TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/071089/07108900.028

Text File | 1990-09-17 | 6KB | 101 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."