러시아 핵 순항미사일 시험 중 5명 사망..."방사능 누출도" VIDEO: U.S.-based experts suspect Russia blast involved nuclear-powered missile
U.S.-based experts suspect Russia blast involved nuclear-powered missile
By Reuters• last updated: 10/08/2019
By Jonathan Landay
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S.-based nuclear experts said on Friday they suspected an accidental blast and radiation release in northern Russia this week occurred during the testing of a nuclear-powered cruise missile vaunted by President Vladimir Putin last year.
world-news-monitor.com
러시아 핵 순항미사일 시험 중 5명 사망..."방사능 누출도" 러 정부 사고 은폐축소 의혹도 미국의 핵 전문가들은 금요일, 지난 해 블라디미르 푸틴 대통령이 추진하고 있는 핵 순항미사일 시험 중 이번 주 러시아 북부에서 우발적인 폭발과 방사능 누출이 발생한 것으로 의심하고 있다고 말했다. 러시아 국방부는 추진 로켓 엔진의 폭발로 2명이 숨지고 6명이 다쳤다고 국영방송이 보도했다. 위험한 물질은 유출되지 않았다고 말했다. 하지만 러시아 로자톰 원자력청(Rosatom)은 25일 새벽 "자체 직원 중 5명이 사망했다"고 밝혔다. 아칸젤스크 지역의 시험장 근처에 있는 18만5000명의 도시 세베로드빈스크의 대변인은 목요일 정오에 백그라운드 방사선의 "단기" 상승이 기록되었다고 말했다. 그러나 이 발표문은 금요일에 사라졌다. 러시아 대사관은 이에 대해 즉각적인 반응을 보이지 않았다. 두 명 전문가는 로이터통신과의 별도 인터뷰에서 액체 로켓 추진체 폭발은 방사능을 방출하지 않을 것이라고 말했다. 이들은 니요노크사 마을 외곽의 한 시설에서 핵추진 순항미사일 시험 중 사고가 발생해 폭발과 방사능 유출이 의심된다고 말했다. "액체 연료 미사일 엔진이 폭발하는 것은 방사선을 방출하지 않으며, 우리는 러시아가 핵 추진 순항미사일 시험을 하고 있다는 것을 알고 있다." 라고 미국 과학자 연합의 수석 연구원인 Ankit Panda가 말했다. 황기철 콘페이퍼 에디터 큐레이터 Ki Chul Hwang, conpaper editor, curator |
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The Russian Ministry of Defense, quoted by state-run news outlets, said that two people died and six were injured on Thursday in an explosion of what it called a liquid propellant rocket engine. No dangerous substances were released, it said. Russia’s state nuclear agency Rosatom said early on Saturday that five of its staff members died.
A spokeswoman for Severodvinsk, a city of 185,000 near the test site in the Arkhangelsk region, was quoted in a statement on the municipal website as saying that a “short-term” spike in background radiation was recorded at noon Thursday. The statement was not on the site on Friday.
The Russian Embassy did not immediately respond for comment.
Two experts said in separate interviews with Reuters that a liquid rocket propellant explosion would not release radiation.
Paramedics were spotted wearing special chemical protection suits when they treated the victimsCredit: Mash/thesun.co.uk
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They said that they suspected the explosion and the radiation release resulted from a mishap during the testing of a nuclear-powered cruise missile at a facility outside the village of Nyonoksa.
“Liquid fuel missile engines exploding do not give off radiation, and we know that the Russians are working on some kind of nuclear propulsion for a cruise missile,” said Ankit Panda, an adjunct senior fellow with the Federation of American Scientists.
Russia calls the missile the 9M730 Buresvestnik. The NATO alliance has designated it the SSC-X-9 Skyfall.
A senior Trump administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he would not confirm or deny that a mishap involving a nuclear-powered cruise missile occurred. But he expressed deep skepticism over Moscow’s explanation.
“We continue to monitor the events in the Russian far north but Moscow’s assurances that ‘everything is normal’ ring hollow to us,” said the official.
“This reminds us of a string of incidents dating back to Chernobyl that call into question whether the Kremlin prioritises the welfare of the Russian people above maintaining its own grip on power and its control over weak corruption streams.”
The official was referring to the 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, in the former Soviet republic of Ukraine, which released radioactive airborne contamination for about nine days. Moscow delayed revealing the extent of what is regarded as the worst nuclear accident in history.
Putin boasted about the nuclear-powered cruise missile in a March 2018 speech to the Russian parliament in which he hailed the development of a raft of fearsome new strategic weapons.
The missile, he said, was successfully tested in late 2017, had “unlimited range” and was “invincible against all existing and prospective missile defence and counter-air defence systems.”
‘NOTTHERE BY ACCIDENT’
Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Non-Proliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, said he believed that a mishap occurred during the testing of the nuclear-powered cruise missile based on commercial satellite pictures and other data.
Using satellite photos, he and his team determined that the Russians last year appeared to have disassembled a facility for test-launching the missile at a site in Novaya Zemlya and moved it to the base near Nyonoksa.
The photos showed that a blue “environmental shelter” – under which the missiles are stored before launching – at Nyonoksa and rails on which the structure is rolled back appear to be the same as those removed from Novaya Zemlya.
Lewis and his team also examined Automatic Identification System (AIS) signals from ships located off the coast on the same day as the explosion. They identified one ship as the Serebryanka, a nuclear fuel carrier that they had tracked last year off Novaya Zemlya.
“You don’t need this ship for conventional missile tests,” Lewis said. “You need it when you recover a nuclear propulsion unit from the sea floor
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He noted that the AIS signals showed that the Serebryanka was located inside an “exclusion zone” established off the coast a month before the test, to keep unauthorized ships from entering.
“What’s important is that the Serebryanka is inside that exclusion zone. It’s there. It’s inside the ocean perimeter that they set up. It’s not there by accident,” he said. “I think they were probably there to pick up a propulsion unit off the ocean floor.”
Lewis said he didn’t know what kind of radiation hazard the Russian system poses because he did was unaware of the technical details, such as the size of the nuclear reactor.
But he noted that the United States sought to develop a nuclear-powered missile engine in the 1950s that spewed radiation.
“It represented a health hazard to anyone underneath it,” he said.
(Additional reporting by Thomas Balmforth, Maria Tsvetkova and Andrew Osborn in Moscow; Editing by Mary Milliken and Diane Craft)
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