Repair of the nuclear submarine Tomsk led to a fire on board

In Primorye there was a fire on the nuclear submarine K-150 Tomsk of the Pacific Fleet. The fire occurred during welding work in the space between the light and durable hulls of the submarine. There were no casualties; the amount of damage caused by the submarine must be determined by a special commission of the Ministry of Defense.

This is not the first time that ship repair work has led to new damage to nuclear submarines.
Photo: Sergey Mingazov, Kommersant

Yesterday, at about 11.30 local time, a fire occurred on the nuclear submarine "Tomsk", which is being repaired in the floating dock "Pallada" of the Far Eastern plant "Zvezda" in the Closed Administrative Unit of Bolshoi Kamen. As a source at the Pacific Fleet headquarters told Kommersant, according to preliminary information, during welding work, a spark hit the insulating coating of the cable route, which caught fire. An attempt to put out the fire by the workers was unsuccessful, and the acrid smoke that quickly spread in the inter-hull space, the width of which reaches 3.5 meters, led to the need to evacuate all ship repairmen and most of the crew from the boat. “On board the boat, in a durable hull, there are several people left who are monitoring the situation. All of them are included in the PDA (personal breathing apparatus),” the officer said. To extinguish the fire, 15 fire crews were involved, of which 10 were naval, the rest were from the Ministry of Emergency Situations, which filled the inter-hull space with special foam. At about 16.00 local time, the plumes of black smoke rising above the Zvezda plant noticeably thinned out, and an hour later it was announced that the fire had been localized. “The incident did not pose a threat to the residents of Bolshoy Kamen. The weapons were unloaded from the boat before being put in for repairs, and the nuclear reactors were shut down,” the Pacific Fleet headquarters assures. It is known, however, that a radiation control vessel was sent to the area of the incident. "Tomsk" has been under repair at the Zvezda plant since 2009, and was put into a floating dock at the end of last year, the officer specified. Fleet headquarters has not yet spoken about the area of the fire, and also finds it difficult to name the location of the source of the fire, limiting itself to reporting that it is located “behind the wheelhouse.” Representatives of the Zvezda plant and the Ministry of Emergency Situations did not come to a common opinion; the areas of the fifth and ninth compartments (auxiliary mechanisms and turbine, respectively) are mentioned. Alexey Kletskin, the former head of the Bolshoi Kamen Closed Administrative Unit, told Kommersant that the smell of burnt rubber was felt in the city several kilometers from the Zvezda plant. This indirectly indicates that the flame could have spread to the rubber noise-absorbing coating of the submarine’s light hull.

The Far Eastern Center for Shipbuilding and Ship Repair, a subsidiary of the state holding United Shipbuilding Corporation, declined to comment yesterday on the fire at the nuclear submarine. The head of the trade union committee of the Zvezda plant, Olga Skripko, also did not say anything about the incident, limiting herself to saying that none of the ship repairers were injured. USC official representative Alexey Kravchenko said the cause of the fire was the ignition of dried insulation during welding work. “The fire occurred during welding work in the interhull space between the light and durable hulls of the boat, which contained a large amount of dried insulation and old paint, which caught fire,” RIA Novosti quotes Mr. Kravchenko. In a statement from the Ministry of Defense, the cause of the fire (according to preliminary data) is a violation of welding rules. A commission has already been created in Vladivostok to establish the causes of the incident, headed by the Pacific Fleet Chief of Staff, Vice Admiral Vladimir Kasatonov. “It is also necessary to establish the extent of the damage caused by the fire of the nuclear submarine,” said the headquarters of the Pacific Fleet. K-150 Tomsk is a Project 949A Antey nuclear submarine. Surface displacement - 14,700 tons, underwater displacement - 23,860 tons. Maximum length: 154 meters, maximum hull beam: 18.2 meters, average draft: 9.2 meters. The power plant consists of two OK-650V nuclear reactors with a capacity of 190 MW each. The armament includes 2650 mm and 4533 mm torpedo tubes and a Granit anti-ship cruise missile launcher.

On December 29, 2011, in a scenario similar to the incident on the nuclear submarine "Tomsk", a fire occurred on the K-84 "Ekaterinburg", a nuclear-powered strategic missile submarine cruiser of Project 667 BDRM "Dolphin" of the Northern Fleet. The submarine was located in the PD-50 floating dock of the 82nd ship repair plant in Roslyakovo. When cutting a technological hole in the fairing of the hydroacoustic complex, a fire occurred due to a violation of safety regulations during repair work; the wooden scaffolding that surrounded the submarine’s hull caught fire. The fire spread to the lightweight casing with a rubber noise-absorbing coating, then to the space between the light and durable casings. To extinguish the fire, the dock, along with the submarine and equipment, was sunk to the wheelhouse level.

The most high-profile incident with a Pacific Fleet nuclear submarine in recent times occurred in November 2008. Then, during sea trials of the nuclear submarine K-152 "Nerpa" in the Sea of Japan, as a result of unauthorized activation of the boat volumetric chemical fire extinguishing system (BOC), 20 people died (of which 17 were civilian specialists), another 38 crew members and the commissioning team were harmed. varying degrees of severity.

Alexey Chernyshev

A boat caught fire from a spark