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#2
Moscow Times
October 11, 2001
After 14 Months, Kursk Returns Home
By Oksana Yablokova
Staff Writer

MURMANSK, Far North -- More than 14 months after setting out for what
became its last mission, the Kursk nuclear submarine returned home
Wednesday, greeted by the silent residents of a small, heavily guarded
Arctic port.

Accompanied by two military ships, the Giant-4 barge, with the crippled
submarine clamped to its bottom, was hauled by a tugboat to the Roslyakovo
shipyard, slowly moving past the sub's home base in Severomorsk. A crowd
stood on the pier in a biting wind bidding farewell to the once-revered Kursk.

The Northern Fleet commander, Admiral Vyacheslav Popov, called through
loudspeakers for five minutes of silence to commemorate the submarine's 118
crewmen, who died in August 2000 when a powerful explosion sank the Kursk
in the Barents Sea during naval exercises. Northern Fleet ships docked in
Severomorsk and Roslyakovo raised their flags and sounded 30-second siren
signals to commemorate the killed seamen.

Having spent most of the day maneuvering through the narrow Kola Bay, by 6
p.m. the barge was finally set on four floating anchors half a kilometer
from the shipyard, completing its two-day journey from the disaster site.

The submarine was lifted from the Arctic seabed on Monday by a consortium
including Dutch companies Mammoet and Smit International. In an
unprecedented and surprisingly trouble-free salvage effort, the submarine
was hoisted up using 26 cables lowered from Giant-4 and was then attached
to the bottom of the barge with its protruding conning tower and tail fins
fitting into specially carved niches.

The lift-and-tow stage of the operation, which began July 9, suffered
almost a month of setbacks due to bad weather and technical difficulties.
The delays gave rise to widespread doubts that the Kursk would be raised at
all.

One of the fears that prompted the $65 million salvage operation was the
possibility of radiation leaks from the sub's two nuclear reactors.
Northern Fleet spokesman Captain Vladimir Navrotsky said radiation checks
-- which would involve cutting holes in the reactor compartment to sample
water for possible leaks -- were to begin Wednesday evening. Throughout the
operation, monitoring equipment has showed no signs of radiation; however,
the decision to bring the submarine to Roslyakovo stirred panic among
residents and prompted local officials to draw contingency evacuation plans
and stock up on iodine.

Once radiation measurements are completed, workers will take Thursday and
Friday to fit Giant-4 with two giant pontoons designed to lift the barge
and sub seven meters higher than they are now, Navrotsky said.

The effort to place the Kursk into the 70-meter-wide dock will begin
Saturday and is expected to last five days, during which the pontoons and
barge will be detached and water from the dock drained, Navrotsky said, to
allow experts to begin the timely and challenging task of dismantling the sub.

Navrotsky said docking the submarine will be a far more complicated
procedure than the lift.

"The situation in PD-50 [the Roslyakovo dock] is very tense as people feel
a high sense of responsibility," he told reporters Wednesday.

Popov said Tuesday he would feel he had carried out his duty to the dead
seamen and their families when the body of the last Kursk crew member had
been laid to rest. Asked whether camera crews would be given access to the
sub, Popov said curtly: "For sailors, a sunken ship is like a dead body and
showing a disfigured wreck is morally wrong."

Navrotsky said officials expect to find no more than 40 bodies, as the
remains of crewmen in the front compartments are likely to have been
shattered to pieces by the powerful blasts that sank the submarine. Twelve
bodies were recovered during initial salvage work last year.

Navy and government officials have said examining the submarine's hull
should help them determine the cause of the disaster, but some experts
believe that the most pertinent evidence lies in the Kursk's mangled front
compartment, which has been left on the seabed in the heavily guarded
disaster area. A decision on whether to lift the front section is expected
next month.

Popov said it will take at least a year to dismantle the submarine, which
will involve cutting out and disposing of the reactors as well as the sub's
arsenal of 24 supersonic Granit cruise missiles and an unspecified smaller
number of torpedoes.

 
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