MOSCOW — As funerals were held Monday for five nuclear workers who were killed while testing a new missile, Russian officials said they will try to determine what went wrong and how to avoid another such accident in the future.
The weapon prototype they were testing relies on small-scale power sources being developed by the Russian Federal Nuclear Center that use “radioactive materials, including fissile and radioisotope materials,” the scientific director of the center, Vyacheslav Soloviev, said in a video broadcast by a television station in Sarov, where the research institute is based.
The missile exploded Thursday evening in the Arkhangelsk region in Russia’s far north. Three nuclear workers who were injured have been hospitalized in Moscow.
The explosion of liquid rocket fuel, on a platform in Dvinsky Bay, threw several of those who died into the water, Rosatom, Russia’s nuclear agency, reported. A “short-term” spike in radiation levels was reported Friday by officials in the city of Severodvinsk, near the testing site, but that report was removed from the web later that day. Dvinsky Bay had already been closed to shipping, and will remain so until Sept. 10.
The Serebryanka, a nuclear fuel cargo ship, has been at the test site since last week, according to several reports.
