A Cold War Soviet nuclear submarine sank 30 years ago when it sank in the Norwegian Sea, causing to the deaths of 42 sailors. The submarine, called the Komsomolets, was at the time the most advanced in the Soviet Navy. When it went down on April 1989, it was carrying two plutonium warheads, which now lie at a depth of 1,680 meters with the rest of the sub’s wreckage, including its reactor. The wreck has caused concern about possible radioactive leakage ever since.
The submarine has sat in the Norwegian Sea for 35 years, at a depth of 1,659 meters . The sub exceeded the crush depth of its titanium hull. It is also leaking radioactivity. Norwegian scientists have been monitoring the wreck of the Komsomolets – which lies 180 kilometers southwest of Norway’s Bear Island and 350 kilometers northwest of the country’s mainland coast – since the 1990s.
The Norwegian monitoring expeditions, which occur on an annual basis, entail taking core samples from the sea floor. Russian investigators had previously found small radiation leaks near the wreck in the 1990s and in 2007.
Maritime Business World