moment, what will happen to thousands of kilometers of railways, electrical networks, hundreds of chemical reactors, and other dangerous objects? An accident in the sewer system of a Romanian factory killed the Danube. How many such treatment facilities are there in Russia? What condition are they in? And who supports them in any acceptable form? Maybe it’s worth conducting several excursions and compiling an atlas of those places where the number of victims of machine “terrorism” can easily overtake the Chechen losses?

They may say that the missile carrier, commissioned several years ago, is new and not connected with this disaster. But that's not true. In order for a modern boat to go to sea, so that its crew can confidently control the most complex equipment, gigantic efforts and expenses are needed, the constant attention of the state is needed, which suddenly loves to remember its strength. You can show miracles of frugality and rationality in spending defense funds as much as you like, but if you do not restore the infrastructure of the army of a modern advanced power that is dying and plundered from despair, then the situation with Kursk will become the prologue to the final decline. In this situation there are no personal culprits - there is a common guilt for the fact that sailors, pilots and other “sovereign people”, forgotten and abandoned to the mercy of wild nature and cruel social losses, cover up the common misfortune with their heroism. A destroyed security system, a destroyed military education, a destroyed morale - this is the real reason for the trouble. And not a specific technical failure or human error.

Russia cannot become a great power by decision from above, and the ultra-modern ship that recently “carried” distinguished guests is a terrible warning of a terrible future.

10 years of eating up old reserves is 10 years of forgetting that progress is expensive. That a developed nation is not the wealth of its capitals. That every step into the future requires an increase in overall responsibility and consciousness. That an attempt to build heaven in a separate apartment will lead to hell entering through a window or a water tap. As before, it is necessary to prove time after time that human life is not a reason or an excuse, but a key priority. That a beautiful idea or program is not a reason to increase the risk for thousands or already millions. That a bright future is not a reason to risk destinies in the present. Alas, this has not changed in recent decades...

The tragedy in the Barents Sea is not an ordinary accident. This is one of the last warnings. 100 guys in a deadly sarcophagus and thousands of their friends on cold training grounds, in abandoned garrisons, in the mountains, near equipment standing without spare parts or kerosene - that’s what we need to think about now. And fight not with unpleasant “opinions”, but with real problems. Of which, alas, there are more and more of them.

Instead of afterwords

Strange country, strange destinies. Those who have seen the darkness and heard the silence of a sinking boat at these hours are worried about something strange. Not to mention the fact that they are ready to give a lot for each young man from the crew of the Kursk, they also think about whether the captain will come to the surface (in the navy, unlike reformers and politicians, they don’t want to forget what honor is) . Will the simple Vologda guy Vyacheslav Popov remain in command of the Northern Fleet, who, without any hairy paws, has earned the right these days to fight for the salvation of his subordinates and, it seems, is remembered by every sailor for his humanity and calm masculine strength. Will Russia have the courage not to destroy for the sake of today's gain what was paid for with dozens of lives?

These are strange thoughts. And it’s a pity that there are fewer and fewer people who think this way...