Johnson's Russia List
#6084
18 February 2002
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A CDI Project
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#3
Torpedo explosion may have caused Kursk sinking - Navy commander
MURMANSK. Feb 18 (Interfax) - Russian Navy Commander-in-Chief Vladimir
Kuroyedov has said that both he and experts have lost confidence in the
torpedo with which the nuclear submarine Kursk was armed.
At a Monday news conference in Murmansk he did not rule out that the
explosion of such a torpedo caused the sinking of the sub in the Barents
Sea in August 2000, killing all 118 seamen.
Kuroyedov finds the torpedo's fuel - hydrogen peroxide - to be the most
problematic. "The danger lies in the fact that the liquid is in constant
motion and its contact with certain metals may have most unpredictable
consequences," he said.
Therefore, the torpedo has been decommissioned from Russian nuclear
submarines, he said, adding that other countries rejected such torpedoes a
long time ago.
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