An
official state of mourning has been declared in the Russian city of Sarov. Last
Thursday, five nuclear specialists employed by Rosatom, Russia's state atomic
energy corporation, were killed in a blast at a military test site in northern
Russia, not far from the port of Severodvinsk.
According
to the official account, the elite scientists killed in the accident – Alexey Vyushin, Yevgeny Koratayev, Vyacheslav Lipshev, Sergey Pichugin and
Vladislav Yanovsky – were killed during tests on a liquid propulsion system
involving isotopes.
Sarov,
known during the Cold War as Arzamas-16, is one of Russia's secret cities.
Closed to foreigners and accessible only by special permit, Sarov is the rough
equivalent to Los Alamos, New Mexico, one of the birthplaces of US nuclear
weapons design.
In
other words, the test most likely had some nuclear dimension. And the reflexive
secrecy of the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin has only further
fueled speculation about the cause of the accident.
Here's
what we know: authorities in northern Russia detected a brief rise in radiation
levels following an explosion at a military training ground there, Russian
state news agency TASS reported Thursday.
Severodvinsk
has a naval base and shipyard and TASS, citing emergency services, initially
said the incident began onboard a ship.
The
Arkhangelsk regional governor said that the area around the explosion would not
be evacuated. But the reports of the brief radiation spike and the lack of
information around the incident raised immediate red flags.
'An
unusual component'
While
the Russian Ministry of Defense admitted something went wrong, informed
observers immediately raised questions about what, exactly, had been going on
at the test range.
Jeffrey
Lewis, an arms-control expert at the Middlebury Institute of International
Studies at Monterey, was one of the first to suggest that missile accident had
an unusual component.
On
Twitter, Lewis linked to an August 8 picture captured by satellite imaging
company Planet Labs, showing the Serebryanka, a nuclear fuel carrier, near the
missile test site in Russia where the explosion and fire broke out.
The
ship's presence, he speculated, might have been related to the testing of a
nuclear-powered cruise missile.
The
Serebrynka, Lewis noted, was the same ship used to recover a nuclear propulsion
unit from a failed nuclear-powered cruise missile test last summer off Novaya
Zemlya, an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean.
"We
are skeptical of the claim that what was being tested was a liquid propellant
jet engine," Lewis told CNN, referring to last week's explosion. "We
think it was a nuclear-powered cruise missile that they call Burevestnik."
The same missile is known by NATO members as SCC-X-Skyfall.
A
US official has also told CNN that the explosion was "likely" linked
to the Skyfall prototype. US President Donald Trump also made the connection,
tweeting on Monday: "The Russian 'Skyfall' explosion has people worried
about the air and around the facility, and far beyond. Not good!"
Little
public information is available about the Burevestnik/Skyfall. But last year,
Putin boasted of new weaponry that he claimed would render US missile defenses
obsolete. Showing a video, he said: "As the range is unlimited, the
missile can maneuver for as long as necessary."
Questions
linger today about whether something dangerous has been released following this
incident. According to the local website 29.ru, officials have shut down the
Dvina Bay in the White Sea for swimming for a month.
Is
it the new Chernobyl? Certainly, no massive plume of radiation has been
detected, as happened over Scandinavia before the Soviets acknowledged the 1986
disaster. But official secrecy often fuels fears of a cover-up.
In
this case, the accident seems more reminiscent of an incident that happened 19
years ago: the sinking of the nuclear-powered submarine, the Kursk, led to the
deaths of more than 100 sailors and was a public-relations disaster for Putin,
who was still newly in office.
Today,
unlike then, Putin now enjoys a near-total monopoly on Russian media. And the
Kremlin thus far is working to contain and control the embarrassing news about
the accident at a secret military test range.
