TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/071089/07108900.028

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 5.6 KB | 109 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 35

HIGH SEAS

Danger! Soviet Subs at Work


    Early on Monday, June 26, word reached Bodo, Norway's
military and civilian surveillance and rescue center 50 miles
north of the Arctic Circle, that a nuclear-powered Soviet
submarine was dead in the water and billowing smoke 65 miles off
the northern coast. There was an immediate sense of deja vu: in
April another Soviet nuclear sub sank in the Norwegian Sea, with
the loss of 42 lives. Following standard procedure, the center
telexed its counterpart in the Soviet port of Murmansk to
inquire if help was needed.

    Not until 80 minutes later did an answer arrive at Bodo:
the Soviets declined help, obviously not eager to have
foreigners, especially military men from a NATO country,
clambering on their sub or plucking their sailors from the sea.
Later in the day, Soviet officials revealed that an air seal in
the cooling unit of one of the vessel's nuclear reactors had
ruptured. By that time, the stricken sub, an Echo II-class
vessel with a crew of about 90 and believed to be carrying eight
nuclear missiles, had begun crawling eastward under auxiliary
diesel power, escorted by a Soviet freighter.

    This time, it appeared, the worst had been averted. The
vessel's two reactors were shut down, and no fatalities were
reported. Soviet officials insisted there had been no venting
of radiation, thus no threat to people or the environment;
Norwegian tests showed no unusual radiation in the area.
Nonetheless, the accident dealt another blow to the prestige of
the world's largest undersea fleet.

    Of all modern engineering achievements, few are as complex
as the nuclear submarine; only manned space vehicles come close.
And as is the case in space flight, accidents are bound to
happen in a global armada of about 367 N-subs -- 195 Soviet, 133
U.S., 19 British, nine French and at least one Chinese. In the
1980s alone, according to a recent report by Greenpeace and
Washington's Institute for Policy Studies, about 60 -- the
number is a minimum due to spotty disclosure records -- nuclear
sub accidents have been logged, including fires, collisions and
leaks of radioactivity.

    During the 1960s, both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. lost two
subs. Neither side is known to have lost a sub during the '70s,
though the Soviets had several fatal accidents, some of the
deaths caused by radiation poisoning from reactor malfunctions.
Then the Soviet navy ran into a streak of bad luck. In 1983 a
Charlie I class with a crew of 100 went down in the Pacific off
the Kamchatka peninsula. In 1986 a Yankee I-class boat was lost
east of Bermuda. With the sinking of the Mike-class vessel in
April, a prototype that is believed to be the most advanced
vessel built in the Soviet Union, the death toll for the decade
took another leap.

    Experts say the environmental threat posed by the nuclear
reactors and atomic weapons lost at sea is small. Reactors are
contained in casings so strong that they remain intact even
under the tremendous pressure of very deep water; missiles
crumple at great depth but will not detonate unless they are
electronically "armed" -- something that would only happen in
wartime. NATO intelligence has confirmed that nine reactors and
50 nuclear weapons of various sizes are resting on ocean floors.
Said one Danish official: "Nuclear things don't just go off, but
the idea of these weapons and reactors rusting away on the
seabed does not seem to be a safe thought."

    Soviet secretiveness over accidents has been a cause of
upset in the West, where high standards are observed regarding
disclosure of nuclear accidents. In Norway patience is wearing
particularly thin. Anger was plainly evident last week when
Foreign Minister Thorvald Stoltenberg denounced Soviet
reluctance to divulge information as "unacceptable."

    No one expects sub mishaps to occur at a rate of one every
three months, but naval experts predict the troubles will
continue. "The incidents were coincidental," says James McCoy
of London's International Institute for Strategic Studies, "but
the problem is that the frequency of this sort of incident is
higher in the Soviet navy per reactor than anywhere else."
Admiral Sir James Eberle, a former NATO commander, agrees:
"There are indications that their engineering is not of the
standards needed in the nuclear business, that their attitudes
to safety means their training standards are not adequate.
Soviet subs are more dangerous because they are more liable to
accidents."

    Western experts have long had reservations about Soviet
reactor design, but deficiencies may be even worse in the areas
of fire prevention, systems monitoring and damage control. The
most recent accident indicates that the Soviet navy may be
facing another problem common to all sub fleets: long-term
stress in aging vessels. The Echo IIs were built in the early
and mid-'60s; last week's accident could point to insufficient
maintenance.

    Another explanation -- that the problems extend beyond
engineering and involve crew training -- came from an
unexpected corner. In the current issue of the Soviet
publication Smena, which went to press well before the Echo II
accident, a Captain V. Ovchinnikov criticized in the letters
column the training of submarine crews: "It will probably
surprise you if I say that the nuclear installations on our
submarines are operated by people who are not sufficiently
trained, and some of them not trained at all. But we still set
sail. The operators know and can do only 30% to 50% of what they
should know and be able to do."